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The COACHE 2024 survey results were just the beginning of the story, and our engagement process focused on learning about the “rest of the story” from our faculty and administrative leaders. After reviewing the survey data, the Steering Committee focused its inquiry on three main questions:

  • What additional information do we need to better understand the survey results, and who should we ask for this input?
  • What insights will unit leaders have to improve faculty satisfaction related to their work area and faculty population?
  • What actionable recommendations allow UNT to lean into our strengths and address developmental opportunities to improve faculty job satisfaction?

The Steering Committee embarked on a distributed engagement process to explore these questions, allowing  additional meaning and context to emerge, providing academic units and senior leaders with data for their local contexts. Figure 1 illustrates this process and additional use of COACHE data. 

Distributed Engagement Process for COACHE 2024 Data

Faculty Engagement and Deeper Dives:
The Steering Committee recruited additional faculty to work on one of three focus committees
COACHE wheel divided into 3 parts: COACHE Steering Committee & Faculty Forms; UNT Stakeholders; and VPAA: Faculty Success, Colleges, Departments
College Reports, Chair Academy, Faculty Success Groups
Stakeholder Group Sharing and Engagement:
HR/Academic Resources, DRI, CLEAR, Toulouse, Faculty Senate

Data Availability
Accreditation, grants, graduate research, planning

(Figure 1: Distributed Engagement Process for COACHE 2024 Data)

The distributed engagement process is further described below:

  • Focused our Steering Committee inquiry around three significant areas. The COACHE Steering Committee identified three main areas of lower faculty satisfaction than UNT's 2021 results and ranked in the lower 30% of our peer comparisons. The three focus areas and co-leads include Shared Governance and Leadership, Promotion and Tenure, and Interdisciplinary Work and Collaboration. Each focus area is described in greater detail later in the report.
  • Shared COACHE survey data with stakeholders. We engaged stakeholders in the Budget Office, Human Resources, Academic Resources, CLEAR, Research and Innovation, and Toulouse Graduate School so they can explore how the data can inform President Keller’s Three Strategic Priorities and their respective areas. Stakeholders received data in early October 2024 and provided quarterly status updates.
  • Created college-level COACHE reports and an interactive dashboard. Our DAIR reach created COACHE reports with college-specific data to allow deans and their faculty to understand the benchmarks that indicate improvement opportunities and areas where their faculty are satisfied. Our DAIR team created 12 college reports, individualized with benchmark breakdowns for that college and longitudinal benchmark comparisons over six years (2018, 2021, 2024). The reports included overall response rates for UNT and college, and a breakdown of tenure type, gender, and ethnicity response rates. UNT College Deans were given their COACHE results in early 2025 and may be contacted for the results.

DAIR also created an interactive COACHE dashboard on Insights 2.0 within the Faculty Dashboard options where department chairs and deans can review their specific unit and college survey results.

The reports also included visuals for global satisfaction metrics, which are not ranked the same as benchmarks, but provide vital information in understanding faculty satisfaction within colleges. The items chosen for the global satisfaction metrics came from a partnership with the University of Missouri (MU). These global satisfaction metrics include breakdowns in gender, ethnicity, tenure status, and experience within the college versus UNT as a whole. DAIR also created an interactive COACHE dashboard within the UNT Insights Platform for unit leaders to review their department faculty satisfaction across demographic data.

Three Focus Areas

graphic of focus linesThe Steering Committee actively recruited faculty to join their work to provide perspective, review and react to the data, and to volunteer for interviews and focus groups. COACHE data revealed UNT’s 2024 ratings on several Benchmarks, including Governance, Senior Leadership, Interdisciplinary Work, Collaboration, and Promotion and Tenure, were lower than those in our COACHE 2021 survey. Further analysis of our COACHE 2024 results revealed concerns around three areas, comprising five benchmarks.

Interdisciplinary Work & Collaboration

The Issue: The COACHE survey revealed that UNT ranked low (fifth place) among peer institutions regarding faculty satisfaction related to interdisciplinary work and collaboration, with mean scores of 2.59 and 3.57, respectively. Specifically, tenured (µ=2.50) and pre-tenured faculty (µ=2.48) reported the lowest satisfaction scores on Interdisciplinary Work. The picture was the same across all demographics, including gender, as both men (µ=2.63) and women reported a low mean score (µ=2.55) that placed UNT in the bottom tier of our peers. From an ethnicity standpoint, UNT faculty ranked in the bottom tier (fifth place) across all ethnic groups.

The Work: The Interdisciplinary & Collaboration (I&C) team utilized several methods to gain deeper insights into COACHE findings. These included engaging departments that scored lowest and highest on I&C Benchmarks, conducting focus group interviews with current or former chairs of those departments to learn about the unique challenges faculty encounter when attempting I&C work, what resources and support would promote I&C work, and how leaders can foster greater concern for I&C work. The I&C read through the promotion and/or tenure documents for the top three and bottom three scoring departments in both the I&C metrics. They also interviewed three UNT faculty members who were actively engaged in interdisciplinary and collaborative work. Finally, the I&C team reviewed best practices of universities that have developed initiatives for supporting this type of work, including Virginia Tech University, Texas State University, University of Houston, Georgia State University, Duke University, University of Southern California, and University of Central Florida.

Their findings indicated:

  • Cultural Silos
    Faculty in departments scoring low in I&C appear to operate in departmental silos with minimal cross-unit engagement.
  • Lack of I&C Incentives
    Interdisciplinary efforts are either not consistently recognized or rewarded in P&T processes, merit, workload, and annual review, or the process is unclear. A review of department guidelines showed that those who scored higher on these I&C Benchmarks included interdisciplinary work in their guideline documents, whereas low-scoring units did not. However, an overarching approach is lacking.
  • Structural Barriers
    Limited infrastructure to support interdisciplinary work, unclear evaluation metrics, and a lack of collaborative spaces, both physical and virtual, hinder interdisciplinary efforts.
  • Leadership and Messaging Gaps
    UNT lacks strong leadership, messaging, and consistent guidelines supporting interdisciplinary work. For example, our recently developed UNT Values do not mention interdisciplinary work or collaboration other than “Better Together”.
  

Tenure & Promotion

The Issue: UNT scored well on several Promotion and Tenure (P&T) Benchmarks including ranking second in its peer group for all faculty members in “Tenure Policies” and “Tenure Expectations: Clarity”, and first in “Promotion to Full.” However, deeper analysis revealed areas of concern warrant additional inquiry. For all faculty, UNT scored low on “Clarity of whether I will achieve tenure,” ranking fifth among its peers and in the 27th percentile of its cohort group.

Mean scores for women faculty on the benchmark “Tenure Policies,” fell from 3.81 (2021) to 3.48 (2024), placing UNT fifth among its peers for this group. White faculty members’ scores for “Tenure Policies” and “Tenure Expectations: Clarity” were lower in 2024 (3.49 and 3.24, respectively) than in 2021 (3.73 and 3.34); additionally, this group ranked fifth among cohort universities on these benchmarks. Finally, some colleges scored significantly lower than their peers on “Tenure and Promotion” benchmarks. 

The Work: The P&T team gathered data through faculty interviews (n=30) and across four focus groups to explore perceived challenges and barriers to tenure clarity, policy, and overall promotion and tenure process. The P&T team used Padlet, a virtual group collaboration tool, for the four focus groups that allowed participants (n=35) to share their responses to the prompt questions. The P&T team then reviewed the data to identify common themes and patterns.

Their findings indicated:

  • Lack of Clarity and Consistency in P&T Expectations
    Faculty expressed confusion about department and college promotion and tenure expectations, citing vague criteria and inconsistent categorization across department and college documents.
  • Concerns About Teaching Evaluation Methods
    Many faculty discussed the over-reliance of their RPT Committee and department chair on SPOT evaluations, despite UNT Policy 6.007, which includes ten additional options to assess teaching effectiveness. Faculty raised concerns about the fairness and effectiveness of teaching assessment.
  • Inconsistent Promotion Criteria for Professional Faculty
    College and department-level Professional Faculty Promotion standards often failed to distinguish between different faculty roles and ranks, leading to perceived inequities for professional faculty.
  • Discrepancies Across Units and Mentoring Gaps
    Conflicting guidance from department chairs and committees, inconsistent advice from mentors, and inconsistent mentoring support contributed to faculty uncertainty and uneven preparation for promotion.
      

Shared Governance & Institutional Leadership

graphic of people in government buildingThe Issue: COACHE results revealed that UNT faculty rated all Shared Governance benchmarks higher in 2021 than 2024. These benchmarks included:

  • “Governance: Trust” (3.13 to 3.02)
  • “Governance: Shared Sense of Purpose” (3.12 to 2.98)
  • “Governance: Understanding the Issue at Hand” (3.02 to 2.90)
  • “Governance: Adaptability” (3.01 to 2.93)
  • “Governance: Productivity” (3.05 to 3.01).

Concerning “Institutional Leadership,” all faculty scored “Leadership: Senior” lower in 2024 (µ=3.25) than in 2021 (µ=3.48). Full professors rated several leadership benchmarks low; their mean scores for “Leadership: Senior” ranked fifth among UNT’s cohort, while their scores on “Leadership: Faculty” ranked sixth among UNT’s cohort and in the 13th percentile. Dr. Neal Smatresk was President when the COACHE data was collected.

The Work: The team facilitated an information-sharing session with UNT faculty from several colleges interested in shared governance/leadership issues at UNT and held a series of meetings with Faculty Senate members and the Executive Committee. Finally, they collaborated with DAIR to analyze college and department-level data to gauge how units rated shared governance and leadership at UNT.

Their findings indicated:

  • Shared Governance Experiences Vary Across Units
    Faculty experiences and perceptions of shared governance vary significantly across departments and colleges, with few units consistently scoring their satisfaction at either extreme.
  • Concerns About Transparency and Inclusion
    Many faculty feel excluded or only symbolically included in administrative decision-making, indicating a need for more meaningful participation.
  • Persistent but Isolated Concerns
    Some faculty continue to focus on highly individualized or outdated issues, suggesting a need to rebuild trust and shift the focus to shared goals and future improvements.