Wellesley College: Robbin Chapman
на канале: Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE)
Dr. Robbin Chapman, Associate Provost and Academic Director of Diversity & Inclusion, describes the benefits COACHE has brought to her institution.
"At Wellesley College, we administer two COACHE surveys over the years, and they have been incredibly useful to us, in particular because we now have more than one recording of the data so we can see where we’ve made progress, where there are definitely areas where we need to delve a little deeper into. I think of it more of a COACHE relationship almost rather than just the COACHE data because besides having the data and reports, I interact with the staff on occasion. Even at conferences if they’re there, I like to set up meetings with them. They help me strategize on how to communicate in a way that’s specific to the audience that’s going to be listening or the message or project or initiative that’s been inspired by what we’ve learned through the COACHE data on how to begin to move that forward in a very strategic way. That has been incredibly helpful to us.
One of the other ways that we’ve used our COACHE data is to look at other datasets that we use here (we have a number of other datasets). The COACHE data has really helped us to contextualize a lot of the information that we get from those datasets where there is an intersection in the kinds of questions, etc., that are being looked at. So it’s been very helpful. It’s helped me to have a more direct contact with my faculty, which I think is always important to moving an institution forward and to serving our students better, which is our primary mission. So pretty much in aspects related to communication and related to moving projects and initiatives forward, the COACHE data and how we work with the COACHE data has been very helpful.
"Personally I’ve gotten a number of benefits from COACHE, some on my campus and some actually off my campus. So on my campus, very much I’ve been able to engage with other faculty, not just around whatever interesting issues we’ve unearthed by working with the data but thinking about our own professional development as faculty and what are the kinds of things we should be thinking about moving forward or should be preparing for. Outside of my campus there is the COACHE leadership summit. I’ve been really lucky. I’m going to be engaging in my third one tomorrow. I’m actually really excited about that. It always sort of re-energizes you, you get a lot of ideas. It’s very time-appropriate that whatever it is I’m focused on at the time or that I know is coming up this fall or spring as far as projects, I have an entire room of folks who understand how to think about this data. And then I have of course the COACHE staff who really understand how to think about the data. One of the things that came out of the workshop today that I felt was particularly valuable and that I never really considered before was the fact that we usually are grouped almost in cohorts when they think about how to analyze your data. But now the staff has me thinking about another kind of cohort, which is those groups of institutions who are facing the same issues that you are and/or who have solved or moved some of those solutions forward. How do you identify and connect with those as far as fast-forwarding your work that you’re doing? So I’m excited about tomorrow because I’m going to scope out everyone and see what we can do. Wellesley College has been fortunate to be able to make use of the COACHE data, and we’re looking forward to seeing and learning other ways that we can do so in the future.
"The work that COACHE does is important because they contextualize the input of data that they gather in the surveys. First of all, the way they think when they construct the surveys. It isn’t done top down where they decide that these are the questions. It is research-based, it is constituency based. They engage different campuses, and then they develop or evolve a series of questions or focuses for what they’re going to be working on.
"The work that COACHE does is important because it helps me contextualize the data that we get from the survey about our institution. It also helps me tease the data in ways that I can think are very specific, focused, actionable things, initiatives, projects, etc. that I can do to bring transformation to my organization.