HUDS Offers Online Survey

With a mass e-mail to all undergraduates yesterday morning, Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) kicked off its first-ever online student survey campaign.

In hopes of reaching more students and analyzing gathered information faster, HUDS jumped into the technological wave with an online survey capable of providing it with real-time feedback.

“It used to take forever to have actionable data,” HUDS Director of Marketing and Communications Alexandra McNitt said. But with the online form, “response has been excellent,” she said.

Most Harvard students are glad to see HUDS active in improving services even though only a minority actually participate.

Jonathan L. Lee ’02 said he appreciates HUDS’s effort to improve their services, even if he has yet to read the entire e-mail HUDS sent out.

“I like the fact that they’re doing that [online survey] because they want to be responsive to students’ needs,” he said. “In my four years at Harvard, that’s something that always impressed me about Harvard University Dining Services.”

Students should expect to see the results of the survey in charts around their dining halls and Annenberg. In some cases, the differences will be felt soon, as HUDS hopes to make immediate changes wherever possible. Other changes might take a while.

“I’ve noticed some changes [between last spring and this fall],” Olga Yevglevskaya ’03 said.

Yevglevskaya, who said she plans on taking the HUDS survey, lives in Quincy House, whose dining hall received the lowest overall rating in the biannual survey last spring. The results spurred the creation of an HUDS focus group for Quincy that examined specific complaints.

“There’s an obvious difference in service between Houses, and there shouldn’t be,” Yevglevskaya said. “I don’t think it takes that much effort to make changes.”

Last spring, HUDS was “ecstatic” after about 29 percent of undergraduates took part in the survey, McNitt said.

This fall, however, HUDS is hoping for at minimum “20 percent participation in each population” of upperclass House and first-year dorms, she said.

That would be enough feedback for HUDS to base changes, but McNitt said she hopes for a response rate around 40 percent.

HUDS discarded their previous method of using electronic forms to compile student responses in favor of the time-saving online form. HUDS will save at least four weeks in work, which McNitt said would allow them to implement necessary changes sooner.

Having the student survey outsourced to surveystudents.com will also allow HUDS to compare Harvard’s results with other colleges who also use the website, McNitt said. Comparisons will be available after this year’s survey is finished.