HEDS survey assesses life on campus

How satisfied do students, staff and faculty feel with the CSB+SJU campus climate?

The Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium (HEDS) is designed to answer just that, helping institutions assess the quality and impact of their campus programs as well as the strengths and weaknesses of their campus climate.

This survey was administered to College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University students, faculty and staff in the spring of 2019, the spring of 2021, spring of 2023 and most recently in the fall of 2024.

The data received from the most recent administration of the survey is compared across 219 institutions, including associate colleges, baccalaureate colleges, master’s
institutions, doctoral universities and special focus institutions.

“I am deeply interested in campus climate culture. I am interested in what will move us to optimal student growth,” CSB+SJU President Brian Bruess said. “My entire career has been
based on this idea: the more schools open themselves to understanding the real lived experiences of everyone, the better the sense of community is.”

The survey looks at, overall, how how satisfied people are with their campus community.

“Overall, folks are satisfied with our campus climate for diversity. We’ve been around 72% since we first started administering the survey. Most folks fall in the generally satisfied range,” said Sandra Mitchell- Goode, Senior Diversity Officer, during a presentation of the survey results to the Joint Faculty Assembly (JFA) last week.

However, one group stood out in terms of dissatisfaction.

“Our faculty were less satisfied with the institution than those at our peer institutions were in this survey,” Mitchell-Goode said.

When asked how satisfied they were in “the extent to which you feel all community members experience a sense of belonging or community” only 29% of faculty respondents said they were “very satisfied” or “generally satisfied.”

The report found that students overall were generally satisfied with the sense of belonging and community on campus, but there were discrepancies between different
dentity groups.

“Historically underserved groups reported less satisfaction with campus climate in general than those at other institutions,” Mitchell- Goode said.

Comfort in sharing views on diversity and equity at CSB+SJU was also measured.

It was reported that undergraduate students’ comfort has diminished since 2019. 59% of students reported feeling somewhat or very comfortable in fall 2024, compared to 69% somewhat or very comfortable in spring 2019.

Mitchell-Goode said part of this can be attributed to the way that students from diverse backgrounds experience campus life.

“28% of BIPOC individuals indicated that they had been discriminated against or harassed in the past 2 years here at CSB+SJU. They experience harassment at nearly twice the rate of their white peers,” said Mitchell-Goode.

This number is reported to have fallen since the first administration in the survey in 2019, but the 2019 number was not provided.

The report also found that CSB+SJU undergraduate students were less likely than their peers at other colleges to report daily engagement across differences in socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, disability and country of origin.

According to the survey, at CSB+SJU, liberal students, atheist/agnostic students and students with a long-term disability were statistically more likely to have experienced discrimination than their peers at other baccalaureate colleges.

Additionally, the survey reported that graduate students and conservative students viewed CSB+SJU’s campus climate more positively than national peers.

When asked about how to engage students from these groups better in our campus community, Bruess shared his thoughts.

The fact is, any student that doesn’t have an optimal experience is a disappointment to me.

I can’t speak to our previous history, but our mission tradition calls us to the dignity and worth of all students.

It calls us to the greater good.

No matter what the data shows over time, it’s the experience of all that we are lifting up.

All of those dimensions of difference matter,” Bruess said.

Following the presentation of the survey data at the JFA, there was time for staff questions.

Several staff members pointed out concerns with the data presented.

Gregory Schroeder, a professor in the History Department, asked how the faculty response rates compared with other institutions.

The information was not able to be provided.

“This report points out problems with faculty morale, as it has over the last several years,” Schroeder said. “My request to you is to facilitate actual discussions amongst admin. When the topic is addressed it’s often diminished and redirected, but we keep getting these clear results about morale. I think it needs to be addressed clearly and with authenticity.”

Peter Ohman, a professor in the Computer Science department, called into question CSB+SJU’s expression of community.

“One of the stats you showed was data on the way students responded to the prompt ‘I feel a sense of community.’ The results of that one were strikingly low,” Ohman said.
“One of CSB+SJU’s foundational values is community. We have historically taken a lot of pride in our community. I am wondering how it compares?”

In response, Mitchell-Goode said that CSB+SJU’s data from this prompt is consistent with national trends.

Johnathan Merritt Nash, a professor from the CSB+SJU history department, shared his own concerns with the community at CSB+SJU.

“Studying the history of CSB+SJU, we seem to fall short of the community and hospitality that we claim to offer. When SJU tried to recruit black people from Chicago and St. Louis in the 60s, these students felt excluded and ignored. They went so far as to stage a sit-in in the president’s office,” Merritt Nash said.

Mitchell-Goode responded to this concern with comparisons to other institutions.

“Pretty much every higher education institute has a similar history,” Mitchell-Goode said.

When asked about specific policies, the CSB+SJU administrative team is aiming to implement based on the discrimination and harassment reported in the HEDS survey from fall of 2024, Mitchell-Goode’s response was short.

“I can’t say that there are very specific things [that we are planning],” Mitchell-Goode said.