After almost five months of flooding students' inboxes with email reminders, the 2011 Student Experience in Research Universities, or SERU, survey closed July 5, and UF ranks at the top for student participation.
Over the survey's lifespan, 30,772 undergraduates were sent a survey and 63.4 percent of those students responded, according to Marie Zeglen, assistant provost and director of institutional planning and research at UF.
Out of the universities participating, the second-place competitor was the University of Southern California, whose response rate was 37.5 percent. For every response USC had, UF had 1.7 responses, Zeglen said.
Making the survey a requirement for entering the student football ticket lottery helped boost responses, she said. The SERU team's giveaways of iPads, as well as gift cards to Amazon.com, iTunes and the UF bookstores were also important for making the survey appealing to all students.
She said the team's "We Listened" campaign helped show students their opinions were heard by providing examples of changes that have occurred at UF since the 2009 SERU survey.
Zeglen said students' responses to the survey's open-ended questions will help to provide insight into what students value and which areas they feel should be improved. She said seeing responses to these questions also helps to eliminate the worry that students may have just entered random answers instead of being thoughtful with responses.
