Initiative to improve the student experience goes global

By Thierry Luescher-Mamashela. Research universities from across the globe met from 8-10 October at the University of California, Berkeley, to discuss a first round of survey data on their students’ undergraduate experience. Institutions from Brazil, Britain, China, The Netherlands, Russia and South Africa have joined the new SERU International Consortium.
SERU, which stands for Student Experience in the Research University, is a survey tool designed to collect data on the academic and civic engagement of undergraduate students at research universities in the United States. The survey has gone global and the Berkeley meeting was attended by members of the SERU International Consortium including the University of Campinas in São Paolo, Brazil; University of Cape Town, South Africa; University of Bristol, UK; Amsterdam University College in The Netherlands; National Research University – Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia; and China’s universities of Hunan, Nanjing and Xi'an JiaoTong.
Observers were also present from Oxford University, the universities of Rhodes, the Western Cape and Johannesburg in South Africa, the University of New South Wales in Australia and member institutions of the American Association of Universities.