October 31, 2016
Ellie Colpitts
This October, the Student Government Association provided students with a survey called #ImproveUCCS to collect feedback on students’ opinion of issues on campus.
The multiple choice survey provided results that were more quantifiable as opposed to an open-ended discussion, according to Samuel Elliott, SGA president.
Students who completed the survey had a chance to win a GoPro HERO Session valued at $199.
The most important question on the survey asked students if they knew SGA’s purpose on campus, said Elliott.
The average answer to this question was 3.5 on a scale of 1-10, meaning that a limited number of are informed about SGA and its involvement.
“A big part of this survey was getting SGA’s name out there. It had nothing to do with approval rating, we just wanted to see who was seeing and answering it,” said Elliott.
“(Tamara Marshall) and I have our experiences with the campus, but as student government it’s our responsibility to be representing all students’ experiences. So that’s why conducting this survey and many more is really important to improving UCCS.”
One of the survey questions asked which issues surveyors believed needed the most improvement on campus based on previous years’ results such as parking, food prices, grade forgiveness and events.
“We chose this question because we wanted to make sure that we as a student government were properly identifying the problem that students saw so we could go about fixing it in the correct manner,” said Elliott.
From these options, parking received the most votes. Less than eight percent answered “other” claiming that the problem was not listed on the survey. Full results will be disclosed by the committee.
After the results have been collected, SGA will take the information and conduct another more specified survey in the next few weeks with similar intentions. Survey phase two will ask the approval ratings of SGA and other offices on campus.
In past years, SGA gathered feedback from the student body by setting up tables on campus. Students were asked to fill out questionnaires to answer questions on what problems they saw on campus, according to Elliott.
“Problems are really just places for improvement, so our public relations committee came up with the idea for the (#Improve UCCS) campaign to emphasize students talking about what they want to have enhanced,” said Elliott.
Although not listed on the survey, SGA is taking more steps this year to emphasize the sense of community on campus, according to Tamara Marshall, SGA vice president.
“One of the issues that students had was we’re kind of a commuter school, and while we’re trying to get out of that, a lot of students on campus don’t attend the events we offer,” said Marshall.
“We wanted them to feel like we’re on campus as a community and as a family. Then from there we will continue to address the other problems we have identified as the community that we have formed so that we can work together and make more progress.”