Nilanjana Dasgupta, Director of Faculty Equity and Inclusion, shared the results from the faculty survey assessing department culture and its impact on faculty satisfaction.

1. Faculty Survey 2015
Sponsored by CNS (includes COE and CICS)
Buju Dasgupta
Director, Faculty Equity & Inclusion, CNS

2. Goals of the Survey
1. How do faculty feel about their department culture/ climate,
and experiences in terms of research, teaching, and service
2. Do these experiences vary by faculty gender, rank,
race/ethnicity? What’s going well and what needs work?
3. Recruitment: What makes UMass a “destination of choice?”
Can we leverage these assets in future recruitment efforts?
4. Retention: Why do faculty think of leaving? Can we leverage
this knowledge to address dissatisfactions early?
5. Come up with set of actionable agenda items going forward

3. Sample
• N = 383 faculty (82% response rate) from CNS, COE, and
CICS.
• Gender: 63% men, 33% women, 0.2% other gender, 4%
no response
• Rank: 43% full, 18% associate, 20% assistant, 13%
lecturers, and 6% non-tenure research
• Race: 82% White, 12% Asian, 1% African American, 4%
Hispanic, 0.8% multiracial and other racial groups
• National origin: 69% U.S. born, 31% immigrants

4. Department climate & culture
Equity
Transparency
Fairness
Valued
Collegiality
Collaboration

5. Faculty perceptions of department climate: Gender
differences and similarities

6. Men vs. women’s perception of department culture
diverge most in departments with very few women

7. Men vs. women’s perception of department culture
diverge most in departments with very few women
Transparency of policies, procedures,
and decision-making Perceived gender equity

8. Mentoring

9. Who has mentors? When is mentoring is most useful?
• 60% had mentor within home department, 38% had mentor
outside department, and 29% had both
• Chosen mentors were more useful than assigned mentors, p
< .001
• Mentors outside the home department were more useful
than mentors inside one’s department, p = .003
• Mentoring was more successful when faculty were grouped
by common interest regardless of department
• Often praised: CNS women’s mentoring program, UMass-
wide Mellon Mentoring program

10. Recruitment and Retention

11. Recruitment: What makes UMass a “destination of
choice” for faculty?
1. Quality of department and university
2. Quality of life in Western Massachusetts
3. Work-family balance

12. Quality of department is significantly correlated with
department climate
** p < .001

13. Retention: Why do faculty think about leaving?

14. Retention: Who considered leaving UMass?
Rank differences
• 44% of all faculty in this
group received outside
offers
• 34% of faculty in this group
have a spouse living in a
different city
• No gender difference in
retention
63% of all survey respondents considered leaving

15. Spousal employment
• 40% of survey respondents have a spouse employed at UMass
• Big gender differences in types of spousal employment
Table 2 What type of job did/does your spouse/partner
have at UMass?
Tenure-
system
faculty
Non-
tenure
system
lecturer
Short-
term
researc
h
scientist
Staff
position
other -
please
specify:
Male
faculty
Count 30 8 2 21 11
%
within
41.70% 11.10% 2.80% 29.20% 15.30%
Female
faculty
Count 31 3 2 4 9
%
within
63.30% 6.10% 4.10% 8.20% 18.40%
Total Count 61 11 4 25 20
Tenure-
system
faculty
Non-
tenure
system
lecturer
Short-
term
research
scientist
Staff
position
other -
please
specify:
Male
faculty
% within 41.7% 11.1% 2.8% 29.2% 15.3% 100%
Female
faculty
% within 63.3% 6.1% 4.1% 8.2% 18.4% 100%
Total 61 11 4 25 20 121
What type of job did/does your spouse/partner have at
UMass?
Total

16. Spousal Employment
• Gender difference: Spousal employment played a bigger role in
women faculty’s decision to come to UMass (p = .046) and to
stay at UMass (p = .037)
• Generational difference: Younger faculty’s decisions to come to
UMass (both men and women) were more influenced by
spousal employment than older faculty’s decisions (p < .001).

17. Research

18. Satisfaction with research facilities: Wide variation
across departments

19. Satisfaction with support around grant applications:
Wide variation across departments

20. Teaching

21. Teaching concerns and satisfaction

22. Satisfaction with TA allocation and support handling
struggling students varies by department

23. Satisfaction with teaching classrooms and labs
varies by department

24. Six actionable steps
1. Inadequate research facilities is a top priority for faculty in
some depts. Affecting morale and retention. We need to fix
this problem
2. All depts need high quality internal staff support for grant
submission and equal access to CNS staff
3. Identify departments with toxic climate. Figure out ways to
intervene early. Another reason for retention problems.
4. Create a spousal employment network by actively
coordinating with Five College Consortium, UMass-Worcester,
local employers

25. Six actionable policy implications (cont’d)
5. Identify “matchmaker” at university level who gathers
information about job opportunities from local networks and
connects units in need of a spousal position
6. Create free or subsidized bus service between Amherst,
Worcester, Boston, NYC to make it convenient for faculty
spouses to commute to jobs.
Having a bus service has benefit of expanding geographical
region within which faculty spouses could look for jobs

26. Thanks!