Assessing Undergraduate Satisfaction With An Academic Department: A Method And Case Study

College Student Journal, Sept, 2000 by Daniel P. Corts, John W. Lounsbury, Richard A. Saudargas, Holly E. Tatum

This article describes assessment needs faced by academic departments from a variety of disciplines. Included is a survey technique for assessing student satisfaction with overall departmental performance in the following domains: advising, course offerings, career preparation, instruction, and class sizes. While many departments limit evaluation to individual teacher ratings, results of a case study indicate that each of the above factors is positively correlated with overall satisfaction. Moreover, two areas beyond the scope of standard teaching evaluations, advising and career preparation, account for the most variance in overall student satisfaction in the case study. The method described in this article provides an efficient, comprehensive and flexible technique for departments that wish to assess student satisfaction.

Program evaluation has been a topic of extensive discussion and research in recent years (e.g., Korn, Sweetman, & Nodine, 1996; Morgan & Johnson, 1997). Faculty and administrators interested in improving the overall quality of their departments have turned to methods ranging from alumni surveys (e.g., Kressel, 1990) to senior seminars (Morgan & Johnson, 1997) to gather information regarding a variety of student outcomes, such as correlates of job and degree satisfaction. At the same time, other researchers have studied campuswide satisfaction of undergraduate students (Benjamin & Hollings, 1997). Recent research has established the importance of student satisfaction; not only does it improve retention (Koseke & Koseke, 1991) but also contributes to academic, personal, and professional achievement (Bean & Bradley, 1986; Pike, 1993). Kom et al. noted that faculty and professional consultants alike consider student satisfaction one of the primary problems facing academic departments. According to this report, student satisfaction is inversely related to student complaints regarding advising, career preparation, and the need for new courses or effectiveness of current courses. To address these student satisfaction issues in our department, we designed an Undergraduate Major Survey to assess students' satisfaction with the major as a whole and with the factors that may contribute to it.

Undergraduate programs typically have several goals that may include (a) providing majors with opportunities to develop a broad base of knowledge and methodology in the field, (b) developing critical thinking skills, and (c) preparing students for careers in their chosen discipline. Instruction assessments and knowledge based measures such as the Major Field Achievement Test indicate the degree to which the faculty are providing the appropriate subject matter and how well students are learning it (Norcross, Gerrity, & Hogan, 1993). However, students may have less than adequate information on other related topics, such as how to get into graduate school or how to build a career (Lunneborg & Wilson, 1985). Indeed, the present study arose from the frequency of questions and misconceptions by undergraduates regarding these topics. We hope that by understanding and addressing these misconceptions, faculty may provide a substantive change and improvement in the quality of undergraduate education.

To a large extent, the faculty bases curriculum decisions on their perceptions of student needs, which may differ from those of students themselves (McGovern & Hawks, 1986). Moreover, the students who speak up often do so because they are disgruntled or conversely because they have had satisfying interactions with faculty. Thus, the information received from this self-selected group of students may not be representative of the population of undergraduate majors. Sanders and Burton (1996) noted that all too many university assessments focus on the outcomes from the institutional perspective rather than the student perspective. Unfortunately, this is also true at the departmental level where evaluation is often limited to a class-by-class analysis of instructor and course quality. Less frequently these assessments include department-wide matters such as advising and mentoring which are likely to make a significant contribution to students' education and personal development. These activities take place outside the classroom, and therefore, are beyond the scope of course evaluations (Doll & Jacobs, 1988). In a study of 272 psychology graduates, Quereshi (1988) found that 153 comments identified personal interest, care, concern, encouragement, and understanding as characteristics of outstanding faculty. In contrast, only 55 comments identified interesting or challenging teaching style. Furthermore, a number of studies have identified advising as a frequent source of dissatisfaction among students (Guinn & Mitchell, 1985; McAnulty, O'Connor, & Sklare, 1987). These results serve as evidence that teaching evaluations alone do not provide departments with adequate information regarding the faculty roles that students value most. In the past decade, researchers have addressed these gaps in assessment through various methods that include designing and implementing an assessment seminar (Morgan & Johnson, 1997), conducting exit interviews with seniors (Doll & Jacobs, 1988), surveying employers (Walker, Newcomb, & Hopkins, 1987) and surveying alumni (Quereshi, 1988; Walker et al., 1987). While these techniques have proven useful, they may be limited in applicability. For example, a department with 600 majors may not be able to conduct in-depth interviews and creating senior seminars may place great demand on already limited resources. Furthermore, with an evolving discipline and job market, alumni surveys may fail to address the immediate needs of the current undergraduates.