Using Faculty Satisfaction Data for Strategic Change in Higher Education:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 254 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Dr. R. Todd Benson

Transcript: Changing Higher Ed podcast 254 – with Drumm McNaughton and Todd Benson

Introduction to Changing Higher Ed^®

David: Welcome to Changing Higher Ed®, a podcast dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. With your host, Dr. Drumm McNaughton, CEO of The Change Leader, a consultancy that helps higher ed leaders holistically transform their institutions. Learn more at changinghighered.com. And now, here’s your host, Drumm McNaughton.

[00:00:20] Introduction and Guest Welcome

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David. My guest today is Todd Benson, the Executive Director of COACHE, the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education. Todd leads the COACHE team across many dimensions, in fact, all dimensions of its research and partner engagement, and he’s worked in higher education for three years.

For those of you who don’t know the COACHE survey, it is a great survey that enables institutions to understand and get a better pulse on what their faculty and staff are doing and how they feel about things going on. Todd earned his doctorate degree, higher education, leadership, and policy at Vanderbilt, and he joins us today to talk about the COACHE survey, how it works, and what institutions can get from it if they decide to go through the process.

Todd. Welcome to the program.

Todd Benson: Thanks for having me on today. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk.

Drumm McNaughton: My pleasure. There is just so much going on in higher education right now, not only coming out of Washington, but many potential and actual votes of no confidence from faculty and administration, boards, et cetera. The work that you’re doing with COACHE and surveying faculty attitudes is critical.

[00:01:35] Todd Benson’s Background and Career Path

Drumm McNaughton: Before we get into that, give us a little bit of your background. Let listeners know how you came to this and et cetera.

Todd Benson: Well, like a lot of folks that work with academic affairs, I stumbled into it. It’s a Fort Gump type career, I think for a lot of folks. We don’t expect to end up here. I actually started out in higher ed working in student affairs. So I spent about 11 years living on campus in residence life with students, mostly freshman students. Raised all my kids on campus. And then when I went back to graduate school, I learned a little bit about the experience of PhD students and what it took for them to have successful faculty careers. And that me write into this position with COACHE. I’ve been with COACHE now for 15 years. Started out really on the survey and administration side of things. But now for the last three years I’ve been the executive director and principal investigator.

Drumm McNaughton: Congratulations on that. You said something in your bio, your background, that was interesting for me.

[00:02:35] The Role of Faculty in Student Success

Drumm McNaughton: Working with first year students, et cetera in student affairs did you get a sense of the impact that faculty can have on students and how that dynamic between faculty and administration plays out?

Todd Benson: Even before I could talk about the student story, I have my own personal story on that, which is that I was a pretty terrible student as an undergraduate. I was not on, a very strong path. And I was fortunate enough to have some faculty members who gave me, the nurturing kick in the butt that I needed, and the support that I needed, in order to be a successful student.

It’s interesting because now being at Harvard, it’s certainly a very different experience, but most of my career, prior to Harvard, was at a broad range of institutions from small liberal arts colleges that are tuition driven and, every head counts, to, large public research universities like Rutgers.

And I’ll just highlight, I’ll tell you one of the places where I saw this connection between faculty and the student experience was early in my career doing a lot of, I’ll call it, enrollment management work, but it was really triage. We would have to find ways to identify students who were at risk and then put together resources to support them and, make sure that they stay with us.

And that was one of the first opportunities I had to collaborate with faculty as a student affairs professional. , And when we do that, what we find is that we can all touch students in slightly different ways, and they’re gonna resonate differently with different people. So maybe me as a hall director at the time, I was, fortunate enough to be able to connect with students and help them to deal with maybe homesickness or relationship issues, but that’s very different than what a faculty member can bring to the table. But, we were two sides to the same coin. And I think that’s a lot of why I find as much enjoyment in my current work as I did as a residence life and, student affairs professional.

Drumm McNaughton: You bring up an interesting point, and I don’t mean to take us off of the conversation about COACHE, but I’m going to anyway.

[00:04:44] Impact of COVID-19 on Faculty and Students

Drumm McNaughton: Right now we’re seeing students coming, post covid students. They require, they’re requiring far more hands-on, more help, more learning study skills, et cetera. That’s falling On faculty in many respects.

Todd Benson: Yeah, especially, we tend to think about higher ed as being these large research universities, but boy, if you go into, community colleges or regional publics, they are a combination of scholar and counselor and mentor. It’s all really focused on the students at those types of institutions and it’s remarkable. It’s really remarkable when I think about what faculty do just on a day-to-day basis, oftentimes, I think without even realizing it.

Drumm McNaughton: We’ve had a couple of faculty members on, just after Covid who have had to spend inordinate amount of time with students, not only tutoring them, but more being quasi mental health professionals, and that’s a challenge.

Todd Benson: Yeah, it certainly is.

[00:05:49] Introduction to COACHE

Drumm McNaughton: Now we’ll get to COACHE. Tell Tell us a little bit about COACHE please, ’cause first time I came across it, I was fascinated by what you’re doing.

Todd Benson: So COACHE is a research practice partnership and we study faculty. The idea behind a research practice partnership, in a in a condensed version, is that we produce high quality, rigorous research to understand the academic workplace and faculty, in a way that is designed to help practitioners be better in their roles.

At the same time, we’re listening to the practitioners who are telling us what the real challenges and issues are that they need to address, and we’re trying to find ways to use research to inform that.

[00:06:32] COACHE’s Evolution and Methodology

Todd Benson: So it’s a very reciprocal relationship and COACHE actually started out, in 2003, as the study of new scholars, which was a grant funded project to understand why junior faculty weren’t making it through the tenure process.

When that grant ended, what they realized is they had this very interesting diagnostic tool for understanding the academic workplace. And there was a belief that colleges and universities would support this work because we are in a competitive labor market. That if we wanna recruit, retain, and develop the best faculty, we really need to understand their experience, and if we can do it in a comparative way that can drive the market. And so when COACHE began working we only focused on those junior faculty, but then around 2009, 2010, we expanded the survey to include all full-time faculty.

Then, I joined in around 2009 and one of the questions that we had for our partners was, “well, how are you putting the data to use?,” and we got very disparate responses. There were some institutions that integrated COACHE data into their strategic plans, and there were other ones that, forgot about the report altogether. And there was this variance that we wanted to try to narrow down, and that’s what COACHE has evolved into now, which is this RPP model where we don’t just think about a survey and a report, but we really think about how do we give our partners the tools they need to drive change with faculty and for faculty.

[00:08:01] Using COACHE Data for Institutional Improvement

Todd Benson: When I first got into COACHE, we would deliver the reports and people would think about them almost like a report card. Did you pass or did you fail?

Drumm McNaughton: Of course we’re academics.

Todd Benson: But that doesn’t drive change, and that’s the crazy part, is that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to change things.

And so instead, what we started to think about is, “well, how do we use the entire research process to not just, deliver this important data to institutions, but to really make sure that they do something with the data?” So just to give you a sense of our, a typical three-year partnership in COACHE’s job satisfaction study. We administer the survey in the spring, we’re in the field right now, usually from February to April. But we start working with our partners the summer before to develop a communications plan that allows faculty to see what’s gonna happen with the data, ’cause if they don’t believe that you’re gonna do something with the data, then they’re not gonna take the time to complete the survey.

And so we take this time to make a compelling case to faculty and it’s gotta come from a variety of sources. It’s gotta have different messages for different audiences, but the point of it is to, in some ways, paint an institution into the corner to say, “yeah, we’re really gonna do something this time”.

We typically deliver reports around the summer and then we start a whole ‘nother cycle. And this is where we look at the result, but instead of saying, “you have to fix X, Y, and Z because we have a five point Likert scale that says, you’re not doing great”. Instead, we say to them, “you need to talk to your faculty about these issues. These are the ones that came up as concerning, but they may not be the highest priority”.

And what happens from that is instead of treating the report, like a report card, we think of it more like a syllabus for a discussion class. And sharing out the results in that way. First of all, it helps you to give your faculty an opportunity to clarify what the issues are. I’ve never had a faculty member come to me and say, you know what, I really do feel like a 3.25 on a 5.0 point scale. But I’ve had ’em come to me and say, “I’m not gonna go up for promotion to full. And here are the reasons why”. That’s a very different conversation, and it’s not something that you can get typically from a survey.

The second reason that we really focus on this second wave communication planning is because it helps us to prioritize. Institutions are big, complicated organizations, and if we try to fix everything at once, we end up not fixing anything at all. And so the prioritization helps us to understand what is it that affects faculty most in their day-to-day lives?

And then the third piece, at least from my perspective is, it’s an opportunity to remind faculty that you’re listening. Faculty need to hear that over and over again. If you’re not listening to your faculty and if they don’t believe that you’re listening then we can’t move forward in a healthy, constructive way with faculty.

And so the goal for that second year is to really clarify, prioritize, and distill down what it is that you wanna get at. And then we want you to come back and tell us your priorities. Once you tell us what they are, we try to connect you with other institutions that are doing the same kinds of work so you get a community of practice .

Drumm McNaughton: So let’s back up just a little bit. It used to be that the COACHE survey, and refresh my memory again, what does COACHE stand for?

Todd Benson: Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education.

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you. It’s far easier to say COACHE. So, so COACHE used to be done once a year and it was a quote report card, and now how long ago did you put people on a three year cycle so that they could see improvements?

Todd Benson: So, should clarify a little bit. We’ve always recommended that institutions survey on a three year cycle, but our partnership with the institutions really cut off once we delivered the report. The idea was we’re giving you good data, you’re smart people, you can figure it all out on your own.

And what we’ve realized is, A, that’s not a model for success, and B, that, especially in academic affairs, and I think you probably know this from your client base as well, nobody goes to provost school.

Drumm McNaughton: Nobody goes to leadership school, period in higher ed.

Todd Benson: Yes. And because of we find that these really, complicated, thorny issues and the lack of structure can affect the way that individuals lead their organizations.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, very much so.

Todd Benson: We If we can give them some templates and timeline and structure, I have to tell you, they thrive on it. They’re so excited when we say, here’s a few examples”, and they’re never gonna fit perfectly from one institution to the next. But just giving them a different way to frame it. And again, I’ll just reiterate that community of practice, boy, there’s nothing better than getting a bunch of academic affairs professionals in the same room to problem solve together.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah. Well one of the things that I thought was really neat is when you deliver the results, the first time results you have your peer groups that you compare to. And in some ways this is a report card and people can take a look and go, “oh gosh, we’re doing fabulous”, or “Oh my gosh, we’re not doing so fabulous”. How do you come up with those peer groups?

Todd Benson: So the institutions define them, and that’s actually part of our communication strategy. When we deliver those reports it doesn’t matter whether or not we think the peers are the best peers or not. In fact, there are analytically sound approaches to identifying peers and, that’s for a different podcast.

But, but peers are also socially constructed and I think that’s an important part is that when faculty see their comparative data, they wanna be as close in comparison groups as is possible. That way there’s less concern about, “well that’s, that might not be the case here”. Or “it’s a different sector”, or “we’re exceptional”, that sort of thing. And those are great ways to dismiss the data and they would be, I think, worth their weight if the goal was just to look at that report and make your final determinations. But that extra step, that’s why the peers are important, but only in so much as they drive conversation.

Drumm McNaughton: But it’s very smart on y’all’s part to have them select their own peers, because these are the folks, in their mind, are the exemplars and their competition. So if you’re doing well compared to those, maybe you need to up your peers, and if you’re not doing well, maybe you need to up your game. Or maybe you need to up your game on both. Who knows?

Todd Benson: Well, and that’s, it’s interesting because we do talk about that and many universities have the peer set that they sit within and they have an aspirant set, and they can pick across those groups in our peer selection so that they can get a little bit of a mix if they want. But I think as long as you are transparent about the rationale, either approach can make sense.

Drumm McNaughton: So, let me ask you this. You’re looking at different axes of behaviors, essentially, lack of a better word. Just briefly, what are some of those axes that you’re looking at? And then we’ll get to what are the trends you’re seeing.

Todd Benson: The job satisfaction survey, and I should, just mention that we do also have our faculty retention and exit study, which is I think the only one of its kind in the country that compares faculty on why they leave their tenure line positions. But that’s a perhaps for a little bit later down road.

When we think about behaviors, I think there’s kind of two levels to this question, so please feel free to push me if you want me to go in one over the other, but there’s the faculty behaviors that we think about, which are, how do faculty treat each other within their department? What does colleagueship look like? Mentoring is a big thing, we’re actually working on some stuff with the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity. Mentoring is a key part of that really happens on the shop room floor.

And then there’s the kind of, I’ll call it organizational or leadership behaviors. And that’s What are you saying? How are you saying it? How often are you saying it? And are you following through on what you said? All of those are pieces of what COACHE studies, both in the survey itself as well as in the approach that we take to helping our partners to put the data into action.

Drumm McNaughton: That makes a lot of sense because the COACHE survey results that I’ve seen from multiple universities, it breaks it down to peers and department type things, and then it’s faculty and administration. For example, how shared governance is working, how leadership is perceived, senior leadership or leadership in general, et cetera.

So, those are all really important things to focus on. What are you seeing in trends lately?

[00:16:36] Trends in Faculty Job Satisfaction

Drumm McNaughton: Say in the last year?

Todd Benson: So I’ll talk about a couple different pieces here. At the faculty level, faculty care about how they’re spending their time. More than anything, I think that’s one of the most important factors. And it shows up not just in the job satisfaction study, but also in the retention and exit study. And that doesn’t just mean, am I studying my discipline? Am I researching all the time? It’s about how faculty perceive their work and their impact. And then the second piece, I guess the trend that I would add to that is then are resources being allocated in a way that supports that work.

And then the third, I think big trend for me is faculty perceptions about leadership. And that to me aligns with that question of how are resources being allocated? Can faculty see how their day-to-day lives impact the overall organization? And, again, are resources being allocated in a way that gives them the support to do that work.

The last thing that I’ll say, and this is a meta part to this question, is that all of this is happening, while everybody’s riding a rollercoaster. The organizations are constantly changing. The departments are constantly changing. And the individual faculty members lives are constantly changing professionally and personally. So there’s gonna be this moment where we’re all in equilibrium, and so we have to figure out how to ride that rollercoaster together in a healthy and comfortable way.

Drumm McNaughton: So it sounds like when the COACHE survey is distributed, taken, that it’s a snapshot in

time.

Todd Benson: Right.

Drumm McNaughton: Okay. And it may have to do with, a new program that’s rolled out that faculty don’t like, or something like that. But how do you balance that over time to say, “yes, faculty are happy, or No, they’re just not happy”? Or is that where the multiple surveys come in?

Todd Benson: Well, I think it’s a both/and.. The multiple surveys matter because you really do get a sense of kind of the flow of faculty. In most universities and colleges that we work with request de-identified raw data back to do their own analysis. So you can really look at the breakdowns by career stage, for example, and see different factors in faculty that are really important.

I would say that, in terms of the experiences of faculty themselves, though, what we emphasize, maybe is the best way to say this, is that If everything’s changing, then the healthiest thing you can do is have a process that is flexible enough for engaging folks.

I’ll just give you an example of this and that, having regular conversations with faculty about their careers and their lives is important. And understanding that someone who came in as a rockstar scholar may hit a point in their career where they just love teaching. Or you may have someone who comes in and didn’t know, that being a department chair could be so fulfilling.

Drumm McNaughton: Or just the opposite.

Todd Benson: Yeah, that’s true. I’m going, I’m gonna go with, I feel like we need some optimism right now, and I’m always gonna go with the idea that there’s somebody who loves that job.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah.

Todd Benson: I want them to feel as supported and engaged so that they can do the best job they can.

Thinking about the idea that if we just have those regular conversations with faculty, not just about, well, what do you wanna do and what don’t you wanna do, but how does it fit into the picture of our department and creating space for those conversations, even if you can’t get to the perfect answer. Think it really matters.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, one of the things that I really liked about looking at surveys is how you, one, de-identify, but two, you can disaggregate faculty, which is really important because sometimes your tenured faculty are gonna feel very different than your folks on a tenure track. Or even those who are not on a tenure track, those who may be lecturers or adjuncts or under contract. I think that’s an important thing.

But I also wanna highlight that yours is a quantitative research. Okay. And what I found is, a lot of times folks will understand what’s going on to trigger responses, but the qualitative piece gives it a nice balance to really understand why and what can be done going forward.

[00:21:06] Importance of Qualitative Data in COACHE

Todd Benson: Absolutely. And I have to tell you just as an example of this, when we built that faculty retention and exit study, one of the things that we did in the pilot was we asked a lot of open text questions with the hopes that we’d be able to use the qualitative responses to validate the quality of our quantitative questions. After that pilot study and reading those comments, there was no question at all that we were gonna keep all of those qualitative questions in. Especially when it comes to things like negotiating with the institution or your decisions to leave. It’s so complicated and sometimes you just need somebody to tell that story in their own words, and we have to respect that.

And I’ll also add that, there’s, I think a general bias towards quantitative research, and I am always trying to think about how COACHE can scale qualitative work in order to elevate those voices. Because, it’s not just that we show a dashboard and everybody sees the same dashboard. There’s a scholar, by the name of Karl Weike who talks about “sensemaking” with data as a community experience. And the analogy he uses that I loved is that “sensemaking” with data is like cartography. And you could have a map of New York City that shows every building and the address and that tells a different story than say a topographical map. And that tells a different story than something that follows traffic patterns.

Drumm McNaughton: Or populations centers.

Todd Benson: Exactly. And each of those stories give us a different way to see the data, but we also have to understand that the reader, the interpreter, sees those maps differently. And so the more we can do to elevate stories across a broader array of methods and communication strategies, the more people we’re gonna reach, the more people we’re gonna connect with. And I hope we can continue to tell those stories.

Drumm McNaughton: I’m sure we will be able to. There’s a couple of things I really want to touch on because we’re starting to run out of time already. Just like I said, we would. One of the things that you’ve seen anecdotally, and I’ve seen the things, is the value of work being questions. Do academic leaders and do administrative leaders have our back? How can they help our climate?

What are some of the other things that, that you’ve seen that say, “Hey, this is about change management. This is about leadership”.

[00:23:28] Effective Change Management in Higher Education

Todd Benson: It’s really, and I just wanna start this by saying pretty much everything that I talk about as examples are things I learned from practitioners. But when it comes to really, framing this question about what are the kind of the big drivers to change management, about telling your faculty what you’re gonna do in a way that is respectful of the constraints and resources that you all have. We can’t show up to every office and go through the reports personally with every faculty member. But we can create venues where people who care about things can come and learn about those particular issues.

But then the second component to that, in terms of change management is telling them everything you learn along the way. Oftentimes we would get folks who would say, “we’re going to accept recommendations”, and they go into this black box and we know nothing about what happens from them. And so explaining to folks how we’re gonna prioritize things is really important.

And then making the connections between the data that you collected, the questions you asked, and the outcomes that you got to. A couple of really good examples that I just wanted to tout because they’re really excellent partners of ours.

Georgia State University does this wonderfully. If you go to their provost page, they have a whole section dedicated COACHE, and almost written as a flow chart. We learned this from the COACHE data. We took these action steps to understand the issue more deeply. And then we took the following actions. And I’ll tell you the, one of the things about Georgia State is when they did their second round, they had all the infrastructure for this built. And so what was a really laborious process in the beginning ended up just making a tremendous impact on their ability to do the work in perpetuity.

The other example that I’ll use is U is University of Texas at Arlington. We’re highlighting them in our 20th year anniversary report, which is coming out, hopefully early spring, well probably late spring at this point, ’cause I guess we’re in early spring. We highlight them because they were a faculty led initiative. I believe they were our first partners where the senate actually advocated for COACHE rather than the provost’s office. And the shared governance approach that they’ve taken between faculty senate and the administration on this is really remarkable. I wish I could, say this about all of higher ed. It’s so healthy because they just went into it with all the right intentions and they laid out a framework early on for how they were gonna work together. And because of that, they created this, what they call their, COACHE scorecard, which shows, again, the direct outcomes.

And, I’ll tell you just two that are, really stick out to me is they advocated for salary equity issues and the administration went out and got the funds to help address that. And the other thing the faculty told them was, “we need more competitive packages to recruit doctoral students”, and the administration came through. That’s a very idealized situation. We don’t often see the level of commitment that we saw at UT Arlington or at Georgia State, but they’re both examples of when we all come together around the table with a shared set of data and a process for exploring them, we can get to some great outcomes.

Drumm McNaughton: Have you in your experience know if there’s issues with the COACHE survey. And not the survey itself, but the results that come back indicate those issues at a college or a university. Is it important for folks to come in and own what’s going on with that? To me that’s part of leadership 1 0 1 is you own what’s on your plate.

Todd Benson: I think that it’s tricky. It is tricky when institutions don’t have that prebuilt kind of healthy infrastructure for these sorts of conversations. Because at least to me, there can be a difference in the tone of that. We might have concerns at the institution, then the unhealthy approach is to say, “whose fault is it”? And what I would say the healthier construction is, “who can be responsible for repairing it”? When we take that approach you can really, take our survey and break it up into components. There are things that the administration really does have to own. There’s no doubt about it that they have to provide the resources and support they have to do things better or differently than they did before.

There’s also a bucket of things like departmental collegiality and engagement and collaboration and interdisciplinary work that really fall in the hands of faculty. Think about this, when we do deep dives with our partners on things like clarity of tenure and promotion policies, oftentimes what we find out is that the mixed messages are coming from within the department.

It’s not that the handbook doesn’t say it, it’s that I don’t care what the handbook says. If my mentor or colleague tells me something, I’m probably gonna resonate more. So that’s an opportunity for faculty to own a piece of the survey. I.

And the other bucket are the things that they have to work on collaboratively. And that’s where, the survey module about shared governance isn’t just about whether or not you have good shared governance. It’s about whether you can actually do the work together at all. And so do you have a sense of trust between faculty and administration? Do you have a shared understanding of the issues at hand? When you think about those framings, it is a collaborative enterprise. And I’ll tell you this, and any survey researchers who are out there can curse me under their breath for saying this, but we intentionally wrote our shared governance questions poorly. And by that I mean they’re double barreled. Our double barreled questions say things like, do faculty leadership and administration operate under a framework of trust? Do they communicate effectively with each other? And, if we ask those questions separately we would probably get responses that lean towards faculty, leadership as being more positive than administration. Just, that’s my guess. It’s not a, it’s a prediction.

Drumm McNaughton: Makes sense.

Todd Benson: But the truth of the matter is they all have to own the relationship. That’s the point that we’re trying to get at with the shared governance module is, it doesn’t matter whether faculty think it’s the senate’s fault or they think it’s the administration’s fault. Everybody’s gotta come to the table to repair it.

[00:29:44] Three Takeaways For University Presidents, Boards, and Administration

Drumm McNaughton: That is a great note to end on, I think. It’s up to everyone. The way higher education institutions are set up in this country, it is a collaborative process to ensure the education of our students. And if you’re not doing it, if you’re not doing it that way, there’s something wrong.

This has been fabulous, Todd, I really thank you for your time today. As we always do, three takeaways for university presidents and boards and administration for what they need to do going forward. Not a small question.

Todd Benson: No problem. I should be able to knock that out in 30 -45 seconds tops.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, no problem. I, it’s a double barrel question.

Todd Benson: So I’ll tell you the three things that I think about most right now is over communication. Faculty need to hear from presidents and boards more consistently now than ever. And I think there’s this perception that we’re just sending out these kind of pulse messages and giving people advice, but they need to hear, not just what’s going on, but how the presidents and boards are advocating and fighting for their faculty.

I think the other thing, and this, I think this really, applies to presidents and boards more than many other groups, is we have to find ways to tell those outside of higher ed about the true impact of faculty. And when I think about that more and more, I’m thinking about how to personalize those stories from two sides. The first is I want our presidents and our boards and everybody who communicates on behalf of faculty, to tell the story of faculty in a way that is personal to the constituents that they are communicating with. And what I mean by that is to not just say, “We got $25 million in NIH grants last year”.

That doesn’t mean much to a person who doesn’t work in the higher ed space. But if you say, “we help drive a cure for a very rare type of pediatric cancer. And by the way, here are some of the kids that were helped by this”. And then there’s the other half of the constituency communication, which is to tell them personally about the faculty who did the work. To remind them that these faculty are hardworking, caring people who in absolutely most cases did not get into this for the money. There’s no faculty member that I’ve ever spoken with that’s been like, “yeah, I just knew I would be able to retire at 45”. In fact, most of them continue working for most of their careers because of caring about whatever it is. And that can be rocket science or it could be Shakespeare, and they all have value.

And the third piece, is to think about how we can tell the story of faculty in a way that we can reflect back to them. To use it as an opportunity to honor and reward the contributions that they make. As I said, I really do believe that every faculty member sees themselves as using their discipline to make the world a little bit better of a place. And sharing that back to them, letting ’em know we hear it and we see it, that matters.

[00:33:01] Drumm’s Bonus Takeaway

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, those are great takeaways. I’m gonna add one more. I generally don’t do this, but there has to be leadership involved with this on both ends of the spectrum and leadership is about relationship and trust building. The absolute worst feeling of a leader is to turn around and find no one’s following. So you’ve got to build those relationships, authentic relationships, to make sure that you celebrate the good times, and you weather the bad.

Todd Benson: Absolutely couldn’t agree more.

[00:33:36] Wrapping Up and Future Directions for COACHE

Drumm McNaughton: So what’s next for you, sir?

Todd Benson: So, as I mentioned a little earlier, we are just about to cap off our 20th year. We’ve been chronicling that in our COACHE report, 20 year impact report, which will highlight not just our partners and our research, but really the intersection between the two. The other things that we’re working on right now, we’ve been doing some really interesting work and we have some grants out there to look at how faculty negotiate with institutional actors. And I think there’s some really interesting questions around equity and equity minded processes that we’re gonna learn about. But mostly I’m just gonna keep listening to our partners and listening to faculty and finding ways to share that.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, those sound great. Todd, thank you so much for taking the time to be with me on the program today. I’ve learned a tremendous amount of COACHE from listening to you as well as looking at your stuff. Just keep up the great work, and thank you.

Todd Benson: Same to you. Thank you so much.

Drumm McNaughton: Thanks for listening, and a special thank you to our guest, Todd Benson, the Executive Director of COACHE. Todd, thanks for joining us. It was a great presentation, and I look forward to working with you more in the future.

Thanks again for listening, see you next week.