Student-Faculty Interaction
Located in a small town on the historic Erie Canal, The College at Brockport, State University of New York (SUNY Brockport) is located 16 miles west of Rochester, NY, and about 45 miles east of Buffalo. SUNY Brockport was one of the founding institutions in the pilot (2003–2004) of the Foundation of Excellence® in the First College Year process and participated in NSSE for the first time in 2004. Since then, the institution has participated in the survey every year. After receiving NSSE results for several years, department chairs at Brockport began to express interest in the survey and ask about the responses of their specific students. To better help faculty serve students, Lillian Zhu, Director of Institutional Research and Planning, utilized the group variable columns in the population file to identify the academic majors of students. Then, she created binders for each department which included NSSE mean comparisons and frequency distributions reports from students in that department over the span of four years compared to the entire Brockport sample. In addition, she and her institutional research (IR) team wrote a one-page summary detailing specific results that department chairs should pay special attention to in both highlighting and improving their efforts.
Zhu and her IR team also provided reports to the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), Honors program, and the Delta College program, an alternative to the traditional General Education program. Delta College offers students an interdisciplinary approach to required courses with a special focus on career preparation. Students work closely with faculty and take up to 10 classes together as a cohort. Zhu continued working with department chairs and faculty following the distribution of binders. Brockport had also participated in FSSE three times from 2006-2008. Through various presentations to and discussions with school deans, Zhu addressed differences or mismatches present in faculty and student perceptions revealed in comparing FSSE and NSSE results. For example, the amount of time faculty indicated students should be investing in class was very different from the amount of time students actually reported. These discussions have led to the development of several action plans to improve the undergraduate experience at Brockport. With the system participation of all SUNY schools in 2008, Zhu looks forward to making use of comparison data to review Brockport’s performance with other system institutions.
