BU hopes to reach freshmen struggling to adjust to campus life, new routines and friendships, homesickness or loneliness, or academic challenges as the pandemic wanes, but is not completely gone. Photo by Jackie Ricciardi

Student Life

First-Year Terriers, How Are You Doing? BU Survey Wants to Hear from You

At a critical time for students’ academic and social well-being, faculty asked to help make sure they complete the survey

It’s a question that cannot be asked enough these days. It’s a question we should be asking our peers, our colleagues, our friends, even strangers. It’s a question so simple, so ordinary, that it’s easy to take it for granted and not realize how important it might be for someone to hear it in the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic.

How are you doing?

Boston University’s Retention and Student Success Committee has launched a quick survey aimed at first-year students that asks that exact question. The hope is to reach freshmen who may be struggling to adjust to campus life, new routines, new friendships, homesickness or loneliness, or academic challenges, as the COVID-19 pandemic starts to wane, but is not completely gone. (Although inspired by the well-being of students during the pandemic, the outreach will continue after the pandemic is over.)

The committee also wants to check in to make sure students can easily connect to the campus resources available to help them thrive academically. Through the survey, students can indicate whether they need assistance with academic planning, arranging academic accommodations, academic success skills, and career advising. “We want to make sure first-year students are connecting early in the semester with the resources that will help them thrive academically and personally,” says Amie Grills, BU associate provost for undergraduate affairs.

Faculty who have classes populated largely with first-year students have been asked to share the survey with a QR code and allow students two minutes during class to complete the survey. (Signs will also go up in dining halls and the George Sherman Union with the QR code.)

Next week, starting Monday, February 21, follow-up emails, with the survey link, will go to first-year students who haven’t yet completed it, says Christine McGuire, BU’s vice president and associate provost for enrollment and student administration.

How a student answers the survey, or if they take the time to put something in the “open comment” section, might trigger some responses from the University to provide assistance. Those students who indicate that they need help will very quickly receive a follow-up contact.

With the COVID-19 pandemic causing an alarming surge in mental health issues, especially among college students, the survey is particularly timely. Sarah Ketchen Lipson, a BU mental health researcher and a co–principal investigator of the nationwide Healthy Minds Study, has been at the forefront of research into the well-being of students. Her survey of more than 33,000 college students across the country has shown rising prevalence of depression and anxiety in young people, caused by a range of factors, from the coronavirus to systemic racism and inequality to political turmoil.

“Half of students in fall 2020 screened positive for depression and/or anxiety,” Lipson told The Brink, BU’s research news website, last year. She said the survey showed that 83 percent of students said their mental health had negatively impacted their academic performance, and that two in every three college students were struggling with loneliness and isolation.

The latest BU survey is part of a broader outreach that includes the ongoing First Year Conversations project, in which staff and faculty log into a database when they have had a substantive, meaningful conversation with a first-year student.