🌟 Higher Ed Customer Spotlight: Page Keller🌟 

Our next customer spotlight is the one and only pagekeller! 🤩
Q: Tell us about your current role:
A: I am the Director of the Center for Excellence in Peer Education at the College of Charleston. The Center for Excellence in Peer Education (CEPE) trains students to serve in paraprofessional peer educator roles to mentor, coach, tutor, and assist their peers in the curricular and co-curricular setting. We became a Qualtrics campus in about 2009 (not sure of the exact year we partnered with Qualtrics), and I immediately began using it to assess peer education programs and students serving in those roles.
Q: Tell us about one project that you have run on Qualtrics that has been particularly impactful: 
A: Our First-Year Experience program was completely redesigned in 2007 as our Quality Enhancement Plan for our 10 year reaffirmation of accreditation. Our QEP, called “Going Further Faster,” took root and became an important and fully supported program on our campus. Our freshmen are fortunate to participate in this high impact educational program, and they receive support and attention through FYE and many other campus programs designed to assist first-year students in their transition into college. Students in their third and fourth years are also provided much time and attention through their majors, experiential learning opportunities, and capstone courses. It’s our second year students who are often forgotten. I’ve heard colleagues in the field refer to sophomores as the “middle children of higher education.” Parents don’t love their middle children less than the older and younger ones, but I think the old adage makes a good bit of sense with regard to the scarcity of programs designed specifically for second year students. The College of Charleston did not really offer any comprehensive programs for our second year student population.
In early spring 2020, a colleague and I were tasked with developing a Second Year Experience initiative in collaboration with partners around campus. After months of planning – and getting derailed by COVID a few times – we formed a committee of campus partners from the Divisions of Academic Affairs and Student Affairs.
One of our first tasks as a committee was to disseminate to all first year students a Qualtrics survey to collect information and data from them regarding their first-year experience, what was missing from their first year, and what they hope to experience in their second year of college. Keep in mind that these were the same students who had their senior year of high school cut short, and their first year of college was atypical because of the many COVID-related restrictions put in place for campus health and safety. We had a 25% response rate to the 15-question survey, which included both subjective and objective questions. Our Second Year Experience program includes a new SYE website, sophomore focused events, and a SYE High Impact Series. Their feedback was both helpful and encouraging. We modified our plans for the website based on their suggestions. We scrapped plans for some of the events we had begun designing, and we modified our Weeks of Welcome activity to include our first ever Second Year Convocation as well as activities of interest to sophomores. Finally, their responses assisted us with the development of our SYE High Impact Series. We also held focus groups with 20-21 second year students for feedback in a direct data-gathering format. Finally, we will send two sets of Qualtrics surveys to all current sophomores at the end of this semester: 1) One survey will be disseminated to all second year students to collect general information about their experiences thus far, with specific focus on events and programming for second years. 2) A second survey will be sent to the students participating in the SYE High Impact Series of workshops to collect their feedback regarding this new initiative.
Q: What would you like to learn from others in the Community?
A: I have done plenty of research on SYE initiatives and programs, but I am curious to know how others in the Qualtrics community have used this platform to assess the student experience (specifically to enhance the sophomore experience).
Q: If time and money were endless, what would be your dream experience?
A: This is a fun question. Can I share two dream experiences? First, I would like to relieve all student debt. I suppose that means my dream experience would include a cash windfall coming my way. Second, I would like to visit at least one university campus in every country I possibly can. This would allow me the opportunity to travel all over the world, explore the architecture and design of the campuses, and meet amazing staff and faculty who also do everything they can to support student growth and development!
Q: Do you have any additional or fun information you'd like to share as it relates to your experience with Qualtrics?
A: I serve on the Qualtrics Higher Education Advisory Council, and I continue to be impressed by every Qualtrics employee with whom I have interacted. Everyone in the education side of the house is professional and passionate about the work they do.
Thank you so much for sharing, Page! You are truly a Student Experience rockstar!🎸
How is your college or university utilizing Qualtrics for Student Experience?