Provost Peter Lange and Academic Chair Emeritus Nancy Allen presented the final draft of the Faculty Survey Report to the Academic Council Thursday afternoon.
The survey, taken by 1,367 faculty members and distributed in Spring 2005, asked professors how satisfied they were with their career, workload and work environment, quality of life, University resources and services and the mentoring, promotion and tenure process.
The final draft takes into account responses from faculty in the entire University-including the undergraduate and graduate programs and the medical center. The data will be broken down by department and distributed to the specific schools later this year.
One trend Lange noted was that female faculty members are less likely to feel valued by their colleagues, report higher stress levels and feel they have to work harder than their male counterparts.
He pointed to a significant disparity in responses to the question, "I have to work harder than my colleagues to be perceived as a legitimate scholar." While men somewhat disagreed with this statement, women were almost completely neutral on the subject.
"These are not good findings," Lange said. "These are findings that bring up concern. We need to dig down further before we think what policy implications the result might have. The issue is we really don't know why this is the case."
He added that before more is known about the root cause of the finding, the University should not assume it is a result of gender discrimination.
The report also showed that 57 percent of female and 41 percent of male faculty delayed parenthood or decided not to have children because of career considerations.
Lange said this statistic could explain the "leaky pipe" phenomenon, where some professors drop out of the tenure process.
"This data might have an inverse," Lange said. "We don't know the number of women facing the same decision that are dropping out of the professorship."
According to the report, tenured faculty members were more likely to rate their workload as heavier than untenured professors.
They agreed in the survey that long hours show commitment, but do not always equate to excellence.
For the satisfaction with Duke and career section, faculty ranked aspects of their work life including curricular requirements, benefits package and advising responsibilities. They reported that the intellectual stimulation of their work was most satisfying.
"You would hope that would be true at a research institution," Lange said. "If that hadn't been the case, I would have probably sent you home to do more work."
Lange said it was not surprising that faculty were least satisfied with their current salary.
"The interesting thing about current salary is we keep close tabs on Duke salaries compared with our peers," Lange said, adding that Duke is usually ranked between sixth and eighth place in salary levels. The schools that place above the University are located in places with higher standards of living, he added.
The survey also revealed that faculty in the Pratt School of Engineering, the humanities departments in Trinity College of Arts and Sciences and the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences were less than satisfied with their classroom space.
"There is a general discontent about the quality of classrooms. If you go school by school, that discontent varies substantially," Lange said. "The strategic plan is obviously the ideal time to be thinking about classroom issues."
In other business:
The Council unanimously agreed to change the name of the art and art history department to the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies.
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