Academic Impressions commonly partners with institutions to improve faculty engagement and retention while lowering burnout. We do this through focused training and development strategies for key leaders.
Use our validated survey to gain insights into faculty engagement on your campus and use the results to focus on key factors that influence retention.
Training and resources designed specifically for faculty in bite-sized, proven, modular, and flexible ways.
Get support to build internal capacity that focuses on expert advice, program structure, and flexible training integration to ensure success.
Connect with a Faculty Development Partner
Get guidance on how to improve faculty vitality on your campus.
How We Help
While we can customize how we work with individual institutions, we typically start with a needs analysis. From there, we will recommend which components below will have the greatest immediate impact on helping you achieve your faculty retention and engagement goals.
Improving Faculty Engagement & Retention
Faculty Retention Diagnostic Survey
Establish a baseline and gain actionable insights.
Department Chair Development
Ensure those with the greatest ability to influence retention are fully trained.
Resources to Support Faculty
Ensure the right training gets in front of your faculty.
Building Internal Capacity
Our "train the trainer" support model helps ensure success.
Mid-Career Coaching Circles
Help faculty move through the "mid-career slump" to advance their career.
Faculty Retention Diagnostic Survey
Academic Impressions can deploy a faculty retention survey to establish a baseline and gain valuable insights into the level of faculty engagement at your institution, focusing on key factors that influence retention. Our survey tool delivers actionable insights, not just policy level recommendations. Results are segmented by college, enabling swift implementation of necessary changes by department chairs and deans.
Don’t be overwhelmed by the survey process – our user-friendly diagnostic tool features just 12- validated questions and can be deployed quickly. Rapid turnaround of results means your institutions can promptly address any areas requiring improvement.
The Faculty Retention Survey delves into how your faculty score within the three areas validated by our research that most impact faculty retention:
Sense of Belonging
Faculty Workload
Leadership Support
You will receive an interactive dashboard that lets you drill into your data in a number of areas:
- By College
- By Departments
- By Demographics (Like Race, Age, Gender, and More)
- By Tenure Track and Non-tenure Track (Customized to Your Institution's Unique Roles)
Department Chair Development
Department chairs have the greatest ability to influence the factors that drive faculty retention, so ensuring they are fully trained is essential. Trainings can take shape in various ways and typically includes a combination of the following:
Faculty Support and Development Made Easy
Our Partner Success Team collaborates with department chairs to ensure the right training gets in front of your faculty to help support your goals. We offer training and resources related to teaching effectiveness, research productivity, building a network, career pathways, exploring leadership opportunities, and more.
Our training courses are carefully crafted by expert instructors to deliver practical and action-oriented takeaways. Faculty will be able to consume our content in bite-sized, proven, modular, and flexible ways. We’ll consult with you and provide guidance on the best ways to get busy and difficult to reach faculty to use the resources.
Building Internal Capacity
One of the keys to success is building the capacity of the faculty affairs office to design and deliver the necessary training they need to achieve their goals. To aid in this effort, we provide a “train the trainer” support model.
Our support hours focus on expert advice, program structure, and flexible training integration to ensure success—without overwhelming your team.
Mid-Career Coaching Circles
Academic Impressions’ faculty coaches have experience helping faculty move through the “mid-career slump” to advance in their career and more effectively engage in their roles at the university in areas such as:
- Developing clarity around their career goals post tenure
- Establishing their post-tenure academic legacy
- Developing the skillsets and network needed to thrive mid-career
- Creating sustainable work practices
- Prioritizing in support of their professional goals and aspirations
- Stepping up their leadership
All the coaches at Academic Impressions are highly skilled coaches who have extensive experience in higher education and understand firsthand the demands of balancing teaching, service, and research. During coaching sessions, they serve as a trusted partner to help clients focus on the alignment of personal, professional, and institutional success, creating a confidential, safe space for their professional growth, and providing the accountability they need to excel.
Read an Example of How We Helped One Institution with Retaining Faculty of Color
A large, urban R1 university was struggling with retaining faculty, particularly faculty of color. They were making significant investments in cluster hires and centralized supports like formal mentoring programs. Despite these efforts, they were still losing faculty at an alarming rate with little information as to why. They deployed a well-known faculty satisfaction survey but the information wasn’t actionable. Their exit interviews received a dismal response rate and the information was unreliable.
Needing a new approach, the faculty affairs office partnered with Academic Impressions to deploy our faculty retention diagnostic survey and collect actionable data in a matter of weeks, not months.
Academic Impressions deployed the validated survey tool and created an interactive dashboard that allowed the faculty affairs and provost team to drill down to department-specific findings and begin to understand what types of targeted and tailored interventions would be most impactful.
Together, we co-created a four-year faculty retention development plan which included a strategy to share the results and facilitate discussion on campus, a comprehensive plan to increase the skills and leadership capacity of department chairs, and strategies to increase engagement with mid-career faculty.
Because department chairs have the most immediate and direct impact on faculty retention, the first year of the engagement focused on providing practical and hands-on training for chairs across campus.
Set Your Faculty Up For Success