When Donna Korol arrived at the UI in 2000, the move, she says, hit her “like a breath of fresh air.” The spirit of cooperation and support among faculty members struck her as unique.
The assistant professor of psychology had worked at three universities prior to the UI, but in Urbana-Champaign she found her fit. It was as if a sense of community had permeated the work space, she says, creating a mix of high-power scholarship and collaboration. She had only just arrived when other faculty members began calling out of the blue to ask if she’d partner on research projects.
“As a junior faculty member that serves not only the practical part of being on grants with people, but also the emotional and psychological part, like ‘Wow, I’m an important component in this big enterprise,’ ” she says. “It’s all about the bigger enterprise. I think the number one thing (at the UI) is the level of collaboration.”
According to a recent study, Korol’s impressions are not isolated ones. The Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) surveyed almost 7,000 junior faculty members – those who have not yet received tenure – across the nation and found that the UI is one of the best at rolling out the red – or orange, perhaps – carpet for its professors. In several categories, junior faculty members at the UI ranked among the most satisfied in the country.
The results are an affirmation at the UI, where the proportion of junior faculty is growing due to a generational turnover in faculty members, and where much effort has been placed upon smoothing the typically uncertain first years of a faculty appointment.
Paul F. Diehl, the Henning Larsen Professor of Political Science and director of the LAS Teaching Academy in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, says junior faculty members appreciate the supportive environment around campus, where many programs are geared toward their professional development. Most of the academy’s programs and events are designed specifically to assist junior faculty members.
Diehl adds that spousal hiring programs and affordable community living create a family-friendly atmosphere that young faculty members find attractive. The academy realizes that appealing to junior faculty is a balancing act.
“If you take care of their personal life, that’s half the battle, but you still have to be an environment that’s intellectually stimulating, and they have to feel that good teaching is rewarded and good research is encouraged,” Diehl says. “We think of this as an investment for the long run. We believe that young faculty can succeed. We want them to succeed and we want to help them.”
Using an online survey based at Harvard University’s Graduate School in Education, COACHE asked junior faculty members to rank satisfaction in various areas. Of the 56 universities that participated, the UI’s scores ranked among the top four in the categories of nature of work: research, policy effectiveness, work and family, and global satisfaction (which included questions about whether they’d accept the job again, work environment, and best and worst aspects of the job). There were a dozen categories.
In one question, junior faculty members were asked to score on a five-point scale – with 5 as “strongly agree” – the notion that they’d accept the job again if they had to do it over. The roughly 200 UI faculty members who participated in the survey averaged a 4.24 on a five-point scale.
When asked how satisfied they were overall with the institution as a place to work, the UI averaged a 3.99 score on the five-point scale (with 5 as “very satisfied”). That number ranks relatively well; the nationwide average for universities was 3.6.
By far, the primary complaint about the UI is geographic location, which 44 percent of junior faculty members listed as the university’s worst aspect. Survey respondents listed the top four aspects of the UI as, in order, quality of colleagues, cost of living, support for research, and a sense of “fit” at the university.
Faculty members say they often hear the complaint about geographic location not only among themselves but from interviewees. Complaints, they say, often stem from desires for a more urban atmosphere, or else mountains and water. Many faculty members who have settled at the UI feel those concerns are far outweighed by the positive, however.
For Paul Gold, Korol’s husband and professor of psychology who previously spent 23 years at a university in Virginia, the most remarkable thing he found at the UI was the level of interaction among faculty members, even from different fields.
“That seems to characterize what Illinois is all about,” he says. “There is a level of collaboration and interdisciplinary activity that really does foster research efforts.”
Thomas Rudolph, professor of political science, grew up in suburban Chicago and understands the complaints about location. His first priority when he came to the UI, however, was a good political science department and good colleagues. He’s found these things, and he’s also found a good family environment – he’s the father of six.
“I enjoy the department. I enjoy the area,” he says. “When people come here for interviews they ask me about the drawbacks, and I can tell them what other people say but (the concern about location) doesn’t apply to me.”
Carla Caceres, professor of animal biology, works around water and acknowledges that UI’s location isn’t the best for her, either. She’ll sometimes travel to places as far as Michigan to do her research. She keeps the complaints in perspective, however.
“It’s incredibly easy to live in this town in terms of affordability, getting around, and raising a family,” she says. “Is this the ideal location in the world? No. But given the benefits that it does have, that makes it attractive to me.”
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