The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), a national assessment which seeks to gauge student involvement on college campuses, will be distributed at Binghamton University, starting Feb. 15.

The administration will be notifying a random sample of freshman and senior students selected to take the survey, which will be used as a measure of the quality of education at BU. The survey should take approximately 10 minutes to complete.

The NSSE is one of the few national assessments recommended by the U.S. Secretary of Education, and other organizations that focus on higher education. Sean McKitrick, assistant provost for curriculum, instruction and assessment at BU praised the survey’s intentions.

‘The great thing about this survey is unlike many others it doesn’t just ask about student satisfaction,’ he said. ‘Instead it aims to measure things that have been proven to affect outcomes in colleges.’

Some of these factors include the frequency of student-faculty interactions, how often people vote, how often students engage in collaborative learning, how much students are challenged academically and attendance at enriching educational experiences such as cultural and athletic events.

The survey will also ask questions about how often students interact with people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, as well as those with different political views or religious beliefs. These questions will help judge how comfortable BU students are working in a diverse environment.

This information is collected from students attending both public and private four-year colleges. Last year 557 schools participated in the NSSE. The University will receive a final report of the survey’s findings in October. This will allow BU to see how it compares to other colleges throughout the country.

McKitrick said this will allow for ‘campus conversations about how to best serve the students.’ It is so far unclear exactly how the information will be used, but the administration hopes to make improvements based on feedback from the survey.

The BU administration is looking for a high number of responses. McKitrick stated, ‘Our goal is a 35 percent response rate, which is approximately the national average, but we would really like to see something closer to 50 percent. Other schools have achieved that in the past and it allowed them to get a truly representative sample of the student body.’

As an incentive for participation, BU is holding three drawings throughout the year, in which they will be giving away prizes including iPods, Sodexho gift certificates, iTunes gift cards and BU T-shirts. Students who respond promptly will be automatically entered in all three drawings.