Skip to Local Navigation
Skip to Content
California State University, Long Beach
Print this pageAdd this page to your favoritesSelect a small fontSelect a medium fontSelect a large font
 

Overview

Theme 3: Student Success, Spring 2006 Campus WASC Survey

CSULB employees were presented with twelve possible strategies for improving student success and asked to indicate their top five priorities. The percentage of employees assigning first through fifth priorities to each of the twelve strategies is shown in Table 3. The strategies are ranked by the percentage of employees selecting each strategy as having any priority (first through fifth), that is, in reverse order by the percentage of employees ranking the strategy as not important (not chosen).

  • Improve Quality of Instruction was the highest ranked, with 22.8% of employees choosing this as their first priority; but nearly 40% of employees did not choose this as a priority strategy.
  • Support Student Mastery of Knowledge/Skills was the second highest rated strategy, selected by 16.8% of employees as their first priority. Again, nearly 40% of employees did not choose this as a priority strategy.
  • Keeping students enrolled (retention) was the third highest rated strategy, selected by 15.6% of employees as their top priority; but nearly half the employees (48.1%) did not give this strategy any priority.
  • Establishing Student Learning Outcomes had a similar high rating by 15.4% of employees as well as a similar rejection by over half of employees responding to the survey (52%).
  • Preparing Students for Employment and Graduate Study was ranked as the first priority by 14.4% of employees, and the majority of employees chose this strategy as one of their five top priorities (only 29.8% did not).
  • Preparing Students for Lifelong Learning was the sixth highest rated strategy, selected by 11.7% of employees as their first priority (but rejected by 43.1%).
Table 3. Employee Ranking of Strategies for Student Success Percentage of employees indicating priority for each question (N=993)
Strategy 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th Not Chosen TOTAL
Improve quality of instruction
 22.8 17.8 9.9 6.3 6.9 39.3 100%
Student mastery of knowledge/ skills
 16.8 11.4 12.7 10.3 9.2 39.8 100%
Keep students enrolled (retention)
 15.6 12.2 10.5 8.8 4.8 48.1 100%
Establish student learning outcomes
 15.4 8.7 7.7 8.5 7.6 52.0 100%
Prepare students for jobs/graduate study
 14.4 15.9 15.4 13.0 11.7 29.8 100%
Prepare students for lifelong learning
 11.7 12.6 11.2 9.7 11.9 43.1 100%
Facilitate Graduation
 9.7 10.0 6.8 5.1 7.2 61.2 100%
Embrace campus diversity
 8.7 4.8 4.1 4.4 4.9 73.0 100%
Engage students in campus life
 7.6 6.5 5.1 6.1 6.5 68.0 100%
Involve students in research
 6.1 7.9 10.4 8.0 6.3 61.2 100%
Improve campus Climate
 5.7 6.5 5.8 4.6 5.0 72.3 100%
Local/global community
4.9 5.8 7.2 8.9 8.4 64.6 100%

The remainder of the strategies were accorded first priority by less than ten percent of the respondents and rejected by more than 60% of respondents.

Theme 3 Student Success--By Group

The analysis was carried one step further to examine the differences between sub-groups of University employees: administrators, lecture faculty, staff, and tenured or tenure-track faculty. In these tables, the first and second priority votes have been combined into one category, and the third, fourth, and fifth priority votes have been combined into another category. The percentage who did not vote for these priorities represents the third category; the total of all percentages sums to 100%.