CAS Congress

Annual Faculty Survey 2014

Purpose: Elicit a Faculty-Centered Agenda for the

Policy Committee• Identify the areas that faculty

members wanted to see improved.

• Generate ideas for how these areas might be improved.

• Set the year’s agenda and serve as the foci for the various policy discussions to be held in the coming year.

The Survey Construction

• Given this plan, the survey was designed to ask about any areas where CAS might do better rather than what CAS does well.

• If respondents identified an area that needed improvement, a text question popped up to solicit specific ideas for how to improve that area.

The Data• We have some quantitative data,

indicating where improvements might be most desirable.

• We also have a considerable amount of qualitative data, highlighting specific suggestions respondents provided for how an area of concern might be improved.

The Participants

• We invited 255 tenure track or tenured faculty members to participate.

• 182 (73%) responded to the survey. (Thank you!)

The Results

• We will use these data to set the 2014-15 agenda for the CAS Congress Policy Committee.

• First we offer the quantitative, then the qualitative data.

First Overarching Question

• Overall, do you think CAS is headed in the right direction?

• Definitely yes = 7%• More yes than no = 56%• More no than yes = 27%• Definitely no = 10%

10%

27%

56%

7%

Second Overarching Question

• Is there something CAS can do to fulfill its mission more effectively?

• Yes = 84 %• No = 16 %

Specific Improvement Areas

• We suggested 7 areas, and asked respondents to indicate how strongly they wanted CAS Congress to improve each area.

Two Areas Were Ranked by Participants

as “Definitely needs improvement”

1. The pay you receive for the work you do.

2. Your ability to impact CAS decisions as they are being made.

Two Areas Were Ranked by Participants as

“Could improve, but I’m not too concerned”

1. The collegiality across different CAS departments.

2. The level of engagement with colleagues in other departments.

Two Areas Were Ranked by Participants

as “Needs No Improvement”

1. The level of engagement you have with students.

2. The collegiality within your department/workgroup.

Two Additional Salary Questions

O 65 % disagree (or strongly disagree) that our pay is fair compared to others in the discipline, at the same rank, in other schools.

O Regarding gender equity:O 50% chose “neutral or don’t know” O 23 % chose either direction (agree/

strongly agree) O 28 % chose disagree/strongly disagree

Fourteen Attitudinal Questions in 5 Groups

O Attitudes about participationO Attitudes about Promotion and

Tenure processesO Attitudes about the Dean’s advocacyO Attitudes about

discrimination/favoritismO Attitudes about the budget

(NOTE: Neutral response was not allowed.)

Attitudes about Participation

• More opportunities to work with faculty in other departments: 79% A or SA.

• More opportunities to participate in college level decision making: 75% A or SA.

• Have enough information prior to decisions: 60% D or SD.

• Feel invited to participate in college decision making: 63% D or SD.

Attitudes about P&T Processes

• Reviews by the Dean are fair: 81% A or SA.

• Reviews by the CAS faculty committee are fair: 61% A or SA.

Attitudes about the Dean as an Advocate

• I trust the Dean to advocate for my department: 56% D or SD.

• I trust the Dean to advocate for CAS: 60% A or SA.

Attitudes about Discrimination/Favoritis

m• Experiences, rather than attitudes, were

reported for the following:

• I have experienced discrimination: 75% D/SD.

• This leaves 25% who agree/strongly agree.

• I have experienced favoritism: 84% D/ SD.

Attitudes about the Budget

O The Dean’s office is handling the budget crisis fairly: 58% D/SD.

O I am given enough information to understand how CAS allocates money: 79% D/SD.

What Can We Learn from the Quantitative

Data?• CAS Faculty are generally happy here.

• However, they see room for improvement.

Areas to Improve

1. Salaries2. Faculty inclusion in college decision

making3. Cross-department engagement4. Communication/flow of information to

faculty5. Possibly Promotion and Tenure processes

Solutions are noted in conjunction with qualitative comments.

The Qualitative Sections

NOTE: Anytime a respondent indicated dissatisfaction with any of the facets of CAS that we considered, a follow up question asked for suggestions about how to improve the situation.

Six Areas of Concern(Unranked)

• Workload• Obstacles to increased collegiality or

community across CAS• CAS Leadership• Lack of inclusion in CAS decisions• Promotion and Tenure• Salaries

Concerns about Workload

• Faculty lack control over their workload.

• Service is not meaningful.• Some work is redundant (such as

entering the same information into Digital Measures for annual and retention reviews).

• Bureaucratic inefficiency is too great.

Possible Actions Related to Workload

• Examine the forms and the processes to see if these can be streamlined?

• Examine service and see how service activities are connected to the following:

• P and T requirements?• CAS goals?• University goals?

Concerns about Collegiality/Community• Curiosity about how other

departments work, how others are handling the budget crisis, etc. was common.

• A desire to be able to talk, ask questions and have an opportunity to develop a sense of CAS as a cohesive group was clear.

Possible Solutions for the Collegiality Concern

• Create an online user group? • Something like Facebook (but not)?

• Find a physical meeting space? • Would faculty take advantage of such a

space?

Concerns about Leadership

• Most of the concerns seemed to center on transparency and communication:• We want to know who is saying what,

who is deciding what, and why.• These concerns are amplified around

the budget.• Some concerns focused on how CAS fits

into the larger University.

Possible Solutions Related to Leadership

1. Ask the Dean to provide rationales for decisions?

2. Have Town Hall meetings once per month, in which faculty can ask for any clarifications they need and he answers as best he can?

3. Create a CAS website for disseminating information, like Chairs’ minutes, etc.

4. Offer meaningful, not bureaucratic, service work for faculty.

Possible Solutions Related to Leadership,

cont.5. Could we have more complete budget information?6. Could we reinstate the Faculty Budget Committee as a Congress ad hoc committee?7. Fairness in budgeting may be connected to better communication.

Concerns about P&T

• Overwhelmingly, respondents felt the Dean reviews were fair.

• Respondents were less confident that the faculty committee is fair and were generally concerned about the unique power of this committee and specifically concerned about recent committee decisions.

• Some wanted greater clarity in the papers.

Possible Solutions Related to P&T

O Change the P&T Committee’s task to simply ensure that department rankings are fair, according to the department papers? (Committee no longer advises on rankings).

O Create a process for selecting the Chair? Just for P&T or all Chairs? Create a removal process?

Concerns about Salaries

• Plainly, there are concerns about salaries.

• The flat rate for the December term is not helping to ease concerns.

• Cutting summer budgets is a salary cut for many of us.

Possible Solutions to the Salary Problem

• Communicate salary dissatisfaction to the Provost?

• Become better informed about the procedures used to set salaries, raises, etc., for CAS faculty?

• More participation from the ad hoc Budget committee?

For this Year• Which problems should we focus on

and in which order?• Which solutions seemed promising, or

not?• Are there new ideas that we can bring

forward?

Chair Contact• Any ideas or comments can be

directed toward Trish Oberweis at toberwe@siue.edu for the 2014-15 year.

• Thanks!