The University of Rhode Island’s Office of Community, Equity and Diversity released an anonymous online campus inclusion survey on Oct. 15, the first since 2021, with an aim to re-establish a baseline for campus climate in a post-COVID-19 world.
With three years having passed since the last campus climate survey, CED has decided to conduct a new one, according to Markeisha Miner, the vice president for CED.
“We wanted to establish a new baseline because a lot has changed in the world and in the community on campus at the university since 2021,” Miner said.
Part of this new post-pandemic baseline will address URI’s return to in-person classes, looking more deeply at campus culture and social climate, according to Miner.
The survey on campus inclusivity was sent out to all members of the URI community including students, faculty, staff and postdoctoral fellows.
“Everyone’s voice matters,” Miner said. “We’re all responsible for creating the community that we want.”
On Oct. 29, President Marc Parlange released a message to the URI community over email encouraging everyone to complete the survey. The message was also posted on Rhody Today .
“You are an important part of our community, and we strive, every day, to make URI one of the best places in the world to live, learn and work,” Parlange said in the statement. “We appreciate your input and honesty in sharing your campus experience with us so we can continue to improve and make URI feel like home.”
In addition to the change in flow of campus life, the leadership within CED and the community of URI as a whole has also changed greatly since the last survey.
The vice president of CED plays an important role in helping to advance the strategic priority of fostering an inclusive culture in an ever-changing environment, Miner said. She joined CED in January 2024 as the new vice president of the office.
“The survey will help me as a new leader and a new member of this community to get a much better sense of how to shape our office efforts and how to prioritize the work ahead,” Miner said.
The strength of the survey does not only exist inside the CED office, according to Miner. The survey works to target URI as a whole and aims to build the structure of the entire university.
“We want people to know that they are heard not just by me, but by the entirety of the university,” Miner said. “It’s not just one office’s role, it takes all of us.”
As a community like URI changes over time, it is a good practice to assess what people’s experiences are regularly, according to Miner.
“This is just the start,” Miner said. “The University Diversity Council is in the process of being reconstituted, and that group will be reviewing not just the results of this survey but preparing for future surveys.”
After the initial baseline is established, the CED hopes to conduct frequent surveys no less than every couple of years, Miner said.
The survey, which closed submissions on Friday, was anonymous and voluntary, purposely designed with a format that made it fast to complete but also accurate, according to Miner. In the survey, there were seven questions total, which were a mix of open-ended questions and questions where participants scale their responses based on factors such as agreement or likeness.
In terms of feedback, identifying and celebrating what is working well can be beneficial is just as important as feedback on what needs to be improved, according to Miner.
“I will benefit from the perspective of a broad cross-section of the community in terms of confirming what it is about URI that people appreciate so that we can lean into that, amplify and expand what’s working while we identify and address what’s not working as well,” Miner said. “I’m hopeful that we’ll get some open-ended feedback and maybe some suggestions we can implement rather quickly.”
Results and responses from the survey are still very fresh, and much work needs to be done before they can be released, according to Miner.
To view the inclusion survey, visit the Fall 2024 Campus Climate Survey . More information on the survey timeline, including the planned date of release for results, can be found in the Timeline for URI Campus Climate Survey .