This report describes the results of a spring 2006 survey of campus administrators, staff, lecturer faculty, and tenured/tenure-track faculty at California State University, Long Beach. The survey was commissioned by the Steering Committee charged with preparing the proposal to the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) for the next round of accreditation.
The University employs over 2,000 full-time and part-time faculty, both lecturer and tenured/tenure-track. There are also about 1,500 staff and administrators employed on campus. To maximize input into the WASC process, all employees were invited to participate in the survey.
The WASC Steering Committee developed questions in three broad areas: institutional effectiveness, staffing for effectiveness, and student success (see Appendix). For each area, the campus community was presented with a list of possible strategies to improve campus performance. Respondents were asked to indicate their first through fifth priority strategies in each area. Two open-ended questions on each of the three areas followed. Respondents were asked first to suggest other high priority strategies in addition to those already listed, and second to suggest how CSULB could evaluate its progress.
The WASC Steering Committee composed a brief e-mail message inviting the campus community to take part in the survey. The e-mail containing the link to the survey URL was sent from the office of the CSULB President to all employees during the month of April. Employees had approximately two weeks to respond to the survey.
A number of university offices contributed to the distribution of the survey by e-mail. Mr. Gerald Greenidge and Ms. Sheryl Pruitt of the College of Engineering (COE) created the software for administering the survey on-line and set up a database for storing the results on a server in the COE. CSULB's President Alexander agreed to have the message sent from his e-mail address in order to boost employee interest in responding to the survey (see Appendix). The Office of the President assisted in securing the President's approval. Ms. Toni Beron, Associate Vice President for University Relations, facilitated the use President Alexander’s e-mail address to give the survey high visibility. Mr. Scott Apel, Assistant Vice President for Human Resources, assembled the e-mail addresses for all University employees.
The results were compiled by Ms. Pruitt and transformed into an excel spreadsheet. The statistical analysis was conducted by Michelle Saint-Germain. The qualitative analysis of the open-ended comments was completed by Lisa Maxfield and Michelle Saint-Germain, with the assistance of Yulian Danusastro, student research assistant and candidate for the masters degree in Health Care Administration (Summer 2006).
