GAPSA seeks survey on campus education and student life

This Wednesday, the Graduate and Professional School Assembly will vote to pass a proposal that aims to establish a "campus climate survey" that polls student perceptions about campus education and student life.

While GAPSA has polled students in the past, the group aims to involve the administration in the process to ensure its repetition and longevity.

According to GAPSA chairman and School of Medicine Ph.D. student Andrew Rennekamp, the administration's role in running the survey would ensure that trend data can be collected despite the year-to-year turn-over in the organization.

In addition to student perceptions of the campus climate, the survey will gather demographic, background and school data.

Rennekamp said he expects that including this information in the survey will help target problems specific to a given student population.

"You can't solve a problem if you don't know it exists," he explained.

Issues on the provisional survey include measures of overall educational experience, mentor relationships, social life and diversity, as well as more concrete housing, health insurance and financial issues.

If passed, GAPSA will submit the proposal to the Office of the Provost and the Council of Graduate Deans and recommend that one of the two "own" the GAPSA-sponsored survey.

The notion of ownership is a standard procedure in University surveys but Rennekamp expects the added University involvement will also "ensure that there will be administration action afterward."

A similar survey already exists but is administered only to those graduate students who complete their program.

"We want to catch students in their first, second [and] third years rather than students who are happy that they are graduating," Rennekamp said.

He also alluded to the fact that many graduate students exit their programs early - and it would help to know why.

School of Design student Joe Littrell, however, seemed pretty happy with his experiences. "I feel like my needs are 100-percent met," he said.

Other graduate students voiced minor concerns listing more funding for student groups or better publicity of graduate school events as two interests.

Rennekamp expressed that the survey form will allow issues to surface that might not otherwise.

"There are certainly pockets of the University where students do feel uncomfortable," he said. "We can't know that if no one is directly asking them."

GAPSA is not yet sure of the expected cost of the project but imagines that it will include not only personnel and information system costs, but also added incentives for students to take the survey.

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