On April 9, 2025, students will receive a text from the Thor chat bot asking: “On a scale from one to ten how likely are you to recommend SUU to a friend.” The responses are calculated into a Student Voice Score, which will reflect how satisfied students are with Southern Utah University.
This is the second year that SUU has participated in this national survey. It is conducted by Edsights, the same organization that the chat bot is operated through.
These scores range from negative one hundred to positive one hundred. In 2024, SUU received an SVC of 46, the highest score in the nation for a four-year public university. The national average was 16.
SUU’s Vice President of Student Affairs Jared Tippets has been invited to various conferences to speak on how the university was able to satisfy so many students.
“I think that SUU is a unique place that balances the personalized experience — the small class sizes — with still feeling like a real university,” he said.
He mentioned that many top scoring schools aside from SUU were smaller universities as well, because of their greater capacity for personal attention. However, these schools tend to have high tuition which gives students high expectations that are hard to meet.
The SVC data does not only reflect how satisfied students are with their education; it also gives the university direction to make improvements. After answering the initial question, students will be given the option to expand on why they scored the way they did.
Tippets mentioned that based on last year’s responses, changes have been made to the academic advising process, the Assistant Coaches for Excellence and Success model and are currently working on expanding the Career Center.
Also in response to student feedback, the school started holding speedfriending this spring semester. Many students shared that it was difficult to form connections on campus. Tippets said that the turnout for these events has been impressive.
Further, Student Outreach and Support Non-Clinical Case Manager Janae Hawk analyzed how the scores varied based on different demographics. She considered score differences between colleges, groups like student athletes and those residing in university housing to identify patterns and address where improvements were needed.
“With the SVS score, it goes all the way up to Mindy Benson and the cabinet and just gives a really broad opportunity for students to tell us what we’re doing well so we can continue it and tell us what maybe we need to improve on,” Hawk said.
Using both this year’s and last year’s results, Hawk plans on collaborating with different departments to create a better student experience.
“I’m planning to start working more with advancement and seeing what we can do to talk to donors and alumni,” she said. “When the students are saying ‘hey, I can’t find housing and I need help’ or ‘I have food insecurity’ or whatever it is, then we can try and, you know, directly impact them.”
The SVS follows a popular business model — a Net Promoter Score. This market research strategy allows companies to measure their customer satisfaction based on whether consumers would refer their product or service to a friend. Though this metric has only recently been utilized by higher education, its popularity is expanding quickly.
SUU was the first school in Utah to participate in this survey, but this year Snow College will also measure their SVS.
Contact the student affairs office for further information on using your student voice, and keep an eye out for their team on campus as April 9 approaches.
Author: Heather Turner
Editor: Anna Mower
Photo by Heather Turner
life@suunews.net
