Michelle Saint-Germain, Coordinator for Program Review and Assessment, & Lisa Maxfield, Coordinator for General Education
The WASC Steering Committee at California State University, Long Beach, commissioned a survey of the campus community to develop themes for the upcoming proposal to WASC. This report describes the results of the survey administered to students, and compares the student responses to those of administrators, faculty, and staff.
The WASC Steering Committee developed a survey instrument consisting of questions on three areas: institutional effectiveness, staffing for effectiveness, and student success. After some discussion, it was decided that only the third question would be asked of students (see survey attached). Students were presented with a list of possible strategies for improving student success and asked to select their first through fifth priorities. Students were also presented with two open ended questions; student responses to those questions are addressed in a separate report.
The University enrolls about 35,000 full-time and part-time students, both undergraduate and graduate students. To maximize student input into the WASC process, it was decided to administer the survey to all continuing students. Continuing students were defined as students enrolled in the spring 2006 semester who had also been enrolled in the fall 2005 semester. This produced a list of approximately 29,000 students.
The WASC Steering Committee composed a brief message that was e-mailed to the selected students. CSULB's President Alexander graciously agreed to have the message sent from his e-mail address in order to boost student interest in responding to the survey (see message text attached). The Office of the President assisted in securing the President's approval and facilitating the use of the President's e-mail address.
The WASC Steering Committee requested the assistance of the College of Engineering in creating and administering the survey on-line. Mr. Gerald Greenidge and Ms. Sheryl Pruitt created the survey software and an Access database for storing the results on a server in the COE.
The Vice President for Administration and Finance and the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment pulled the student sample. The student survey was sent out the week after Spring Break, and students were given seven calendar days to respond.
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 student research assistant Yulian Danusastro, masters degree candidate in Health Care Administration (Summer 2006).
