Dictionary.com defines climate as “the prevailing attitudes, standards, or environmental conditions of a group, period, or place”—in this case, the VVC campus. The VVC Campus Climate Survey was initially administered in Fall 2010 to formally assess the quality of the prevailing attitudes, standards, or environmental conditions relative to our campus governance systems and any related effects on our institutional effectiveness. In the subsequent follow-up surveys, the extent of civility, respect, and trust and their impacts will continue to be assessed and monitored in order to inform action.
Why survey VVC’s campus climate?
- Monitoring, evaluating, and improving as necessary workplace conditions experienced by members of any organization is good practice.
- We wanted to enable VVC workforce members an opportunity not made available to them in recent years—with significant changes both internal and external to the campus, the time was right.
- A survey of campus climate has been planned as part of our response to recommendations from the 2005 ACCJC Visiting Team regarding improving campus climate and institutional effectiveness.
- It bears repeating: Surveying campus climate for the purpose of quality improvement is good practice in organizational development and something we intend to do regularly.
How was “campus climate” defined specifically?
The definition of campus climate for the purposes of this survey derives from its purpose: “The purpose of the VVC Campus Climate Survey is to formally assess the level of respect, civility, dialogue, and trust present across campus, and the impacts thereof on our institutional effectiveness. For clarity, institutional effectiveness is defined in terms of:
- how well shared governance processes operate (pursuant to Administrative Procedure 1201);
- how engaged workforce members are in those processes; and
- how consistent prevailing business practices are with our core organizational values of excellence, integrity, accessibility, diversity, collaboration, and innovation.”
Hence, maintaining a positive campus climate is operationalized in terms of proper implementation of VVCCD’s shared governance system as detailed in Administrative Procedure 1201, and of our institutional effectiveness practices pursuant to Administrative Procedure 1202.
Items on the survey were developed based on each charge of the nine (9) committees, and on general questions about the overall system. Additional items involved assessing our performance on practices related to:
- Communications
- Decision-Making
- Resource Management (Facilities; Human Resources; Processes/Workload)
- Leadership Culture
- Teaching-Learning Focus
The above categories represent general areas of competency expected of institutions of higher education. By including them in the survey, we can identify what if any associations exist between perceptions of climate and of our institutional effectiveness. In this way, the survey provides some measurement of our progress on planning agenda items implemented to date.
What have we learned from the survey?
Preliminary Findings, Update Fall 2011
Findings, Inaugural Administration, Fall 2010
Who do I contact for more information?
Virginia Moran ( x2414)
Mark Clair (x2648)
Jennifer Larriva (x2477)
Audrey Vaughn (x2432)