2025 Climate Survey FAQs
The Graduate Student Climate Survey has been conducted every three years since 2013. The graduate school is committed to fostering an inclusive graduate community. To understand our progress toward this goal, we seek feedback directly from students on their perceptions of campus and departmental climate.
We've compiled questions we have been asked about our climate surveys, along with our answers, and have listed them below.
For additional information or if you have questions you do not see below, please contact Kacy Lawrence, Director of Assessment and Strategic Data Initiatives, Graduate School.
This is the fouth iteration of the graduate school’s student climate survey covering topics such as: campus climate, department climate, support, advising, mentorship, and inclusion.
Virginia Tech is committed to creating and supporting a climate that fosters an inclusive community, and where all students can be productive and engaged members of our campus communities. This survey helps Virginia Tech's leaders to receive valuable input from students about their campus and departmental climate.
All currently enrolled graduate students across all campuses and online will receive an invitation to participate in the survey via their vt.edu email.
All students will receive an invitation to participate in their VT email (vt.edu) on April 11. The survey will run through May 6.
The climate survey provides an opportunity for students to share their thoughts and comments about their experiences and to provide information on the specific things that are going well and those that need to change to make graduate education at Virginia Tech better.
There is an opportunity to enter a raffle to win a prize for completing this survey. If participants want to enter the raffle, they will be taken to a separate survey to provide contact information that is in no way associated with the information in the climate survey.
The survey is confidential, and various measures are in place to protect your anonymity. Responses will only be shared outside of the graduate school in aggregated form and for categories with 10 or more responses. Examples from prior surveys can be seen here. Your participation in this survey is entirely voluntary. Additionally, almost all questions are optional or include an option to indicate "NA" if it does not apply. Upon completion, there will be an opportunity to enter a raffle to win a prize as a thank you for your time. This data from this entry page will be collected in a separate tool from your survey responses.
All data will be maintained by the Director of Assessment and Strategic Data Initiatives in the Graduate School. When the final data are exported out of the system for analysis your email address will be removed and the data will be stored on a secure server managed by the Graduate School. Your email address is used for distribution purposes only and will be removed from all data when the survey closes.
This survey is administered through the Qualtrics Survey Platform, which is compatible with screen reader software. If anyone needs to, or would prefer to, complete a paper and pencil (printed) version of this survey, please contact klawr5@vt.edu to arrange a private location and time to complete it.
Many survey questions remain consistent year to year to allow for historical comparisons. However, it is also important to add new questions to capture attitudes and experiences around emerging themes in graduate education and items of particular interest in a given year. This year, questions were added related to sense of belonging and well-being, harassment and mistreatment, and expanded mentorship questions. Additionally, questions related to student background and identity were added and existing questions were revised to reflect the diverse backgrounds, identities, and experiences of the gradute student body at Virginia Tech.