SA developing survey of all students

By Drew Keller     3/25/15 4:48pm

The Student Association is developing questions to ask the student body through the mandatory Survey of All Students, which students will complete during course registration later in the semester.

According to Lovett College President Griffin Thomas, the purpose of the SAS is to collect information from the student body about both academic and non-academic issues. Thomas said the compulsory, biannual format of the survey is an improvement on the SA’s past system of collecting information.

“The SA used to send out more surveys,” Thomas, a sophomore, said. “However, because they were not required, participation was not high or necessarily representative of the entire student body.”

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While the university administration creates most of the survey each semester, Thomas said the SA also proposes questions to be included on a variety of subjects.

“There is not any one issue area that the survey is trying to address,” Thomas said. “It is rather used to identify trends across multiple topics related student life.”

Weiss College President Alex Tran said the SA hopes to measure student opinion on a number of different issues.

“The SA portion of the SAS will poll students on their priority and preference of use of resources for topics such as parking, campus wide spirit, grade inflation and student activism,” Tran, a junior, said.

According to the minutes of the SA Senate meeting on March 18, the SA is also considering topics including athlete representation in student government, activism on campus, graduate-undergraduate interaction, campus mentorship programs and communication between students and student resources.

Thomas said he plans to use the results of the survey to help determine his actions as a student leader.

“This survey will definitely help to inform my campus wide priorities moving into next year, and I hope that it will help direct the agenda of the SA as [a] whole,” Thomas said.

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