faculty climate survey of stem departments at umass amherst

Faculty Survey of STEM Departments at UMass

Conducted in Spring 2015

Sponsored by College of Natural Sciences

Who participated in this survey?

• Our sample included 383 faculty (82% response rate) from Natural Sciences, Engineering, and Information & Computer Sciences.

• Gender: 63% were men, 33% women, 4% did not respond, and 0.2% indicated another gender.

• Rank: 43% were full professors, 18% associate professors, 20% assistant professors, 13% lecturers, and 6% non-tenure research faculty

• Race: 82% White, 12% Asian, 4% Hispanic, 1% African American, 0.8% multiracial or other

• National origin: 69% were U.S. born, 31% were immigrants

Department culture and climate

To get a pulse on faculty experiences in their home department we asked:1. Whether their department treated all faculty equitably regardless of

gender, race, and other social identities2. How transparent decision-making was in their department3. How fair decision-making was in their department4. How much their opinions were valued by their colleagues 5. How collegial their department was6. How collaborative their department was

We found that women and men faculty had similar impressions of their department’s collegiality and collaboration.

But they had very different impressions of gender and racial equity in their department, transparency of policies and procedures, fairness, and how valued their opinions were by colleagues in the department.

The table that follows provides details.


Department climate: Gender differences and similarities

Men and women’s impressions of department culture and climate were most different in departments with very few women (under 25%).

The next slide shows which STEM departments at UMass have less than 25% women, which have slightly more women (25-35%), and which others have even more women (36-54%).


Faculty gender composition of STEM departments at UMass-Amherst

In departments with less than 25% women, decision-making was seen as less transparent by women compared to men.

While men thought all faculty were treated equally regardless of their gender, women thought men were treated better.

In departments with more than 25% women, this difference of opinion between the genders was significantly smaller.

This is illustrated in the next slide.

Men compared to women’s perception of department culture and climate diverged most in departments with very few women

In departments with less than 25% women, men and women had greater disagreement about decision-making transparency and gender equity

Transparency of policies, procedures, and decision-making Perceived gender equity

Response scale: 1 = not at all, 5 = very much

In some departments, men and women had similar knowledge about the criteria and process for promotion to full professor (e.g., Computer Science, Physics, VASCI, PBS).

But in other departments men were substantially more knowledgeable about promotion criteria and process than women (e.g., Math, Biology, Engineering, GEO, Stockbridge, Chemistry).

The figure on the next slide illustrates this.

Department Culture and Climate

In some departments men and women had similar knowledge about promotion criteria, but other departments showed big gender differences

Mentoring: Who has mentors? What type of mentor is useful?

• 60% of faculty had a mentor in their department, 38% had a mentor outside their department, and 29% had both

• Chosen mentors were more useful than mentors assigned by the department head/chair

• Mentors outside the home department were more useful than mentors inside one’s department

• Mentoring was more successful when faculty were grouped by common interest regardless of department

• Faculty often praised the CNS women’s mentoring program and the UMass-wide Mellon Mentoring program

Recruitment: What makes UMass a “destination of choice” for faculty?

The top three reasons why faculty chose to come to UMass:

1.The quality of the department and university2.Quality of life in Western Massachusetts 3.Work-family balance

Faculty who came to UMass because of department quality felt more connected to, and accepted by, their department and felt that department decision-making was fair and transparent (see correlation table on the next slide).

Pearson’s correlations above, ** p < .001

Correlations between the quality of the department as the reason for coming to UMass and department climate

Retention: Why do some faculty think of leaving UMass?

When asked—have you thought of leaving and if so, why?—the top four reasons were concerns about salary, inadequate research support (especially facilities, start-up, and access to internal grants), spousal employment, and department climate.

See table on the next slide for the frequency with which various reasons were mentioned by faculty.

The reasons why some faculty think of leaving UMass: Organized by how frequently they were mentioned

Of all survey respondents, 63% had considered leaving UMass at some point during their time at UMass.

Of this group, 44% had applied for jobs elsewhere, received an outside offer and a counteroffer from UMass, and decided to stay at UMass.

34% of faculty in this group had a spouse living in a different city.

Associate professors were most likely to have thought about leaving UMass (as shown in the figure on the next slide).

Retention: Who thinks of leaving UMass?

Rank differences in who considered leaving UMass

Black and Latino faculty in STEM were more likely to have thought of leaving UMass (see graph on next slide).

One reason for this greater retention risk may be spousal employment: 58% of Black and Latino STEM faculty live apart from their spouses or partners because of employment constraints.

None of the Black and Latino STEM faculty at UMass had spouses employed at UMass.

Race differences in who considered leaving UMass

Race differences in who considered leaving UMass

40% of all survey respondents have a spouse employed at UMass.

But there were big gender differences in the types of professional positions held by those spouses.

Spouses of women faculty were more likely to be in tenure-track positions than spouses of men faculty.

Spouses of men faculty were more likely to be in staff or lecturer positions than spouses of women faculty. See table on the next slide.

Spousal Employment

What type of spousal employment matters? And for whom?

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

Spousal employment played a bigger role in women faculty’s decision to come to UMass (p = .046) and to stay at UMass (p = .037).

We also found a generational difference: Younger faculty’s decisions to come to UMass (for both men and women) were more influenced by spousal employment than older faculty’s decisions had been when they had been hired (p < .001).

These data suggest the “two body problem” has become more important over time both in terms of recruitment and retention of faculty.

Spousal Employment

Research

When we asked faculty if they were satisfied with research opportunities at UMass, we found a great deal of satisfaction with research collaborations on-campus, but varying degrees of satisfaction with research facilities and staff support around grant applications.

See table and figures on the following slides.

Are faculty satisfied with research opportunities at UMass? What aspects are more vs. less satisfying?

Response scale: 1 (not at all satisfied), 5 (very satisfied)

Satisfaction with research facilities: Departments in newer research facilities were happier than those in old research facilities that had not kept up with changing needs


Satisfaction with grant submission and management: Departments with strong internal staff support and/or college-level support were more satisfied than others with weak or no support


• Women reported more preference for doing collaborative research with other faculty than did men, p = .012.

• Not giving faculty adequate credit for collaborative research at tenure and promotion may have a disproportionate impact on women.

• Women did more interdisciplinary research than men, p = .048.

• Assistant professors did more interdisciplinary research than associate and full profs (p < .020) suggesting that fields are becoming increasingly interdisciplinary over time.

Faculty interest in collaborative and interdisciplinary research

Teaching

On average, faculty felt valued by their department for their teaching. But two specific teaching concerns stood out across several departments:

1. The need for more teaching assistants given class size and better support for struggling students

2. Better equipped classrooms and teaching labs

For more details, see table and figures on the following slides.

Most frequently raised teaching concerns, satisfactions, and other feedback

Satisfaction with TA allocation and support for struggling students: Some departments were more dissatisfied with constrained TA resources and inadequate supplemental support than others


Satisfaction with classrooms and teaching labs: Departments in newer classrooms and teaching labs were happier than those in old teaching facilities that do not have adequate technology


Gender differences in teaching

• Women enjoyed collaborative teaching more than men, p = .006.

• Women were more willing to engage diverse students in classes by modifying course curriculum, p = .008.

• Women advised more undergraduate students, p < .001, and graduate students, p = .046.

Service

Faculty rank and gender influenced the amount of time they spent on service.

Not surprisingly, time spent on service increased significantly for associate and full professors compared to assistant professors, p < .001.

But also, among tenure-system faculty, women spent more time on service than men, p < .05.

These findings are illustrated in the next slide.

How much time do faculty spend on service? Disaggregated by faculty gender and rank

Among tenure-track faculty, hours spent on service per week: Post-tenure > pre-tenure, p < .001. Women > men, p < .05.

Leadership-oriented service

• Department’s gender composition affected whether or not women got tapped for leadership positions

• Men were more likely than women to be tapped for important leadership roles in departments with under 25% women, p < .001.


Six actionable next steps

1. Inadequate research facilities is hampering faculty productivity in some depts. Improve communication between affected faculty, dept heads/chairs, and higher-administration committees that handle research space.

2. Improve staff support for research grant submission; provide equal access to college-level staff for all CNS faculty. This improvement is already underway.

3. Identify problems with department climate and culture early. Department leaders should proactively work to find and implement solutions with assistance from the deanery.

Six actionable next steps (cont’d)

4. Create a spousal employment network by coordinating with Five College Consortium, UMass-Worcester, and other local employers.

5. Identify a “matchmaker” at the university level who will gather information about job opportunities within UMass and also within the local network and connect them to departments in need of a spousal position.

6. Create a free or subsidized bus service between Amherst, Worcester, Boston, and New Haven to make it convenient for faculty spouses to commute to jobs. Such a bus service will expand the geographical region within which faculty spouses could look for jobs.

Questions? Comments?

Please complete our feedback form (see link on the CNS website)

faculty climate survey of stem departments at umass amherst

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