The idea of a Universitywide survey focusing on the academic and civic engagement of undergraduate students was first explored in 1999 by John Aubrey Douglass (senior research fellow at CSHE) and Richard Flacks (professor of sociology at UCSB), in association with Scott Thomas, then a graduate student at UCSB, and now an associate professor at the University of Georgia. Douglass identified the need for improved information on the student experience throughout the UC system as it entered a new era of enrollment growth and financial constraints; Flacks and Thomas had done survey work on UCSB students, exploring issues of student engagement, and had ideas on how such a Universitywide survey might be constructed.
By early 2000, Douglass and Flacks proposed the development of an online survey as a collaborative project between faculty and institutional researchers based at an academic research unit, CSHE. The goal was to develop a new Universitywide resource on the character and experience of students within research universities, one that made use of existing institutional data and that would help promote both scholarly and policy-based research, and, ultimately, institutional improvement. At the time, a number of campuses did student surveys, but they were not coordinated, and generally did not incorporate a larger theoretical framework for analyzing the dynamics of both the academic and civic engagement of students.
Under a proposal forwarded by John Douglass at CSHE, seed funding was provided by Associate Vice President Dennis Galligani at the UC Office of the President to explore the viability of a Universitywide survey, which, in turn, led to a meeting of some 30 faculty and institutional researchers from throughout the UC system (see listing of attendees below). They recommended that the principal researchers, Douglass and Flacks, create a proposal for the development of what has since become known as UCUES.
By early 2001, Gregg Thomson, director of the Office of Student Research at UC Berkeley, was asked to join as a co-principal investigator, in part because of the innovative survey work being conducted at OSR.
The principal researchers then presented in late 2001 a proposal for a Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Project based at CSHE and with one of its primary goals to develop UCUES. The UC Office of the President and the Student Affairs offices on each of then eight undergraduate campuses subsequently funded the proposal jointly.
The SERU Project principal researchers established a Universitywide advisory committee chaired by Neil Smelser (professor of sociology, UC Berkeley) with faculty and administrative and student representatives, and proceeded to work closely with an institutional research work group and interested faculty to develop UCUES as a pilot.
UCUES was first administered in the spring of 2002 as a sample, online survey under a contract with the Social Science Survey Center at UC Santa Barbara.
Since then, UCUES has become a census, online survey sent to all UC undergraduates and administered by the Office of Student Research at UC Berkeley in coordination with the UC Office of the President and each UC undergraduate campus. It is the only survey designed as a longitudinal study on the student experience at research universities.
A SERU/UCUES Institutional Research Work Group coordinates the implementation of UCUES at the campus level, provides input into the development of the survey instrument and reports results for their campuses. UCUES also benefits from the guidance of a steering committee with oversight of survey and research endeavors comprised of UC faculty, campus administrators and UCOP staff and administrators.
Coordination with each of the campuses, and the support of the University of California Office of the President, has been crucial in making UCUES a regularly administered survey. In 2005, Paula Zeszotarski was appointed UCUES project manager at UCOP under the direction of Samuel Agronow, coordinator of admissions research and evaluation. That year, Steve Chatman was also appointed SERU/UCUES project director by the principal researchers with a joint position in the Center for Studies in Higher Education and in the Office of Student Research at UC Berkeley. Chatman provided input on the development and administration of UCUES in his previous IR position at UC Davis.
In 2006 Steven Brint, a professor of sociology at UC Riverside, joined the principal researchers.
For more information on the SERU Project, see the SERU website.