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| Satisfaction Guaranteed! (Well, we're working on it)
Date: June 30, 2000 By: Chris Curran Phone: (513) 556-1806 Photo by: Colleen Kelley Archive: Campus News The University of Cincinnati is the second largest university in Ohio
and among the 20 largest universities nationwide. That can make
it difficult to find the right office or the right expert to
solve a particular problem.
Fortunately, UC has devoted a great deal of time, effort and money in recent years to knock down barriers and improve communication across campus. By the end of fall quarter, the results from the first Student Satisfaction Survey will be available. The surveys were distributed in class and avaialable to all undergraduate and graduate students on the Web during Spring 2000. More than 3,000 students responded. "The results will be widely shared," promised Tony Perzigian, Senior Vice President and Provost for Baccalaureate and Graduate Education. "It's pointless to have an exercise like this without a complete feedback loop." Perzigian would like to see the Student Satisfaction Survey repeated every year, leading to continuous improvement in student services and the quality of campus life. "We need to put into place a mechanism to fix the problems we identify. We need to become more customer-friendly. We need to deliver." Many changes are in the works already. Learning communities keep students together in a "cohort" or tightly knit group throughout their first year on campus. They take multiple courses together, supporting and encouraging each other. The concept was so successful at the pilot scale, it will be expanded to create as many as 20 learning communities this fall under the name LINC Up @ UC for Learning In New Communities. "The learning community can provide the connection that some students might not otherwise have an opportunity to have. It also helps students to make links between their courses, so it enriches both the educational experience and the social experience," said Russell Curley, director of Educational Services. LINC Up @ UC is funded by a two-year $225,000 Success Challenge grant from the state of Ohio to improve retention on college campuses. Contact Arts and Sciences Associate Dean Wayne Hall at 556-5870 for more information. Provost Perzigian said the effort is also consistent with the UC Collaboration for Student Success, sometimes called "the Aspen group" around campus because that's where faculty and administrators first met to kick start the initiative. Perzigian said results were obvious less than one year later. "Given where we were eleven months ago, I'd give it an A-minus or B-plus, and I'm a tough grader." Although the collaboration identified very specific problems such as guaranteeing transfer credits from one college to another and establishing uniform course naming and numbering systems, Perzigian said one of the most important results was intangible. "There has been a real cultural shift at UC," he said. "There is an increased awareness among colleges and administrative units that we need to be more student-centered and more student friendly." You can find out more about the initiative at: |
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