As a Valentine’s Day gift from the Binghamton University president, BU freshmen and seniors received a special message in their BMail accounts.

“You have something to say, and I want to hear it,” began Interim President C. Peter Magrath in an e-mail sent out on Feb. 14 that continued with a link to take the National Survey of Student Engagement, a questionnaire that more than two million college students nationwide have taken since 2000.

According to the NSSE’s website, the survey was created in 1998 as a way to gather information on national college quality, “using a specially-developed survey of good practices in undergraduate education.” The focus of the survey assesses the “time and effort baccalaureate degree-seeking students devote to educationally purposeful activities,” as well as what colleges are doing to “intentionally channel student energy to these activities.”

Unlike many surveys students find in their inbox, there is reason to believe that participating in the NSSE will produce tangible results.

During a Hinman College hall government meeting, Al Vos, the Hinman faculty master and an English professor, talked about previous years’ surveys. He said BU had gotten low scores on academic advising in the survey, which led to the creation of the Discovery Advising programs. The University has an incentive to implement changes based on the survey, as the NSSE has also compared the survey’s results at Binghamton with 1,452 other colleges since 2000.

University spokeswoman Gail Glover said as a result of feedback from the survey, BU has increased its focus on “first-year student writing, students’ acquiring critical thinking skills and ways to make students’ overall experiences at Binghamton meaningful and impactful.”

Nevertheless, many students said they viewed the survey as just another pointless e-mail cluttering an already overstuffed inbox. Sam Williams, a freshman majoring in chemistry, said he “didn’t take the survey because it was an inconvenience.”

Though many students felt disinclined to participate in e-mail surveys, some remarked on the importance and value of the University asking for student input.

“I took the survey because the faculty master of Hinman College kindly asked [those attending the Hinman hall government meeting] to,” said Sofia Andeskie, an undeclared freshman.

After completing the survey, Andeskie said she found it relevant because “it served its purpose of comparing Binghamton University to other universities.”

Although Sean McKitrick, BU’s assistant provost for curriculum, instruction and assessment, could not be reached for comment, he discussed the survey with Pipe Dream in 2007.

“The great thing about this survey is unlike many others it doesn’t just ask about student satisfaction,” McKitrick said. “Instead it aims to measure things that have been proven to affect outcomes in colleges.”

Glover said BU students’ responses to the NSSE have been slow in coming so far.

“We have not received as many responses as we would like, although we are making progress,” Glover said. “In 2007-08 we were recognized for our high response rate, 40 percent, and this time we would like to have a higher response rate.”

A higher response rate means that the results are more representative of the student body and allows for greater in-depth analysis of the additional data.

The questions on the survey aim to learn more about the interactions among students and between students and professors, in addition to discovering more about each school’s cultural and political outlook. Students can still submit the survey before the June 1 deadline.

The NSSE’s importance has been recognized by the office of the U.S. Secretary of Education, which recommended that schools participate in distributing the survey. In 2009 alone, 363,859 college students completed it, and 603 colleges and universities participated in 2010. A total of 1,200 universities have used the survey since 2000, according to The New York Times.