Following the powerful tides of social change that swept college campuses after 2020, a state university in Southern New England determined that the time was right to take the temperature on their own campus, specifically among members of their own faculty and staff. The administration had never conducted this kind of research before, and was eager to elicit feedback from its workforce. While the general goal of the research was to assess satisfaction with the University’s work culture generally, it focused especially on employee experiences and attitudes regarding justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts on campus.

City Square Associates designed a campus climate survey that, while bespoke, reflected broader trends in the field of campus climate research. While the questionnaire was designed to reflect the administration’s unique interests in employee satisfaction and perception of workplace culture, we also relied on our experience in the Higher Ed space to ensure that the research followed a general set of campus climate research “best practices,” as defined by similar work conducted at—and published by—dozens of colleges and universities across the country.

The survey data highlighted areas of needed growth, with specific findings on the extent to which faculty and staff perceive the campus community to be diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, and other identities. It also highlighted the ways in which discrimination may still be perceived on-campus, and whether or not employees think there are equitable and fair processes in place for addressing grievances. The survey also captured, on an open-ended basis, employee aspirations for how the school community can become a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable place to learn and work. The findings were socialized with the senior leadership of the school, who discussed concrete and specific ways of cultivating a campus climate that would be more inclusive, collaborative, and community-oriented.