The highest score was received by the provost, which reflects most of the complements on professors, deans, advisors, etc. The lowest was given to management operations, which includes school-wide services ranging from dining hall service, to building maintenance to the financial aid process, receiving a score of -261. The most typical student complaints dealt with the bursar’s office, financial aid and the registrar. They complained of receiving documents late, having bad customer service, providing incorrect information and employing unhelpful staff. The typical complaint from faculty members addressed the nominal pay and the less than satisfactory benefits. The staff complained of not receiving enough recognition for the amount of time, effort and work they put into improving the school and its services. Professor Todd concluded that overall, the faculty, staff and students agree that the “people who work and go to school here are generally liked, but the way things are done can be improved.” The first “Satisfaction Survey” was emailed out to the entire University of Bridgeport intranet community on April 13th. The initial deadline for response was April 16th but later pushed back a week due to some technical difficulties with emails sent to the faculty. The UBnet-wide survey, used by students, faculty and staff to voice any concerns, complaints and complements was single handedly created by Professor Robert S. Todd, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Computer Applications and Information Systems. Professor Todd said he undertook such a massive yet needful task because UB has no mechanism for feedback from its three constituencies. Simply stated, “The purpose is to make everything better.” The survey gained approval from the UB lawyer, the provost, the vice president of administration and finance and President Neil Albert Salonen, who was very pleased to have such direct feedback from students on issues concerning them.
Professor Todd received 60 to 70 responses to the survey, 30 of which were students. The results totaled to over 300 comments, 205 of them were praises and 168 were complaints. The comments were evenly matched among men and women and were in response to questions such as: what is the best thing about UB; what is the worst; which departments or services deserve praise; and who is the one person or department whose performance could be most improved? Along with answering these questions, participants were also given a chance to ask some of their own, mainly in efforts to implement an informal “rumor control” vehicle. The question and suggestion section of the surveys have yet to be assessed.
The survey has somewhat of a complex scoring system giving individuals both their personal feedback points and inherited points. The faculty is divided and categorized into hierarchical groups for the purpose of correctly distributing points. For instance, a positive comment on a professor’s teaching style will reflect on the dean of that particular school as well as the provost, the vice president of administration and finance, the president and the board of trustees. Likewise, the points will also be deducted in the event that the comment was negative. For comments that deemed a professor, department or service the best/worst, 5 points were allotted to that professor, director or administrator and the corresponding supervisors; for good/bad comments, 2 points were allotted; and for comments involving any type of hearsay, 1 point was allotted. Points for general statements such as, “this school has a good and passionate faculty,” and “the students provide for a diverse learning environment,” respectively, were awarded to the provost and vice president for enrollment planning.
Although much work has gone into this initial attempt, the statistics and comments should not yet be regarded as statistically valid since notably less than half of the staff, faculty and students responded. Of the students who did respond, Professor Todd assumes that a majority of them are from the business school, having advertised and continuously reminded his students to participate. The difficulty with having a survey through email is that many students have yet to set up their UB email accounts or rarely use them. Professor Todd as well as those who have approved the survey encourage students to set up their email accounts and voice their opinions rather than allow their complaints and problems to remain unheard. The survey is completely confidential since the participant’s email address is automatically stripped from the response before entering Professor Todd’s mailbox. As of right now, the survey is scheduled to be conducted on a monthly basis, in order to monitor improvements or pinpoint obstacles and problematic areas. Eventually, Professor Todd would like to publish a copy of the monthly survey results and place them on reserve at Wahlstrom Library in order for students to see how their peers rated school services, departments, and professors. Guess what UB; survey says more students need to take the survey!