The Graduate School 2025 Climate Survey
Climate Survey Overview
The Virginia Tech Graduate School is committed to creating and supporting a climate that fosters an inclusive community where all students can be productive and engaged members of our campus communities. To understand our progress toward this goal, we seek feedback directly from students on their perceptions of campus and departmental climate. The graduate school has conducted many climate surveys over the years, but in 2016 the survey underwent significant revisions to decrease the number of questions and to include students at all campuses. The 2025 Graduate School Climate Survey is the fourth iteration of the revised survey. This survey attempts to gather a holistic view of the climate throughout graduate education by covering topic areas such as campus climate, department climate, support, advising, mentorship, and inclusion.
Methodology
The graduate school has conducted many climate surveys over the years, but in 2016 the survey underwent significant revisions to decrease the number of questions and to include students at all campuses. The 2025 Graduate School Climate Survey is the fourth iteration of the revised survey. Prior to this year's survey distribution, feedback sessions were held with faculty stakeholders in academic units as well as with multiple graduate student groups and revisions to some demographic questions were made based on their input. Also, new questions were added in partnership with the Graduate and Professional Student Senate related to sense of belonging and well-being, harassment and mistreatment, and expanded mentorship questions. This survey attempts to gather a holistic view of the climate throughout graduate education at Virginia Tech by covering topic areas such as campus climate, department climate, support, advising, mentorship, sense of belonging and well-being. The survey is conducted as a census with all graduate students invited to participate.
The 2025 Graduate Student Climate Survey was sent to 6,748 graduate students who were enrolled on April 10, 2025. Forty-four e-mail addresses bounced bringing the total number of students reached to 6,704. Survey responses were collected through the Qualtrics survey software. The initial deadline of May 6th was extended to May 8th to allow students to complete the survey on Reading Day. On May 9th the survey was closed and response data were downloaded and saved on a secure server and e-mail addresses were removed from the dataset. When the survey closed, 1,067 students met the guidelines for inclusion in the final analysis resulting in a response rate of 16%.
On April 11, 2025 the initial invitation to complete the web-survey was sent to the vt.edu e-mail address of all student enrolled with graduate student standing as of April 10th. Students were incentivized to participate through an optional raffle entry upon completion. Student information for the raffle was collected in a separate survey system to keep it separate from survey responses. Throughout the survey window, college deans and graduate program directors were sent a communication informing them of the survey and asking for their help in encouraging graduate student participation. Students were also informed of the survey through the graduate school weekly bulletin and social media postings. Students were sent three reminders to their vt.edu address.
Response rates help measure the potential for nonresponse bias, but do not specifically identify bias. Comparing the characteristics of those students who complete the survey to the student population as a whole provides a narrative around who is represented in the survey. Detailed response rates and acadeimc representation comparisons can be found in this interactive graphic.
Summary of Results
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