Alumni SurveysAlumni Surveys

Larry Caretto

Mechanical Engineering Mechanical Engineering Advisory Board MeetingAdvisory 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

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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

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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

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2005 Results

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2005 Results2005 Results

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2005 Results

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2005 Results

Importance of TopicsScale: 1 = Not important 7 = Very important

Error bars show 95% confidence interval

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2006 Results

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How well did program enhance your ability?Scale: 1 = Very poor 7 = Very well

Error bars denote 95% condifence limit

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2006 Results

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Importance Minus Preparation

-1.0

-0.9

-0.8

-0.7

-0.6

-0.5

-0.4

-0.3

-0.2

-0.1

0.0Ora

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2006

2005

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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

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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%

142005 Results

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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)

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2006 Comparison

Questions Ratio of means

Laboratory Preparation 1.04

Engineering Logic Preparation 1.00

Educational Abilities Preparation 1.01

Communications Preparation 1.00

Overall Effectiveness 1.01

Necessary Skills Provided 1.07

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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