An undergraduate seminar at Penn is taking the learning process outside of the classroom with a University-wide survey about the political values of students.
The survey, which is being run by students in "Citizenship and Democratic Development," is part of an ongoing attempt to gauge the political atmosphere in the undergraduate community at Penn.
"We want to see what kind of impact the University has on citizenship and the democratic orientations of students," Political Science professor and seminar leader Henry Teune said.
The project is in its third phase of development, having been distributed in two previous years.
At the end of next week, every undergraduate at Penn will have received the survey through e-mail. The questions in the survey range from "Have you ever been a founding member of a student group on your campus?" to political-awareness questions like "Who is the Secretary of State?"
"The main point of the study is to find out the values that students hold," College junior and teaching assistant Max Dubin said. "We are looking to see if students are civically minded and whether or not they feel they can make a difference in the world."
Dubin believes that answering such questions can reveal important information about students, such as whether or not they will be an active part of the political community.
In the first year, the survey went through several pre-tests, and last year it was distributed to 1,000 undergraduates.
This year, Teune and his class are sending out the survey to the entire undergraduate population and are hoping to get a 40 percent return rate. Some undergraduates have already received the survey, but the results will not be tallied until all students receive the e-mail.
"Our previous findings have established that Penn is an aggregation of constituencies, athletes, religious groups, etc.," Teune said. "This adds to the diversity but also poses the question: 'What is a Penn undergraduate?'"
Teune added that Penn students, unlike students at other universities, do not have a clear "footprint" on the status of undergraduates.
"Everyone knows what a 'Yalie' is, but what's a 'Penn-ie?' I have never even heard that, and I do not think there is a real Penn undergraduate stereotype," Teune said.
At the beginning of the semester, the class began to look at the previous survey questions and to revise them slightly. After the results are collected and analyzed, which should happen by the end of the semester, the students will use the information for a final project.
"The real question is, does Penn make you more democratically minded, or does the University dampen that democratic sense?" Dubin said.
The survey is intended to aid University officials by providing information about the current status of students, and Teune added that the results will hopefully incorporate other universities down the road, eventually leading to a global survey.
However, the class might not receive the kind of results it would like.
"I saw the e-mail, but I never opened it," College freshman Anna Turetsky said.
Engineering junior Jeffrey Benshetler tends to side with Turetsky on e-mail surveys.
"I look at the surveys, but I usually do not fill them out just because I am busy," Benshetler said. "It's not an intentional blow-off of the e-mail."
