Alumni Surveys Larry Caretto Mechanical Engineering Advisory Board Meeting October 18, 2006

2 What We Have Done Program objectives refer to accomplishments of graduates a few years after graduation Assess by survey of alumni and employers Done in June 2005 and 2006 Commercial Survey by Engineering Benchmarking Inc. (EBI) –Provides comparisons with other engineering schools in the survey

3 Results to Date 2005 survey did not have sufficient employer responses but alumni results are complete 2006 survey has alumni results for CSUN, but comparison data is in different format from 2005 Will show 2005 and 2006 data –No statistically significant difference between the two sets of alumni responses

4 Survey Questions How important is X in your work? How well did your program enhance your ability to do X? Answers range from 1 (not important) to 7 (very important Use score from AE and ME students for department evaluation –2005: five Aeros and 15 ME’s –2006: three Aeros and 27 ME’s

Results

6

7

8

Results

Results

11

12 Comparison with Others First comparison for 2005 data 23 institutions participated –Range of institutions including Stanford and Prairie View A&M Results shown for seven Aero departments and 15 ME departments Get weighted rating where 100% is highest rating from both CSUN Areos and ME’s and 0 is lowest from both

13 Comparison with Others II Detailed results on next chart –In 15 of 17 factors CSUN ME rating is 50% or above –Experimental abilities and use of reference materials and modern engineering tools were rated at 75% or above –Design rating is 55%, just above midpoint –Written communications and applying knowledge of mathematics were below 50%

Results

15 Second Comparison In 2006, 24 institutions participated –Sample: Stanford, Texas, Syracuse UCSD, and Carnegie Mellon (CSUN only CSU) Departmental results in different format Total alumni in survey from all institutions is 70 Aeros and 761 ME’s Compare weighted means for CSUN and all institutions Get ratio of CSUN mean to mean of all institutions (including CSUN)

Comparison QuestionsRatio of means Laboratory Preparation1.04 Engineering Logic Preparation1.00 Educational Abilities Preparation1.01 Communications Preparation1.00 Overall Effectiveness1.01 Necessary Skills Provided1.07

17 Conclusions Survey differences prevent easy comparison of both years of data 2005 survey identified two below average areas (mathematics and written communications) and several highly rated areas 2006 survey showed CSUN ME Department alumni at average for all schools in survey