Faculty asked to participate in job satisfaction survey

A job satisfaction survey is on its way to all full-time Johns Hopkins faculty, and university administrators are confident that broad participation can yield meaningful results.

In response to the 2012 iteration of the survey—part of a Harvard Graduate School of Education national program called COACHE, for the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education—many tangible changes occurred at Johns Hopkins. Among them were the creation of the Homewood Early Learning Center and the establishment of the university's new policy on parental leave.

COACHE was designed entirely to determine current job satisfaction compared to that of faculty at peer institutions.

Responses will be gathered and passed on in a summary analysis to Johns Hopkins' Office of Institutional Research, which will analyze broad patterns in the data so that it can assist with planning and developing improved academic policies and practices.

After the data is analyzed, a summary of key results will be shared publicly with Hopkins faculty, and potential action plans in response to the finding will be discussed in various groups within and across divisions, as appropriate.

In an email alerting faulty to the upcoming survey, Provost Sunil Kumar wrote, "We welcome this opportunity to learn from an independent, research-driven, comparative study, and data from the COACHE study will be meaningful and actionable only if we have broad participation."

Faculty should note that the email that each receives from COACHE will contain a unique link for the web-based survey, which takes 20 to 30 minutes to complete.

"This standardization and benchmarking are important in order to understand what actions we can take as we strive to attract and retain the best and brightest scholars and teachers, to increase the satisfaction of all faculty, and to make Hopkins a fantastic place to work," Kumar said.

Participants who have questions about the survey can contact Ratna Sarkar, vice provost for institutional research, at IRSurveys@jhu.edu or COACHE at <coachefaculty@srbi.com.