Last modified: Monday, January 12, 2009
National organization honors National Survey of Student Engagement
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jan. 12, 2009
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The National Consortium for Continuous Improvement in Higher Education (NCCI) has recognized the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) -- a part of the Indiana University School of Education -- with an Honorable Mention in its 2009 Leveraging Excellence Awards.
Chair of the judging panel, University of Kentucky President Lee T. Todd Jr., noted that the NCCI award recognizes projects that reach "beyond the initial implementation of an innovative practice," to actively leverage the "greater impact of projects that are on the frontier of expanding excellence in higher education."
Every year, NSSE surveys students at several hundred four-year colleges and universities, inquiring into their participation in programs and activities that promote learning and personal development. Participating institutions receive detailed reports comparing their results against those for three customizable comparison groups, as well as comparative information for five "Benchmarks of Effective Educational Practice:" Academic Challenge, Active & Collaborative Learning, Student-Faculty Interaction, Enriching Educational Experiences and Supportive Campus Environment. Since its debut in 2000, more than 1,300 institutions in the U.S. and Canada have participated.
NSSE is housed at the Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research (CPR), a part of the IU School of Education. CPR promotes student success and institutional effectiveness through research and service to postsecondary institutions and related agencies.
"We are delighted to be recognized by the Leveraging Excellence program," said NSSE Director Alexander C. McCormick. "NSSE's wide adoption attests to the serious quality work going on at hundreds of campuses nationwide. There is a palpable hunger in higher education to enrich the national conversation about college quality by moving beyond rankings to focus on what really matters to teaching and learning."
Aligning with the mission of NCCI member institutions that work to promote quality assessment, planning and institutional improvement, NSSE promotes evidence-based improvement by helping institutions identify aspects of the undergraduate experience inside and outside the classroom that can be improved through the adoption and expansion of good practices in undergraduate education.
The award will be presented on Feb. 8, 2009, at NCCI's preconference at the American Council on Education (ACE) Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.
The full release about all NCCI award winners is available at https://www.ncci-cu.org/Visitors/Documents/2009LEPressRelease_2__000.pdf. More information about the Leveraging Excellence Award can be found at https://ncci-cu.org/Visitors/awards/awardprogram.cfm.
More information about NSSE and related projects can be found at www.nsse.iub.edu.
