Time to talk back

Prairie View A&M University is encouraging students to participate in the annual National Survey of Student Engagement between March 9 and April 10.

Randomly selected first year freshmen and seniors will be notified through their campus e-mail to take the online survey. The results from the survey will help the university accurately evaluate itself and its productivity.

"It's really important that students are involved and that they are saying things from their perspective," said survey administrator and assistant justice studies professor Dr. Charles Bailey. "[Students] will tell us what they think and value instead of someone saying what they think they think."

Students are strongly asked to participate in the 10-15 minute survey. Questions target areas such as level of academic challenge, student-faculty interaction and institutional climate.

Bailey said that the university's focus is ultimately enhancing student learning mentally and socially. That includes areas such as extra-curricular activities and classroom needs.

"Students have to be engaged in a variety of areas," said University College Director Lettie Raab. "The sooner we find out our weak areas the sooner we can fix the problem. We will never know to change it if we don't know something's not working."

The survey helps faculty and administration see trouble areas so that they may improve for the following school year. The survey alerts the university on the perceptions to rate their level of influence on its students socially and academically. The idea is to rate the university on how well they are helping to develop students throughout their college experience.

NSSE also compares PVAMU to other institutions and provides information to prospective students.

"It's not to evaluate them, they will not be identified and it's confidential, but it gives them a voice, and it gives the administration a better idea of students' perceptions of their college experience at PVAMU," said Dr. Kenyatta Phelps, survey administrator and sociology professor.

Phelps said that faculty primarily uses NSSE to make improvements in the classroom. "Because we will have a base of issues we need to improve on, it'll be the administration's responsibility at that point," Phelps said.

Bailey stressed that students should take time out to complete NSSE because they are stake holders and important parts in the process of improving the university through their donation of time and money.

"Please take time to do this so that we can know what we're doing. [NSSE] gives us feedback on ourselves," said Raab.