Faculty Senate Survey on University Priorities

Kenneth Wilson

Sociology

A Special thanks to Natalie Hill (ITCS) who created the web-survey and to the Students in SOCI 3216 who help to publicize the survey. 

Every faculty member on campus was contacted by email and asked to participate in this survey. Members of the faculty senate were asked to deliver a follow-up request to the faculty members in their units. A second email request was sent and students in SOCI 3216 distributed over 1,000 flyers to many units and posted them on bulletin boards around campus. The overall response rate was 36.3 percent.

Table 1 shows the response rate for different segments of the campus community. Tenured and tenure track faculty were much more likely to respond than fixed term faculty. The School of Education and the Libraries were most likely to respond. Overall faculty members in Academic Affairs were twice as likely to respond as faculty in Health Affairs. Faculty members with 6 to 15 years of service were more likely to respond than faculty with more or less service. Since all faculty members were included, some held administrative positions. Since I could not find the number of faculty with each type of administrative position, I could not calculate the response rates for these groups.

Each faculty member completing the survey was asked to rate 30 possible spending alternatives. These alternatives were derived from ideas provide to the Chair of the Faculty. Each alternative could be rated from 0 to 10 with 10 being the best alternative. Faculty could skip alternatives. After respondents finished rating the alternatives, they were asked to pick the one they would pick if they could only recommend one thing. Results are presented in several formats since each approach provides a slightly different view of these complex decisions.

Table 2 present the Mean Rating that assigned each option and Graph 1 shows the options plotted with a 95 percent confidence interval. With this approach, the top 6 options clearly stand out from the rest since there is a gap large enough that the confidence intervals do not overlap. These top 6 are the first 6 options listed in Table 2: Competitive salaries, better health care, recruit more top students, attract more quality faculty, safer campus and surrounding neighborhoods and workloads more in line with other research universities.

Table 3 presents the respondents selection of a single option as their only choice. There were 538 respondents who selected one of the 30 alternatives. This time “competitive salaries” are clearly the single dominant alternative. The second group is composed of better health care, a campus child care center, workloads in line with other research universities and off-campus scholarly leave.

Table 4 combines the two approaches by calculating the number and percent of faculty giving each option one of the top 3 ratings. This time competitive salaries and better health care form the top group. A second tier is composed of more top students, safer campus and surrounding neighborhoods, more quality faculty and workloads more in line with other research universities. A third tier is composed of off-campus scholarly leaves and a campus child care center.

These different approaches should remind us that these types of data provide insight but that they are not precise. Examining them in different ways provides the same overall pictures but changes many of the numerical rankings. Given the ballpark nature of these results, what would I conclude?

1) Salaries that are competitive with our peers and better access to health care (one respondent pointed out that we have great health care available, we just can’t get access to it) are clearly the top two concerns of faculty. However, anyone could have told you this and they probably have. Now you can respond that we have a survey that documents what we all knew.

2) The most interesting results are the alternatives included in the next tier of options that emerged. These options didn’t always appear in the top group but were consistently close and were identified more than once as a priority. These six could provide insight into the concerns and visions of ECU faculty.

ü more top students

ü attract more quality faculty

ü safer campus and surrounding neighborhoods

ü workloads more in line with other research universities

ü a campus child care center

ü off-campus scholarly leave

3) Remember that while these 8 are the top priorities, there are many other items that are viewed as important by many ECU faculty members. The tables and graphs are included so that you can examine all 30 options and see how many faculty members supported each alternative.

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A final approach is provided to allow decision makers to see how the alternatives fit together when faculty consider them. The easiest way to view this table is to examine all the options grouped together in a white or grey section. Faculty who supported one of these alternatives tended to support the others. While the factors seem to have general themes, they are not pure. The first factor seems to focus on the teaching mission, the second on downtown development, the third on hiring new faculty and the fourth on West Campus. I don’t know what the theme of the fifth factor is. The sixth factor seems to focus on getting new faculty off to a good start. The seventh factor is being competitive with our peer institutions in several important ways.

I am not sure that this Factor Analysis will help in the short run. However it can provide folks with some interesting questions. For example, why don’t moving expenses, office and finding opportunities for spouses cluster together with mentoring and start-up expenses? Why does “attract more quality faculty” end up in the teaching factor rather than with one of these two factors that seem to relate to recruiting better faculty?

Table I: Survey Response Rates for Various Campus Demographic Groups

	Fact	Survey	Response
Tenure Status	Book		Rate
Fixed Term	578	120	20.8%
Tenure-track	414	196	47.3%
Tenured	596	261	43.8%
	1588	577	36.3%
College or School
Business	89	25	28.1%
Education	126	90	71.4%
Fine Arts & Communication	156	63	40.4%
Health & Human Performance	67	27	40.3%
Human Ecology	85	41	48.2%
Technology & Computer Science	57	18	31.6%
Arts & Sciences	400	168	42.0%
Allied Health	54	19	35.2%
Medicine	428	81	18.9%
Nursing	71	24	33.8%
Other (Libraries)	76	42	55.3%
Health Affairs	553	124	22.4%
Academic Affairs	980	432	44.1%
Other (Libraries)	76	42	55.3%
Years of Service
Under 6 years of Service	791	261	33.0%
6 to 10	292	125	42.8%
11 to 15	180	74	41.1%
16 to 20	129	48	37.2%
21 to 25	100	35	35.0%
More than 25 years of service	114	37	32.5%
Administrator?		Survey	Percent
No		478	83.7%
Unit level Administrator		46	8.1%
School or College level		24	4.2%
Other level		23	4.0%

Table 2: Number Rating and Mean Rating Given Each Alternative

		N	Mean
1	Salaries that are competitive with our peers	577	8.6
2	Better Health Care	561	8.0
3	Recruit more top students	527	7.0
4	Attract more quality faculty	519	6.8
5	Safer campus and surrounding neighborhood	533	6.7
6	Workloads in line with that of other research universities	530	6.6
7	Increase graduation rates	495	5.9
8	Off-campus scholarly leave for established faculty	547	5.8
9	More academic programs that bring recognition to the university	504	5.8
10	Reduce paperwork	523	5.8
11	Campus Child Care Center	544	5.5
12	Startup money for new faculty	536	5.5
13	More faculty office space	529	5.4
14	Opportunities/benefits for faculty spouses; e.g., tuition	524	5.4
15	Mentoring program for new faculty	538	5.4
16	Higher proportion of tenure/tenure track faculty	514	5.3
17	Improve opportunities for student work/service experience	503	5.2
18	Moving expenses for new faculty	530	4.8
19	Parking decks on or adjacent to the core campus	544	4.8
20	Continue increasing the number of PhD programs	536	4.7
21	Limit enrollment increases	505	4.3
22	Finding employment for spouse of new hires	512	4.3
23	Create new interdisciplinary undergraduate programs	517	3.9
24	Continue increasing the number of DE courses/ programs	517	3.8
25	Faculty Club	535	3.6
26	ECU downtown center	511	3.6
27	Dining options on west campus	487	3.3
28	Cultural Museum downtown	511	3.2
29	Recreational facility on west campus	496	2.9
30	Faculty advocate or ambassador	483	2.8
	Valid N (listwise)	405

Graph 1: Mean Rating for 20 Spending Alternatives with 95% Confidence Intervals

Table 3: Number and Percent Selecting of Each Possible Action as Their Single Selection

	N Top	Percent
	Pick	Top Pick
Salaries that are competitive with our peers	164	30.5%
Better Health Care	72	13.4%
Campus Child Care Center	61	11.3%
Workloads in line with that of other research universities	44	8.2%
Off-campus scholarly leave for established faculty	41	7.6%
Safer campus and surrounding neighborhood	16	3.0%
Attract more quality faculty	14	2.6%
Startup money for new faculty	12	2.2%
Parking decks on or adjacent to the core campus	12	2.2%
Continue increasing the number of PhD programs	8	1.5%
Mentoring program for new faculty	8	1.5%
Faculty Club	8	1.5%
Higher proportion of tenure/tenure track faculty	8	1.5%
More academic programs bringing recognition to the university	8	1.5%
Recruit more top students	8	1.5%
Finding employment for spouse of new hires	7	1.3%
Cultural Museum downtown	7	1.3%
Create new interdisciplinary undergraduate programs	6	1.1%
Increase graduation rates	4	0.7%
Limit enrollment increases	4	0.7%
More faculty office space	4	0.7%
Reduce paperwork	4	0.7%
ECU downtown center	4	0.7%
Recreational facility on west campus	4	0.7%
Opportunities/benefits for faculty spouses; e.g., tuition	3	0.6%
Improve opportunities for student work/service experience	2	0.4%
Moving expenses for new faculty	2	0.4%
Dining options on west campus	1	0.2%
Faculty advocate or ambassador	1	0.2%
Continue increasing the number of DE courses/ programs	1	0.2%
	538

Table 4: Percentage and Number Giving Rating of 8, 9, or 10

Descriptive Statistics
	Percent	Number
Salaries that are competitive with our peers	74.9%	448
Better Health Care	63.7%	381
Recruit more top students	44.1%	264
Safer campus and surrounding neighborhood	42.6%	255
Attract more quality faculty	40.3%	241
Workloads in line with that of other research universities	39.8%	238
Off-campus scholarly leave for established faculty	34.4%	206
Campus Child Care Center	34.3%	205
Reduce paperwork	30.6%	183
Increase graduation rates	27.3%	163
Startup money for new faculty	26.6%	159
More academic programs that bring recognition to the university	26.6%	159
Parking decks on or adjacent to the core campus	26.1%	156
Opportunities/benefits for faculty spouses; e.g., tuition	25.9%	155
Mentoring program for new faculty	25.8%	154
More faculty office space	25.4%	152
Higher proportion of tenure/tenure track faculty	23.9%	143
Improve opportunities for student work/service experience	20.2%	121
Moving expenses for new faculty	18.7%	112
Continue increasing the number of PhD programs	18.2%	109
Limit enrollment increases	15.4%	92
Finding employment for spouse of new hires	15.4%	92
Faculty Club	14.7%	88
Continue increasing the number of DE courses/ programs	14.4%	86
ECU downtown center	12.5%	75
Create new interdisciplinary undergraduate programs	11.0%	66
Dining options on west campus	10.9%	65
Recreational facility on west campus	10.5%	63
Cultural Museum downtown	9.9%	59
Faculty advocate or ambassador	5.9%	35
Valid N (listwise) = 598 responses

Table 5: Factor Analysis of the 30 alternatives

	Component
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Attract more quality faculty	0.787
Recruit more top students	0.733
More academic programs that bring recognition to the university	0.728
Increase graduation rates	0.607				0.301
Improve opportunities for student work/service experience	0.496	0.368			0.350
Higher proportion of tenure/tenure track faculty	0.467		0.404
Create new interdisciplinary undergraduate programs	0.434	0.412
Cultural Museum downtown		0.819
ECU downtown center		0.779
Faculty advocate or ambassador		0.562
Finding employment for spouse of new hires			0.822
Opportunities/benefits for faculty spouses; e.g., tuition			0.749
Moving expenses for new faculty			0.495			0.462
More faculty office space			0.382
Dining options on west campus				0.888
Recreational facility on west campus				0.887
Continue increasing the number of DE courses/ programs					0.722
Off-campus scholarly leave for established faculty		0.329			-0.523		0.326
Safer campus and surrounding neighborhood		0.319			0.458
Startup money for new faculty						0.745
Mentoring program for new faculty						0.612
Salaries that are competitive with our peers							0.747
Better Health Care							0.739
Workloads in line with that of other research universities						0.325	0.507
Limit enrollment increases								0.757
Reduce paperwork			0.312					0.420
Parking decks on or adjacent to the core campus					0.407			0.407	0.378
Faculty Club									0.656
Campus Child Care Center		0.316	0.379						-0.434
Continue increasing the number of PhD programs	0.324							-0.324	0.333

Are you interested in off-campus scholarly leave, child care, better health care, interdisciplinary programs, a faculty club, more office space…?

The Chancellor has asked the Faculty Senate to give him some input on faculty priorities for spending the limited amount of money he has to improve ECU.  Catherine Rigsby collected many possible options from committees and faculty senators.   I volunteered to create a questionnaire and Natalie Hill (ITCS) created the web-survey. 

Working together we have created the opportunity for faculty to advise the Chancellor on how we want him to spend his discretionary money. 

Please take 5 minutes to respond.  On April 24^th, I will write a report to the Faculty Senate using the responses that are available.  Therefore, please respond to this web-survey by Sunday, April 23, 2006.

Go to http://www.ecu.edu/cs-acad/fsonline/survey/index.cfm and log in. A new email with a clickable link will be distributed Thursday morning.

You need to log in so that no one can answer twice.  Your name will never be associated with your answers. 

Some of the options being considered are off-campus scholarly leave, child care, a faculty club, better health care, more office space, interdisciplinary programs…

If you have any questions please contact Ken Wilson at wilsonk@ecu.edu.  Thank you.

Kenneth Wilson

Department of Sociology

252-328-4897