Last fall, more than 2,600 faculty and staff members participated in Climate Assessment Surveys to gauge Georgia Tech’s progress on building an inclusive, supportive, and welcoming environment for the campus community.

The report from the 2017 Faculty and Staff Climate Assessment Surveys is now available from Institute Diversity and Academic Effectiveness at diversity.gatech.edu/ClimateAssessmentSurveys. In the report, longitudinal data from last year’s surveys were compared to the results from the 2013 Climate Assessment Surveys.

As Academic Effectiveness Assistant Director Joe Ludlum explained, “The content of the questions in the 2017 surveys remained unchanged from the 2013 surveys, which therefore allowed comparative analysis to track changes over time since the first surveys’ administration.”

The Climate Assessment Surveys assessed the lived experiences, perceptions, and satisfaction of faculty and staff with respect to the Strategic Plan’s aspiration to build “a culture of collegiality, close collaboration, global perspective, intercultural sensitivity and respect, and thoughtful interaction among a diverse community of scholars that includes all students, faculty, and staff.”

“The results of the surveys indicate significant progress on some important measures,” said Archie Ervin, vice president for Institute Diversity. “For instance, there were positive gains over the past four years on faculty satisfaction with support from their chairs, and nearly 90 percent of staff respondents hold the opinions that they freely interact with colleagues across Georgia Tech and that the Institute is generally a comfortable and inclusive environment for them.”

“Despite the generally positive direction over four years, we have work to do. As another example, the level of agreement from staff respondents that adequate processes are in place to address grievances dropped by seven percent in 2017 in comparison to 2013,” added Ervin.

Following the evaluation of the faculty and staff surveys over the past year, all undergraduate and graduate students were invited to participate in the 2018 Student Climate Assessment Survey earlier this month. Results from this survey will be compared to the findings of the 2013 Student Climate Assessment Survey and released in 2019.

“Thank you to those who participated in the surveys as this feedback will help us better understand the lived experiences of faculty, staff, and students and inform Tech’s leadership about strategies to improve support for the campus community,” said Keona Lewis, program review and research manager for Institute Diversity. “Programs like the Diversity and Inclusion Fellows Program, Inclusive Leaders Academy, and Leading Women@Tech were launched, in part, after reviewing the findings from the 2013 survey.”

To learn more and read the reports from the 2013 and 2017 Climate Assessment Surveys, visit diversity.gatech.edu/ClimateAssessmentSurveys.