Alumni survey initial results provide key information
By Bethany Hoff, Assistant Professor of Psychology
How does our college experience continue to shape our lives long after graduation? This was the question that my senior psychology students and I asked this past Autumn Quarter and included in the Winter Quarter Connections’ article, “Student researchers conduct alumni survey.” Thank you to the 505 alumni who responded! Alumni from the 1950s to the 2020s participated.
Here are three takeaways from the statistics we collected:
What shapes life satisfaction and character long term? While many things beyond the college experience shape these, we found a few key things.
- For current satisfaction with life, feeling like you were prepared for your vocation, and that you grew in courage and temperance during college were important.
- For current sense of character, having a mentor and meeting a significant friend or loved on in college were very important, as well as feeling like you grew in your wisdom, temperance, and future vocation.
Do campus traditions matter for students?
- Yes! Ivy Cutting, Tradition, Chapel, Hellofest, Sacred Sounds, Falconettes, Ashton Cup, Talent Show, Early Connections, Quest, Centurions, and more.
- Traditions were related to alumni’s experience at SPU and current life outcomes.
Alumni helped us test a new measure of “character climate,” developed right here at SPU! What is character climate?
- It is how a university emphasizes and embodies character formation across the university.
- And not only did the scale work well, but it was also an important part of alumni’s SPU experience.
As a professor, I see how these findings help me understand how my students’ experiences today and influence their life far after their time as students at SPU has ended. Going forward, I will be dialoguing with student leaders on campus about SPU traditions, as well as continuing to refine my teaching practices to create a strong character climate.
Special thanks: This work would not have been possible without the help of the Office of Alumni, Parent and Family Relations, as well as the Classrooms that Cultivate Character grant, led by Drs. Brittany Tausen, Thane Erickson, and Krystle Jalalian-Chursky, which focuses on how SPU can help students grow in their character across college.