Four campus surveys were developed in the fall of 1998, in preparation for our October 1999 NASC accreditation visit. The surveys - Faculty, Classified Staff, Professional Staff, and the Core Curriculum Student Opinion Survey - contained questions that were targeted at specific standards of the NASC Self-Study. Many of the questions asked were similar to if not exactly the same as questions asked on the faculty survey that was administered in 1989 as a part of MSU's 1990 NASC Accreditation visit, thus providing a baseline for comparison.

Because NASC requires the assessment of our general education curriculum, the Faculty Survey contained a section on the Core Curriculum. The Core Curriculum Student Opinion Survey contained questions exclusively about Core. In addition, a previous survey was administered in 1997 to those faculty teaching Core courses.

The Faculty, Classified Staff, and Professional Staff surveys were distributed in December 1998 to a census of each group. The Core Curriculum Student Opinion Survey was distributed in December 1998 and January 1999 to a sample of students from a cross-section of university courses.

The surveys were developed, pre-tested, and analyzed with the assistance of numerous individuals and groups (see Acknowledgments). The surveys were specifically designed to solicit "forced responses" - that is, no neutral choices were offered. If a respondent did not feel comfortable with the choices given, she or he could check "Don't Know or N/A."

A summary of the findings of each survey, in both narrative and graphic format, follows.


Copies of the survey instruments are available as pdf files, which require the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Acrobat Reader is free and can be downloaded from Adobe.