2025 COACHE Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey

COACHE, the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education, is part of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and the creator of the Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey, the industry’s preeminent instrument for measuring faculty job satisfaction and well-being. COACHE is a robust, independent and confidential survey that produces the best faculty satisfaction benchmarking data in higher ed. Vanderbilt is proud to participate in this year’s COACHE survey.

The Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey is directly administered by the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s COACHE team, with local oversite by Tracey George (Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs and Professional Education), Olivia Kew-Fickus (Chief Data Officer) and their respective teams. The survey instrument and all corresponding communications are approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB). The Faculty Senate supports the COACHE survey as a complement to its 2023 Well-Being Survey.

The 2025 COACHE survey runs from February 7 to April 11, 2025. During this time, faculty will receive multiple invitations and reminders from COACHE and university leaders to complete the survey.

All full-time, Vanderbilt University-employed faculty will receive the survey. This includes tenured, tenure-track and continuing track faculty members. VUMC faculty and university administrators such as the chancellor, provost and academic deans are not eligible.

Vanderbilt University believes that faculty work at the nexus of our academic mission, playing significant roles in achieving institutional goals, providing a transformative academic experience for students, and generating bold, impactful new research. Faculty satisfaction is deeply important to the success of the university, and COACHE enables university leadership to act meaningfully in the best interest of the faculty.

Yes, Vanderbilt faculty participated in COACHE in 2016 and in 2020 with tremendous success. With prior response rates of over 70%, Vanderbilt received reliable data that informed over 70 meaningful actions on behalf of its faculty. With your continuing support, Vanderbilt will continue to provide data-backed improvements to the faculty experience for years to come.

COACHE is the most respected tool for understanding fa culty experience in higher ed. By participating, you are helping Vanderbilt’s leadership make strategic decisions that improve the well-being and satisfaction of our world-class faculty and better align institutional priorities with faculty interests.

The COACHE instrument gives Vanderbilt faculty the opportunity to speak into a range of key topics, including:

• Nature of work, including the balance between teaching, research and service.
• Institutional leadership and governance, including whether faculty feel their voice is heard and respected in decision-making processes.
• Resources and support, assessing if faculty have the necessary resources to perform to their highest potential.
• Retention, promotion and tenure, understanding whether faculty believe paths of advancement are transparent and fair.
• Recognition, collegiality and collaboration, how faculty feel about their department culture and ability to collaborate locally and across the university.

Yes. COACHE deidentifies all responses and delivers the data in its raw form. It is impossible identify an individual respondent in the COACHE data set.

While faculty take many surveys during their professional career, COACHE is distinguished by its independence, scholarly integrity and broad adoption across higher ed. The result is a state-of-the-art survey instrument that gathers faculty input without bias or agenda and allows Vanderbilt to benchmark against comparable institutions.

COACHE takes 30-45 minutes to complete. You do not need to complete the survey in one sitting as the COACHE tool saves your progress automatically. If you do not complete the survey by the deadline, only your completed answers will be submitted.

COACHE will provide Vanderbilt with a complete, deidentified data set in the summer of 2025. The university will synthesize the data and publish the findings, along with corresponding next steps, during the the 2025-26 academic year. 

Vanderbilt has a track record of leveraging COACHE data to implement meaningful for change. Insights from past surveys have led to over 70 initiatives aimed at improving faculty job satisfaction, and the university remains committed to using the 2025 survey to drive data-backed improvements.

Yes, hundreds of universities, including numerous top 20 institutions and many AAU R1 universities, have participated in COACHE. This allows Vanderbilt to benchmark against peer institutions and ensure that Vanderbilt is positioned to provide the strongest faculty experience available in higher ed.

The COACHE survey and its questions are set by COACHE and administered to each participating university. Vanderbilt is permitted to include a handful of questions concerning our culture and mission that are unique to Vanderbilt’s faculty. These questions are approved by the IRB and will likely be obvious when encountered in the survey.

The COACHE survey is supported locally by the Office of Data and Strategic Analytics (DSA). If you have questions about the survey, please contact Ryan Corser at surveys@vanderbilt.edu.

Yes, COACHE sends the survey invitation directly, and the initial invitation was sent on February 7, 2025. Additionally, to ensure the integrity of the COACHE survey, all email communications were approved by the IRB in advance and sent directly by COACHE from the following email address: coachefaculty@abtsurvey.com.

In the unlikely event you receive an email about COACHE and question its authenticity, please forward it to the Office of Data and Strategic Analytics at surveys@vanderbilt.edu, and they will be happy to assist you.