With the end of the year approaching, seniors are wrapping up their college careers. This year, changes have been made to the exit interview process in order to make a simpler and faster method of closing out their time in college.
The changes were originally implemented for the December graduates as well to give the Office of Academic Affairs an idea of how the change would be received. The biggest of these changes was making the one-on-one portion of the process into a group interview.
“[The] group[s] were good, we had four people in my particular group,” said December graduate Steve Samek. “One guy seemed to dominate the conversation, but I would say it was a more efficient process. Just as long as the groups don’t get too big.”
That was the most substantial change, but the questions and options of the online survey also received some touching up. Many of them were given prewritten answers along with a fill-in-the-blank option of “other” if that student’s particular situation or response didn’t appear for the predetermined options.
“The predetermined answering options are based off the write-in answers of previous surveys seniors have filled out in years past,” said Assistant to the Provost, Sarah Bell. “The options were made based off the most common responses. We also wanted to include a write-in option because someone might want to put in an answer that differentiates from the common answers.”
Much of the survey revolves around the experiences of the students in their time at Waynesburg. Like any survey, it starts with a name and some basic information before the question portion of the survey begins. Then, there is a brief fill in the blank section where the student is asked to fill out their experiences in various categories including academic, social, advisor and spiritual experiences at the university.
The next section is where the predetermined answers begin to show up in the survey. The questions revolve around service experiences, the time the students spent in Fiat Lux and things they wish they had done differently.
After that, the survey includes a commentary on suggestions for the university, advice on how to succeed and a testimonial of the university. With this, the Office of Academic Affairs wants to get student feedback.
“We really want to know what they suggest to us,” said Bell. “We aren’t going to take what they say as them bashing the university; we want to hear their honest suggestions because they may have a really good idea that could help students in the future.”
There is still time and opportunities for seniors to schedule their exit interviews. To do so, they need to fill out the online survey and choose an exit interview session and then submit the online document. Along with the option for a fill in the blank answer as opposed to the predetermined answers, if a student would rather have an individual exit interview as opposed to a group session, that option is also available.