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Online surveys to assess SCSU
With the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission report on diversity issues at SCSU now complete, there are two more similar assessments left to be completed.
One of these assessments was performed by Rankin and Associates in January, at the behest of SCSU's Student Government. The results of this assessment has yet to be disclosed.
The other, by Nichols and Associates, Inc., began in November and is expected to be completed in April. Hired by SCSU, Nichols and Associates employees were on campus that month to hold focus groups in order to gain insight into the situation. They held about 40 such focus groups and also met individually with faculty, staff and students who had requested personal interviews.
Larry Chambers, SCSU director of Human Resources, said the interviews and focus groups were the first step of the process in the cultural assessment.
"Based on the data gathered during the interviews," he said, "the Nichols' researchers developed a survey instrument (questionnaire) that is specific to SCSU and aimed at gathering further input. This instrument is being made available from Nichols to you by way of the Internet."
There are, in fact, two different surveys available online. One of these is for faculty, staff and administrators, while the other is for students.
"You (survey participants) will not be identified by your individual responses to the survey questions," Chambers said. "After you access the survey Web page, you will be asked for your e-mail account, along with other identifying factors. This information will only be used by Nichols to safeguard the integrity of the instrument."
And on the off-chance that anyone intending to take part in the survey does not have an e-mail address, there is a back door to it. When asked to enter an e-mail address, all a person has to do is to enter his or her first name and first two letters of his or her last name, followed by @survey.com. The survey is expected to take between 20 and 25 minutes to complete.
Once the results of the survey are tabulated, Nichols researchers are expected to take about a month to analyze them and come up with recommendations to SCSU. The results and recommendations will then be presented to SCSU President Roy Saigo.
"After he (Saigo) gets a chance to review it, the report will be released to the public," Chambers said. "We expect that to be early April."
Other than the three assessments, a fourth was released in July. The report, released by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, stated that an environmental scan of the university had found that there existed "a strong perception of anti-Semitism on campus."
The EEOC report released last week stated that SCSU "suffers from a lack of credibility" where diversity issues were concerned due to "years of complacency" when dealing with the issues.
Students, faculty and staff can access the surveys online at: www.nicholsandassoc.com.
Leslie Andres can be reached at: [email protected]
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