Academics
NSSE Survey Rankings
RALEIGH (Aug. 21, 2008) - For the seventh year in a row, Peace College has earned from its students top-ranking evaluations in the National Survey of Student Engagement.
Evaluations by senior students placed Peace among the top 10 percent nationally in three of NSSE’s five survey categories: student-faculty interaction, supportive campus environment and enriching educational experiences. Peace seniors’ evaluations also placed the college highly within the two remaining categories: level of academic challenge and active and collaborative learning.
"The results demonstrate a strong record at Peace of providing a value-added experience in student learning," said President Laura Bingham. "Students experience the mentoring culture of Peace and the NSSE results demonstrate the efforts of faculty and staff in producing the types of behaviors that lead to student success."
The NSSE results are intended to give participating schools feedback from students concerning their learning environments, how well students are learning and what they are getting out of their undergraduate experiences. The 2008 NSSE surveyed 478,079 students at 769 four-year colleges and universities around the country.
The NSSE project does not rank institutions. Each school has only their students' scores on the five "benchmarks of effective educational practice" and some comparative information for similar types of colleges (in Peace's case, other women's colleges and liberal arts colleges) as well as national averages established by results from all the institutions that participated in the survey, identified in the charts as "NSSE 2008."
The charts display the mean, which is the weighted arithmetic average of students' responses, in each of the five benchmark categories: (1) Level of academic challenge, (2) Active and collaborative learning, (3) Student-faculty interaction, (4) Enriching educational experiences, and (5) Supportive campus environment.
The charts are best used by scanning across the bars to see how Peace students' evaluations compare to the scores from students at schools in the comparison groups.
Bingham said the NSSE results offered insights into the college's academic program that can't be gained by other popular rankings, such as the one produced by US News & World Report.
"Many college ranking systems today are typically based almost exclusively on an institution's resources and reputation," Bingham said. "Unfortunately, the rankings say little about students' experiences. NSSE data focus on what is far more important to student learning - how students actually use institutional resources for learning and how they feel about the quality of their educational experience.
"This is a much different and more accurate way to think about what to expect from a college than what rankings represent," she said. "In fact, the NSSE project has determined that a school's academic reputation, as judged by others, says very little about the extent that active learning, student-faculty interaction, and a supportive environment characterize a campus."
Peace College Provost Debbie Cottrell said the NSSE results demonstrate that recent investments in Peace's academic program are having success in sustaining an academic environment that engages students.
"NSSE evaluations by first-year and senior students indicated growth in all five benchmark areas of the survey," she said. "The results are reflective of the investments Peace has made, and we're pursuing a program of continued investments that I'm certain will be expressed in continued success of our students."
The 2008 NSSE results were consistent with results from the previous six years that put Peace College at the top ranks among all participating schools in several survey categories. In this year’s survey, seniors’ evaluations placed Peace College in the top 10 percent in three of the five NSSE benchmarks: student-faculty interaction, supportive campus environment and enriching educational experiences. First-year students’ evaluations placed Peace in the top 10 percent in the benchmark category supportive campus environment.
NSSE provided Peace College with data that allows comparisons to students' responses at other women's colleges, liberal arts colleges and all other colleges and universities that took part in the survey. Those data demonstrated that Peace seniors rated their experiences at Peace in all five categories higher than did students at the other women's colleges, liberal arts colleges and the co-educational colleges that took part in the survey.
Survey results were released to participating schools this week. More details concerning Peace's NSSE results are available here.
NSSE's 2008 annual report is sponsored by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. More information about the NSSE report is available at the organization's web site.
Located in the heart of downtown Raleigh, Peace is a four-year liberal arts and sciences college for women. For more information about the educational opportunities available at Peace College, please continue to look through our website.
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