With heightened interest focused on what college graduates are doing immediately after receiving their degrees, the University of Nevada, Reno is launching The Outcomes Survey. This survey will collect nationally standardized, valid and comprehensive data about where students choose to work or continue their education after they graduate. 

"While we know that a student's first destination after graduating tells only one part of the story, we believe it's an important place to start the conversation," Mary T. Calhoon, Nevada Career Studio assistant director, said. "The Outcomes Survey will allow us to understand more about the employment and continuing education goals and plans of our graduates, as well as formative experiences such as internships and campus engagement that helped shape these plans." 

The survey will allow the University to gather this data on all of its graduates, whether they graduate in December or May. Further, it gathers data at four intervals: three weeks before graduation, and at three, six and 12 months after graduation. Graduates can update or change their survey answers at any time during the first year after commencement. For undergraduate and graduate students graduating in May 2015, the first survey link will be sent out via email Thursday, April 23, 2015.

Graduating students can access the survey in two ways. They will receive a link to the survey via email and they can also retrieve the unique response URL using the following link once the survey has launched April 23: http://tinyurl.com/RequestMyTOS-Link.

"Since response rates are essential to successful survey research initiatives, we ask all University faculty and staff to assist in making The Outcomes Survey initiative a success," Calhoon said. "Encourage your graduating seniors and graduate students to complete the survey. If you learn of a graduating student's job offer or graduate school acceptance, let us know directly. Simply email outcomessurvey@unr.edu and we'll follow up with the student to enter their data into the survey." 

"As the state's land grant University, this survey will help demonstrate our institution's accountability for university student outcomes," Shannon Ellis, University vice president of student services, said. "Our goal with this survey is to respond more effectively to the increased demand for student career readiness outcomes and student outcomes data. We know our students are successful after they graduate. This survey will give us the hard data to prove it."

The Outcomes Survey is a national third party vendor administered by CSO Research, Inc. The project is funded by the University's Parent Fund and the Nevada Career Studio. Preliminary outcomes will be available in late May 2015. Learn more about the survey at outcomessurvey.com or email outcomessurvey@unr.edu.