A message to recent University of Illinois graduates: Alma wants to know where you've been and what you've been up to.
At least that’s the goal of the recently unveiled First Destination initiative, a campuswide program that has revamped the way postgraduate information is volunteered, reported and updated.
“We will finally be able to tell the Illinois story about where our graduates are going,” said Julia Panke Makela, the associate director of the Career Center. “The end result is that we’ll be able to tell people the value of a U. of I. degree.”
The program uses multiple entry points over time to ensure a voluntary and detailed outcomes survey is completed and updated frequently – with Career Center representatives going so far as to sign up graduates as they collect caps and gowns for commencement.
The end result will be a growing, comprehensible and accessible database of former students' postgraduate outcomes.
The first step to accessing the data will be the production of annual reports for the campus and its colleges. The aggregate information, which will become accessible in March, will not identify specific students.
A password-protected data portal containing more specific information for faculty and staff members will be available later this year, and a career-exploration portal using nonidentifiable information will be made available for current and prospective students.
“We found out we were way behind (in postgraduate information collection) and that we could do much better,” Makela said. “Our goal is not only to catch up, but to surpass the data capacity of our peer institutions.”
The outcomes survey, which already received approval from the university’s Institutional Review Board, was first distributed to August 2014 graduates and will be a part of this year's annual report. The response rate was an astounding 66 percent, though Career Center officials have a goal of increasing the rate to 85 percent.
Results of that first year’s survey will be made available online later this year, with campus faculty and staff members and administrators given the power to not only access aggregated graduate data, but also to customize those reports using various data sets. The additional information also will be available for annual academic reports and can be used for recruiting or marketing efforts.
The information includes where students plan to go immediately after graduation, such as starting a career, volunteering, continuing their education or enlisting in the military, and the survey asks about their experiential learning at the U. of I. If they have had experiential learning, they are asked in a follow-up question if it has been beneficial in their job search.
The survey also asks more-specific questions about the student’s after-graduation activities, and invites them to update their information in three-, six- and 12-month follow-up surveys.
Makela said privacy issues have been paramount in creating the process, and that survey takers’ private information will not be available to the public.
"We fully believe in the importance of protecting graduates' confidentiality and privacy," said Makela, "and in being very thoughtful about the way that we are designing our project every step of the way."
The university has offered incentives for those completing the survey, such as gift cards and other prizes raffled away through follow-up reminders.
Other core partners in the program are the Office of the Provost, the Division of Management Information, the Council of Undergraduate Deans and the Career Services Council.