Residence Satisfaction Survey

University Housing regularly surveys resident students to gain their perspectives on a variety of housing-related services and programs. The Housing Research Office annually conducts a Michigan-developed survey that every resident completes; every three to four years, however, an effort is made to participate in a national benchmarking survey to compare our services to peer institutions across the Big-10 and other elite institutions with comparable housing systems. Students completed this national study in January 2004.

The purpose of the study is to answer two important questions:

(1) What are student needs and levels of satisfaction with the programs and services offered by University Housing?
(2) To what extent does University Housing fulfill these expectations?

This study will enable us to:

(1) Assess various aspects of our housing operation through the eyes of the students we serve
(2) Identify areas that require improvement to serve a continually changing demographic
(3) Utilize the benchmarking features of this instrument to compare our satisfaction levels with peer institutions

Residence Environment Study

Continued public desire to improve undergraduate education has propelled American post secondary institutions to develop programs that enhance student learning and development. One of these innovations is the living-learning program. While living-learning programs are being introduced on several campuses as a means to unite students’ in- and out-of-class experiences, very little research has been conducted on the impact of these programs on student outcomes across institutional and program types. This project continues to study the influence of living-learning programs on student outcomes across multiple campus contexts and various types of programs. We survey living-learning participants (and similar non-participant student samples) utilizing a developed questionnaire, and quantitatively analyze their data to uncover the significance of living-learning participation on student outcomes. By articulating the ways in which living-learning programs benefit participants, the results of the national study will fortify the literature and help post secondary institutions and key stakeholders augment undergraduate education.

Residence Hall Association Study

Residence Hall Associations serve as the student government within the residence halls to oversee policies, programming, and procedures that affect the living and learning communities of our students. Leadership has been intrinsically linked to residence education for many years. Through planning events, discussing and passing legislation, and interacting with faculty, student affairs staff, and other residents, students are able to enhance and build upon their leadership skills. Komives, Lucas, and McMahon (1998) identified several topics that student leaders face on a regular basis: how to speak confidently, strengths and weaknesses in character, style of leadership, and even personal values. Yet, at this time, we have been unable to empirically identify specific leadership skills attributed to RHA executive board service.

The purpose of this study is to gather baseline data regarding whether or not students learn and/or enhance their leadership skills as a result of serving as executive board members of a campus-wide residence hall association.

Komives, S. R., Lucus, N., & McMahon, T. R. (1998). Exploring leadership: For college students who want to make a difference. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Multi-Year Trends Associated with Living-Learning Environments

With the completion of the most recent Residence Environment Survey, we have five years of data that allows us to examine possible trends across time. Each year provides a snapshot of students taking the survey; we are unable to track specific students over academic years, so this data is not longitudinal in nature. This research has produced one paper on student-faculty interaction (pdf 276kb), with others in process.