2002 National Survey of Student Engagement: Guilford College
How the Reality Reflects the Promise
In Spring 2002, Guilford College participated for the first time in the National Survey of Student Engagement, administered by Indiana University. The survey is intended to "assess the extent to which students engage in a variety of good educational practices." In 2002, 206,844 students at 366 four-year colleges and universities participated in this survey, including 219 first-year and senior students at Guilford.
The survey asked our students over 75 questions about their educational experience at Guilford College: How often do they ask questions in class or contribute to class discussion? To what extent does their coursework emphasize analyzing the basic elements of an idea? How many papers did they write? Do their exams challenge them to do their best work? What is the quality of academic advising? Have they or do they plan to study abroad before they graduate? How often did they include diverse perspectivesin class discussions and assignments? How much has their experience at Guilford contributed to their writing clearly and effectively? How much does Guilford encourage contact among students from different economic, social, and racial or ethnic backgrounds? What is the quality of their relationships with the Guilford faculty and with their fellow students?
In these pages, we present the results from Guilford's participation in the 2002 NSSE. From these, you will be able to see the educational experiences of our first-year students and our seniors. You will also be able to see how Guilford compares to other liberal arts colleges and to the national sample of colleges and universities, which includes schools large and small, research universities and teaching colleges. Those comparisons are in benchmarks defined and calculated by NSSE that include Level of Academic Challenge, Active and Collaborative Learning, Student-Faculty Interactions, Enriching Educational Experiences, and Supportive Campus Environment. We expect you'll see many of the elements that make Guilford a special place to be a student and some of the areas in which we'll be working to make sure our students get the best experience possible.
As we use these results in our planning for the future, we make them available to the Guilford community and the wider public, including future Guilford students. We hope that these results provide a fuller portrayal of what Guilford is about. When we next administer this survey in Spring 2005 (when the first-year students who participated last time will be seniors), we'll learn even more about the many ways in which our students obtain an outstanding education at Guilford.