Chronicle of Higher Education to Survey Faculty, Staff

The Chronicle of Higher Education will be surveying 600 randomly selected Duke University faculty and staff next week as part of the "Great Colleges to Work For" program.

The program, which is administered by an outside consulting group called ModernThink, was designed to recognize higher education institutions that have created great work environments and provides a means for institutions to compare themselves across a variety of dimensions.

The program is higher education's version of the popular Fortune magazine survey, with one key difference: it does not rank institutions in one big list. Instead, the program recognizes small groups of colleges for specific best practices and policies, such as tenure clarity, collaborative governance, work/life balance and compensation and benefits.

Part of the program involves a survey distributed to a sample of each institution’s full-time faculty, administrators and professional staff. This survey was designed specifically for higher education. Faculty and staff selected among the random sample should receive an email invitation from ModernThink on Monday, March 18.

Kyle Cavanaugh, vice president of administration, said he encouraged all faculty and staff members who receive an invitation to complete the survey.

"While we’ve been honored to be recognized by The Chronicle as a great workplace the last several years, it probably more important to get the feedback from the survey" Cavanaugh said. "We hope that everyone invited to take the survey will take a few minutes to do so because they will be representing not only themselves, but all their colleagues as well."

The results of the survey will be factored into the overall scoring process that will ultimately determine the institutions recognized. The Chronicle of Higher Education will publish the findings this summer in a special Academic Workplace Supplement.