The concept “campus climate” is rooted in a 1982 report that investigated the “classroom climate” for women students within higher education contexts.*This groundbreaking work documented that the learning climate was “chilly,” disadvantaged women students, and stymied equal educational opportunity. In the early 1990s, the influential work of higher education scholar Sylvia Hurtado provided important insights about the “racial climate” for students of color within higher education, including how inhospitable campus environments – both academic and social – impacted outcomes for students. By the late 1990s, the more expansive concept “campus climate” gained traction as inquiry about identity-based marginalization and discrimination within higher education contexts extended beyond gender and race/ethnicity to sexual orientation, disability, and socio-economic status.
The CCS’s measure of campus climate was developed by drawing on nearly two-decades of campus climate research conducted at a wide variety of universities in the U.S. Given the complex, multi-faceted nature of the concept, the measure is composed of several items that gauge different dimensions or aspects of the campus social environment (e.g., friendliness, inclusiveness, sense of community). Survey participants were instructed to rate the campus overall on ten 5-point rating scales, each anchored by polar opposite adjectives (see dashboard, below). These ten items, once combined, form a robust composite measure** of perceived campus climate.
Before we explore similarities and differences in campus climate perceptions among social identity categories, it is worthwhile to consider the individual items that comprise the composite measure of campus climate. The dashboard below shows mean scores (ranging from 1 on the negative end to 5 on the positive end) and standard deviations (SD) for each of the ten campus climate dimensions, sortable by population (undergraduates, graduate students, staff, and faculty).
Mean ratings across all ten items and among all four populations range from a low of 3.1 to a high of 4.2. Among graduate students, staff, and faculty, the Unsafe-Safe dimension received the highest rating (G=4.0, S=4.0, F=4.2), whereas among undergraduates Unwelcoming-Welcoming received the highest rating (3.9). In contrast, Weak sense of community-Strong sense of community received the lowest rating among undergraduates (3.5), graduate students (3.3), and staff (3.1), whereas among faculty, Not Diverse-Diverse received the lowest rating (3.1). Exploration of the dashboard by population reveals that faculty have the greatest variation among item mean scores, whereas undergraduates have the least variation.
*Hall, R. M. and Sandler, B. R. (1982). The classroom climate: A chilly one for women? Project on the Status and Education of Women. Washington, D.C: Association of American Colleges.
**Cronbach’s alpha: UG=.93, G=.95, S=.93, F=.93
