Central Michigan University

Supportive Campus Environment is one of the five National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) benchmarks of effective educational practices. This NSSE-based KPI describes the extent to which students believe that CMU provides a supportive and welcoming environment. Individual responses to a series of 6 questions are weighted by gender, enrollment status, and institution size, and assigned a value that ranges from 0 to 100. The resulting score for each student is a weighted average of these 6 questions. The Questions for this NSSE Benchmark Address the Following: Campus environment provides the support you need to help you succeed academically Campus environment helps you cope with your non-academic responsibilities (work, family, etc.) Campus environment provides the support you need to thrive socially Quality of relationships with other students Quality of relationships with faculty members Quality of relationships with administrative personnel and offices CMU has exceeded its target for first-year students. In other words, the FY09 results (59.7) demonstrate that we have successfully achieved our 2010 target (58.6) . Our FY09 score is identical to that of our peer institutions (59.7), slightly less than those in our Carnegie group (60.7) and that of all NSSE schools (61.6). These differences are statistically significant but with a small effect size. Based on FY09 results, CMU has come very close to meeting its target for senior students. Our FY09 results (54.7) are only slightly less than our target of 54.9. Our peer institutions scored 55.6, our Carnegie group 57.1, and all participating institutions 58.3. The difference between our score and that of our peer institutions is not statistically significant. The differences between CMU's score and that of the other two comparison groups is statistically significant, but with a small effect size.