This year marks the fourth year of the Academic and Staff Satisfaction Survey, to rate customer satisfaction with campus administrative services. Not only will your rating help departments with real-time feedback on customer service, this year every participant can direct a contribution to a UC Davis emergency care fund.

The 2021 UC Davis Academic and Staff Satisfaction Survey opens Wednesday (Feb. 17) and runs through Friday, March 12.

Your time and feedback are valuable. In past years, participating in the survey has meant employees could claim UC Davis gifts. This year, the university will make a $1 contribution to one of three funds of your choice as a token of our appreciation. You will be able to choose from one of the following:

• The Staff Emergency Fund, which provides aid to UC Davis and UC Davis Health staff — up to $1,000 — who are experiencing personal financial hardships.
• The Student Emergency Relief Aid Fund, which provides emergency funding to help students cover essential living expenses.
• The Compassionate Care Fund, which helps cover medical bills to care for sick and injured animals at the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital.

Options new and old

Survey participants are reminded to only rate campus units and services that they interacted with during 2020, which may have been different than in prior years. Please don’t rank the services you did not use.

Then again you may have interacted with new-to-you services and groups — perhaps though cross-cutting workgroups started to address COVID-19 challenges and Campus Ready efforts. Please remember to provide those units with your feedback.

Each year’s survey includes some additional campus units and service lines that are seeking feedback through the survey. With a dramatic increase in online learning and remote work, it might come as no surprise that among this year’s additions are service lines from Information and Educational Technology, specifically:

• Data Center
• IT Express
• Kaltura (lecture capture)/AggieVideo

For example, IET reports that AggieVideo had a 650 percent increase in video plays on the campus YouTube-like service, and Canvas had more than 100 percent increase in pageviews. One of the services that IT Express supports is campus Zoom use, which included more than 688,000 Zoom meetings during 2020.

You can preview which service lines are included in this year’s survey along with their unit descriptions, which are also available in the survey itself for easier navigation.

More COVID-19 adjustments

Speaking of the pandemic, you may notice some new questions related to COVID-19 this year for some of the service lines, which may ask you to rate:

• Whether the service line has provided adequate substitutes or approximations of services that have been limited by COVID-19 restrictions. 
• Whether the unit’s employees have used best COVID-19 safety practices for any in-person interactions (including face coverings, physical distancing and sanitizing surfaces).

With each survey response, UC Davis academics and staff send a message to senior leadership about why they love an administrative program, or to share ideas that could lead to something great for the organization. 

Learn more on the Satisfaction Survey website.

Follow Dateline UC Davis on Twitter.