Cody Shepard/The Veritas News
Junior Andrew Littauer sits down to take the student satisfaction inventory on Monday, Nov. 26, 2013.
Students received an email from Noel-Levitz, Inc. last Thursday, Nov. 21, that included a link to a survey — ENC’s student satisfaction inventory.
One day prior, Vice President for Student Development and Retention Jeff Kirksey sent an email to students letting them know about the survey they would be receiving shortly. Kirksey charged students to take the survey so he can better “prioritize the College’s approaches to enhancing the ENC student experience,” he wrote in the email.
The survey, which takes about 15-20 minutes, lists topics relevant to college life and asks them to rank how important that idea is to their college experience and then to rank the same item by how satisfied the student currently is with ENC’s approach to the topic.
Kirksey, who has worked with college students for 12 years, said that the student satisfaction inventory has been one of the most effective ways to hear from a wide variety of students in a way that action can be taken to improve the students’ college experience.
ENC sends out a National Survey of Student Engagement every two years, but the last student satisfaction inventory completed at ENC was in 1999.
President Dr. Corlis McGee, who became president in 2005, said it was not the college’s intention to put off the student satisfaction inventory for almost 15 years.
McGee said that the college, specifically student development, has completed informal surveys over the past few years that have led to improvements and changes, such as the 24-hour space in Spange Lounge, Hebrews Café, and the addition of complimentary laundry.
“We’ve been trying to do informal student satisfaction surveys, and that’s where a lot of the improvements in the student areas have come,” she said.
The president said that doing the survey at this time is very intentional.
“Nothing intentional in not doing it previously, but very intentional in doing it at this point in time in saying we want to gather as much information as we can,” she said. “We want to be able to benchmark that against best practices at other institutions.”
Kirksey said that while other surveys have been sent out to students in recent years, nothing this comprehensive has been done as of late.
“We haven’t done a survey that covers this breadth,” Kirksey said.
He said this satisfaction inventory will be particularly helpful as he’s coming into his role as a vice president and “trying to learn about the student community and what are the needs of students and desires of students.”
Kirksey said that after analyzing the results, it’s usually necessary to organize focus groups to get to the specific or underlying issues.
“Then you can move forward and make adjustments to improve student experience,” he said.
The survey officially closes on Dec. 15. Kirksey will likely receive the results shortly after Christmas.