Results of UMass Amherst STEM faculty experiences conducted by Buju Dasgupta

1. STEM faculty experiences at UMass
Results from the faculty survey conducted in 2015
Sponsored by CNS (includes COE and CICS)
Buju Dasgupta
Director, Faculty Equity & Inclusion, CNS

2. Goals of the Survey
1. How do faculty feel about their department culture/ climate,
and experiences in terms of research, teaching, and service?
2. Do these experiences vary by faculty gender, rank,
race/ethnicity? What’s going well and what needs work?
3. Recruitment: What makes UMass a “destination of choice?”
Can we leverage these assets in future recruitment efforts?
4. Retention: Why do faculty think of leaving? Can we leverage
this knowledge to address dissatisfactions early?
5. Come up with set of actionable agenda items going forward

3. Who participated in this faculty survey?
• N = 383 faculty (82% response rate) from CNS, Engineering,
and Information & Computer Sciences.
• Gender: 63% men, 33% women, 0.2% other gender, 4% no
response
• Rank: 43% full, 18% associate, 20% assistant, 13%
lecturers, and 6% non-tenure research
• Race: 82% White, 12% Asian, 1% African American, 4%
Hispanic, 0.8% multiracial and other racial groups
• National origin: 69% U.S. born, 31% immigrants

4. Department climate & culture
We measured faculty experiences of:
Gender & racial equity in their department
Transparency
Fairness
Feeling valued
Collegiality
Collaboration

5. Department climate: Gender differences and
similarities in faculty impressions
• 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 feeling valued.

6. Department climate: Gender differences and similarities
(cont’d)

7. Men vs. women’s perception of department culture
diverge most in departments with very few women

8. Men vs. women’s perception of department culture
diverge most in departments with very few women
Transparency of policies, procedures,
and decision-making Perceived gender equity

9. Some departments are more transparent about
standards and process for promotion to full professor
than others

10. In some departments men and women have similar
opinions about the transparency of promotion to full,
but other departments show big gender differences in
opinions

11. Mentoring

12. Who has mentors? When is mentoring is most useful?
• 60% had mentor within home department, 38% had mentor
outside department, and 29% had both
• Chosen mentors were more useful than assigned mentors, p <
.001
• Mentors outside the home department were more useful than
mentors inside one’s department, p = .003
• Mentoring was more successful when faculty were grouped by
common interest regardless of department
• Often praised: CNS women’s mentoring program, UMass-wide
Mellon Mentoring program

13. Recruitment and Retention

14. Recruitment: What makes UMass a “destination of
choice” for faculty?
1. Quality of department and university
2. Quality of life in Western Massachusetts
3. Work-family balance

15. Faculty who indicated that quality of department
influenced their decision to come to UMass cared about
department climate
Pearson’s correlations above, ** p < .001

16. Retention: Why do faculty think about leaving?

17. Retention: Who considered leaving UMass?
Rank differences
• 44% of all faculty in this
group received outside
offers
• 34% of faculty in this group
have a spouse living in a
different city
• No gender difference in
retention
63% of all survey respondents considered leaving

18. Retention: Who considered leaving UMass?
Race differences
0% of spouses of
Black and Latino
faculty are
employed at
UMass
58% of Black
and Latino
faculty live apart
from spouses
b/c of
employment
constraints

19. What type of spousal employment matters?
And for whom?
• 40% of survey respondents have a spouse employed at UMass
• Big gender differences in types of spousal employment
Table 2 What type of job did/does your spouse/partner
have at UMass?
Tenure-
system
faculty
Non-
tenure
system
lecturer
Short-
term
researc
h
scientist
Staff
position
other -
please
specify:
Male
faculty
Count 30 8 2 21 11
%
within
41.70% 11.10% 2.80% 29.20% 15.30%
Female
faculty
Count 31 3 2 4 9
%
within
63.30% 6.10% 4.10% 8.20% 18.40%
Total Count 61 11 4 25 20
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

20. Gender differences and generation differences in
spousal employment
• Spousal employment played a bigger role in women faculty’s
decision to come to UMass (p = .046) and to stay at UMass (p =
.037)
• Younger faculty’s decisions to come to UMass (both men and
women) were more influenced by spousal employment than
older faculty’s decisions (p < .001).

21. Research

22. 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)

23. Satisfaction with research facilities: Wide variation
across departments

24. Satisfaction with support around grant applications:
Wide variation across departments

25. • Women report more preference for doing collaborative
research with other faculty than do men, p = .012.
• Not giving faculty adequate credit for collaborative research at
tenure and promotion may have a disproportionate impact on
women.
• Women do more interdisciplinary research than do men, p =
.048.
• Assistant professors do more interdisciplinary research than do
associate and full profs (p < .020). Fields are becoming
increasingly interdisciplinary over time
Faculty interest in collaborative and interdisciplinary
research

26. Teaching

27. Teaching concerns and satisfaction

28. Satisfaction with TA allocation and support handling
struggling students varies by department

29. Satisfaction with teaching classrooms and labs
varies by department

30. Gender differences in teaching
• Women enjoy collaborative teaching more than men, p =
.006.
• Women are more willing to engage diverse students in
classes by modifying course curriculum, p = .008.
• Women advised more undergraduate, p < .001, and
graduate students, p = .046.

31. Service

32. How much time do faculty spend on service?
Disaggregated by faculty gender and rank
Among tenure-track faculty: Post-tenure > pre-tenure, p < .001. Women > men, p < .05.

33. Leadership-oriented service
• Department’s gender composition affects whether or not
women get tapped for leadership positions
• Men are more likely than women to be tapped for
important leadership roles in departments with <25%
women, p < .001.

34. Seven actionable steps
1. Inadequate research facilities is a top priority for faculty in
some depts. Affecting morale and retention. We need to fix
this problem
2. All departments need high quality internal staff support for
grant submission and equal access to CNS staff. Currently,
grant submission support is uneven.
3. Identify departments with toxic climate. Figure out ways to
intervene early. Another reason for retention problems.
4. Identify and address salary dissatisfaction early. E.g., ask DPCs
and chairs to use AFRs to identify highly productive faculty
who are paid less relative to market rate. Provide merit raise.

35. Seven actionable policy implications (cont’d)
5. Create a spousal employment network by coordinating with
Five College Consortium, UMass-Worcester, local employers
6. Identify “matchmaker” at university level who gathers
information about job opportunities from local networks and
connects units in need of a spousal position
7. Create free or subsidized bus service between Amherst,
Worcester, Boston, NYC to make it convenient for faculty
spouses to commute to jobs.
Having a bus service has benefit of expanding geographical
region within which faculty spouses could look for jobs

36. Questions? Comments?
Email: dasgupta@psych.umass.edu