Kuh Under Kuh’s leadership, NSSE has developed several tools to help colleges and universities use the survey results to improve their services—national roundtables, regional users workshops, an accreditation tool kit, and a new five-year initiative to improve student attainment at minority-serving institutions.

The award recognizes individuals whose leadership in higher education has resulted in better ways to educate people to participate in and improve an open and inclusive democratic society.

Kuh directs the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), an annual survey of more than half a million college students that provides information to colleges, universities, states and policymakers to improve undergraduate education.

During the past five years, the NSSE project has been at the forefront in reshaping national perceptions about student success and the quality of undergraduate study. Kuh is Chancellor’s Professor of higher education and director of the Center for Postsecondary Research at IU Bloomington, where the NSSE project is housed.

“Through his work at NSSE, George Kuh has helped to redefine the concept of quality in undergraduate education,” said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, one of the sponsors of the award. “Even more importantly, he has developed practical tools for campus improvement.”

The core idea of the NSSE project is relatively simple: students learn more if they are engaged in those practices—both inside and outside the classroom—that have been shown to promote student learning. For example, when faculty members expect students to study more and when they structure their classes to achieve this end, students are more productive. As another example, when students participate in a community project linked to a course, they report greater gains in personal, social and ethical development.

Under Kuh’s leadership, NSSE has developed several tools to help colleges and universities use the survey results to improve their services. This has included national roundtables, regional users workshops, an accreditation tool kit and a new five-year initiative to improve student attainment at minority-serving institutions.

“NSSE has elevated campus-level discussion on student engagement, providing university leaders with the comparative data needed to evaluate the campus learning environment and implement needed change,” said Molly Broad, president of the University of North Carolina.

“NSSE was launched with ambitious aims—among them to be widely used by institutions to improve undergraduate education and to help reshape public opinions about college quality,” said Peter Ewell, vice president of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems. “In five short years, NSSE has done all this and more.”

At IU, Kuh also has served as associate dean of the faculties at IUB from 1997-2000, associate dean for academic affairs at the School of Education from 1985-1988 and chairperson of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from 1982-1984.

Virginia B. Smith, for whom the award is named, is a president emerita of Vassar College who also has served as founding director of the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education and as a founding board member of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education (NCPPHE). The award, which carries a stipend of $2,500, is jointly administered by the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning and NCPPHE.

The NSSE online edition of the 2004 annual report, Student Engagement: Pathways to Collegiate Success, may be read in PDF format at this Web site:           

http://www.iub.edu/~nsse/html/report-2004.shtml