February 8, 2016 - Today, the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium begins administration of a revised version of its undergraduate student survey at 19 of its 24 member campuses in the United States. The 2016 survey introduces a framework that explicitly recognizes the multiple purposes and contexts of undergraduate education. Known as SPACES, the survey assesses Social skills, Personal development, Academic development, Civic engagement, Economic opportunity, and Settings (inside and outside the classroom).
The campuses administering the 2016 survey are Purdue University, Rutgers University, University of Iowa, University of Kansas, University of Pittsburgh, University of Southern California, University of Texas-Austin, University of Virginia, University of Washington, University of Oregon, and all nine undergraduate campuses from the University of California system: Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz.
Based at UC Berkeley and in partnership with the University of Minnesota and the Higher School of Economics – Moscow, the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium is a group of top tier research-intensive universities who collaborate in student survey research for policy and scholarly purposes, share data and best practices, and seek paths for institutional self-improvement.
Current member campuses include 39 research universities, 24 in America and 15 universities located throughout the world, including China, Japan, Brazil, the UK, South Africa and Russia. Consortium membership in the US is restricted to Association of American Universities (AAU) campuses.
The SERU Undergraduate Survey was first administered in 2002 to all students within the University of California system of campuses where it is known as the UC Undergraduate Experience Survey or UCUES. In 2009, member campuses of the AAU began administration of a customized version of the survey. SERU-International conducted its first survey in 2011.
The SERU Undergraduate Survey is a census, on-line survey, and will be sent to some 416,000 students among SERU’s AAU campuses over the period of February to May 2016. Working in partnership with Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) here at Berkeley, AAU survey development, administration and management is led by researchers at the University of Minnesota, except survey administration for the UC campuses is conducted by the UC Office of the President. A version of the SERU Undergraduate Survey will be administered this spring as well to a group of international universities by the International Graduate Insight Group Ltd (i-graduate).
The SERU Consortium recently developed a new census survey of the graduate school student experience (GradSERU) that will be administered selectively among SERU AAU and International member campuses in 2016-17.
For further information contact:
Ron Huesman – SERU AAU Managing Director and Principal Researcher
University of Minnesota
huesm003@umn.edu
John Aubrey Douglass – SERU UC Berkeley Principal Researcher
douglass@berkeley.edu