UAB is committed to creating and maintaining an environment that attracts and retains world-class faculty and staff. Gathering faculty and staff perspectives on their work experiences and the university’s functioning helps leadership understand what works and what needs to be improved. The Campus Engagement Survey also will help inform UAB's institutionwide strategic planning process.

Improvement occurs when we openly solicit candid and confidential feedback from all critical stakeholders and act upon this feedback. Disciplined follow-up on the survey findings help us continue to drive our institution to future success.

Past Campus Engagement Surveys provided the basis for input from staff and faculty on university priorities and needs and was the catalyst for a number of changes — from performance management and workforce development to child care. The feedback opportunities provided by the survey will be in the form of a continuous process, not a singular event. Future Campus Engagement Surveys will add new items to reflect new challenges and opportunities.

The Noel-Levitz Student Satisfaction Survey is administered to all UAB students every other spring. UAB uses student feedback on institutional activities and services — from academics to student services to extracurricular activities — to improve student learning and life.

The UAB Campus Engagement Survey is a joint initiative of the Office of the President, the Office of Financial Affairs and Administration and the Office of the Provost. A Steering Committee with representation from the Faculty Senate and Staff Council was charged with directing the survey process. Those member's names are listed here:

• Jim Bakken - Chief Communication Officer
• Paulette Patterson Dilworth, Ph.D. - Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• John Jones III, Ph.D. - Vice President for Student Affairs
• Molly Kate Lallone - Staff Council President
• Eva Lewis, Ph.D. - Vice Provost for Institutional Effectiveness, Research, and Planning
• Ryan Outman - Executive Officer, Finance and Administration
• Eric Ford, Ph.D., MPH - Faculty Senate President
• Janet May - Chief Human Resource Officer
• Michelle Robinson, Ph.D. - Senior Vice Provost, Faculty & Academic Affairs

The survey is timed to enable ModernThink to process responses and provide UAB with results that can be presented in spring, before the semester ends.

ModernThink LLC. ModernThink is a nationally recognized organization specializing in surveys of this kind for higher education. The higher education benchmark data that ModernThink provides gives our institution valuable insight into how we compare to other schools across the nation. The email sender is Great Colleges (surveys@modernthink.net).

The survey statements solicit feedback on a broad range of topics focused on the following themes:

• Collaboration
• Communication
• Confidence in Senior Leadership
• Access & Engagement
• Faculty & Staff Well-being
• Faculty Experience
• Job Satisfaction & Support
• Mission & Pride
• Performance Management
• Professional Development
• Supervisors/Department Chair Effectiveness

In addition to the 60 core survey statements, the Survey Committee included several additional statements that focus on retention. The survey also includes a series of questions about UAB benefits.

First, as a UAB faculty or staff member, your voice matters. Second, higher response rates give a more accurate picture of the university and its individual departments. This is a significant opportunity for you to share your ideas, opinions, and solutions by participating in both the survey and the action planning that will follow.

Yes, participation is completely voluntary.

The President, Expanded Cabinet and Steering Committee are committed to gathering feedback, identifying priority areas of action, sharing the findings with you and developing follow-up plans to address them. You can read about improvements based on results of past surveys under the Survey Actions page.

UAB is committed to continuing this process every two to three years so that we can use comparative data to chart our progress.

If you have any questions, concerns or suggestions regarding the survey and/or the survey process, please do not hesitate to contact Susan Coan at 205-934-6257 or scoan@uab.edu, or Liz Flood, UAB's Project Manager at ModernThink, at 888-684-4658 or lflood@modernthink.com.

All faculty and full-and part-time employees of UAB’s Workgroup A (see "Who is eligible to participate in the survey?") are invited via email to take the survey, hosted on ModernThink’s secure website. The email sender is Great Colleges (surveys@modernthink.net).

The survey is available for two weeks; that window may be extended depending on the response rate. You will be asked to enter a username and password, which will be provided in an email invitation sent to you directly by ModernThink. You may take the survey at any time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from work or from home. Internet access is required. Faculty or staff taking the survey can use the same workstation, as long as each person properly logs on and off the computer.

The 2025 survey email was sent to UAB employees’ campus email address (@uab.edu) on February 3, 2025. It came from Great Colleges (surveys@modernthink.net). If you did not receive the email, please use the troubleshooting steps below. 

Please note, the window to take the 2025 survey is now closed.

• Step 1: Are you in scope?
  This survey is sent to all Faculty - Workgroup F and Academic Staff - Workgroup A (see "Who is eligible to participate in the survey?"). Check your workgroup here.
  
  
• Step 2: Is it in your junk folder?
  Though UAB IT worked to ensure these emails would not be caught by junk or the “Other” tab of your inbox, please check to ensure it didn’t land somewhere else other than your inbox folder.
  Note to UABMC users: Emails were sent to your @uab.edu email address. If you have forwarding turned on, it should have arrived in your @uabmc.edu address but may have landed in a junk folder.
  
  
• Step 3: Contact ModernThink
  If you are in scope and have checked elsewhere, please reach out directly to Liz Flood, UAB's Project Manager at ModernThink, at 888-684-4658 x 103 or lflood@modernthink.com.

The online survey takes approximately 18-22 minutes to complete. If you are unable to complete the survey after you begin, you have the option to save your responses and access them later.

The survey consists of statements that faculty and staff respond to using a five-point agreement scale (Strongly Agree, Agree, Sometimes Agree/Sometimes Disagree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree). Additionally, there is a Not Applicable response option. The survey instrument also includes a benefits satisfaction component and open-ended questions. There are several demographic questions at the end of the survey (Gender, Age, etc). Respondents are encouraged to provide responses; however you have the option of skipping any of the demographic questions and if you have concerns regarding the anonymity of your responses. (See also Are my survey responses confidential?)

The UAB Campus Engagement Survey is sent to UAB faculty and full-and part-time employees of UAB’s Workgroup A, including adjuncts, part-time staff and postdocs.

Participating Workgroup A employees include Regular FT (01), Temp FT (02), Regular PT (03) and Post-Docs (21). This does not include employment categories 04, 06, 07, 11, 12, 17, 46, 59, 60 and 99.

No. Completing the Campus Engagement Survey is an important business function of UAB. Time spent completing the survey, and participating in focus groups, may be considered work time. No UAB faculty or staff member should be charged personal time for completing the survey.

UAB employees can access computers and Wi-Fi through UAB Libraries.

Your answers will be stored each time you select the SAVE & CONTINUE button at the bottom of a survey page. So if you get interrupted you can come back to the survey. You will need to log on to the ModernThink survey site to re-access the survey. To protect your confidentiality, you will not be able to access the survey after you click the SUBMIT button on the final page of the survey.

For technical questions or problems with the survey site please contact ModernThink at (888) 684-4658 or surveys@modernthink.net, M-F 9 a.m.-5 p.m. EST. After hours, leave a message and your call will be returned as promptly as possible.

No prizes are awarded. However, everyone who completes the survey is making an investment in improving their own workplace and the present and future of UAB.

The purpose of the survey is to get honest feedback. That is why UAB uses an external partner (ModernThink) to administer the survey. It is web-based and automated with a secure internet connection.

Each faculty or staff member receives an email invitation from ModernThink to participate in the survey. The email sender is Great Colleges (surveys@modernthink.net).

Once you click on the survey link, you are taken directly to ModernThink’s website. UAB has no access to this website. Your responses are made directly on ModernThink’s website, and all processing is done by ModernThink. You are not asked your name on the survey. The email includes unique password information for each user. This information is stored on the ModernThink server. This information is for access only and is not linked to your individual survey responses.

At no point does your manager or any other institution employee see your individual survey results; they are combined and only reported back to your institution in the aggregate/grouped format. No one in the university will know how you personally responded. Any aggregate/group with fewer than five members will not be reported back, so that responses cannot be traced to a specific individual or demographic.

No. The survey is completed on ModernThink’s confidential website. Your email address is only used to access the survey and to ensure that only one survey is completed per faculty or staff member. Emails are purged from ModernThink’s system once the survey project has been completed.

To make it easier and quicker for you to take the survey, and appropriately report results, certain information is preloaded into the survey:

• Job Status (e.g. full-time, part-time, irregular)
• Job Category (e.g. faculty, administrator, professional staff, clerical & secretarial)
• School/College or Unit
• FLSA status (exempt or nonexempt)

Other demographic information is gathered by self-report.