Belonging and Community at UMD Survey

The campus climate at the University of Maryland shapes the lives of all of us - students, staff and faculty. Understanding deeply the varied experiences of our community is a critical part of continuing to improve how we work towards creating a more inclusive and equitable campus environment. That is the goal of the University of Maryland climate assessment.

The survey measured belonging and the experiences of students, staff and faculty who live, work and learn at UMD. The results will inform the creation of an action plan designed to improve belonging at UMD. Belonging is important for individual and community well-being, for personal, academic and professional success, and for ensuring everyone in the UMD community can thrive.

Incentives included:

• Athletics tickets (including box seats to Terp football and basketball games!) and apparel
• The chance to create a special-edition Maryland Dairy ice cream flavor (Testudinette Twist, a raspberry ice cream with streusel and vanilla creme sandwiches, was launched at the Maryland Dairy in November 2024)
• $2,500 to put toward community-building activities to the academic units with the highest graduate student response rate and undergraduate student response rates
• $2,500 to donate to a campus cause of their choice to the units with the highest faculty response rate and staff response rate
• For every faculty and staff survey, $1 given to the respondent's choice of either the Campus Pantry or Student Crisis Fund
• As a surprise addition for the final week, a free scoop of Maryland Dairy ice cream was offered to the next 4,000 students who took the survey

To redeem the ice cream incentive: If you completed the survey prior to 9 AM on Wednesday, May 1, 2024, and opted in for the free ice cream incentive, a voucher will have been loaded onto your student ID card within 72 hours of opting in. Students who had already taken the survey when we announced this incentive qualified for ice cream as well. As long as students entered their information for the other incentives, they received a free scoop loaded to their card. If you have further questions, please email belonging@umd.edu.

The survey is now closed, but the findings summary is available to anyone in the UMD community to view via the links above.

The survey was available online in English, Amharic, Mandarin (simplified), Haitian Creole, French and Spanish.

Our campus is deeply committed to taking action based on the results of the survey. Recent examples of actions taken by the university that emerged from campus feedback include CLOC's Supervisor Training and the Campus Mental Health Task Force.

Now that the results have been analyzed and reported, the campus will engage in an action planning process.

By using the CAS login, we hoped to ensure that only members of the UMD community take the survey. Please be assured, neither UMD nor Rankin is or was able to see any individually identifying information and the login is not connected to your survey response.

The following statements of confidentiality and anonymity may also be helpful to reference. We take respondent confidentiality very seriously and want to be sure everyone feels comfortable sharing their voice through this survey. Any additional questions on this can be directed to belonging@umd.edu.

Statement of Confidentiality for Participation
No personally identifiable information will be shared in any publication or presentation resulting from the assessment. Your confidentiality in participating will be kept to the degree permitted by the technology used (e.g., IP addresses and location data are never recorded). The survey is run by RC via Qualtrics, whose servers are protected by high-end firewall systems and scans are performed regularly to ensure that any vulnerabilities are quickly found and patched. Qualtrics uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption (also known as HTTPS) to protect transmitted data. Access to RC surveys is restricted and audited for compliance. In addition, the external consultant (RC) will not report any group data for groups of fewer than five individuals, which may be small enough to compromise confidentiality. Instead, RC will combine the groups to eliminate any potentially identifiable demographic information. Please also remember that you do not have to answer any question about which you are uncomfortable. The survey has been approved by the UMD Institutional Review Board.

Statement of Anonymity for Comments
Upon submission, all comments from participants will be de-identified so they will not be connected to their author. However, depending on what you say, others who know you may be able to connect certain comments to you. In instances where certain comments might be connected to an individual, RC will make every effort to de-identify those comments or will remove the comments from the analyses. The anonymous comments will be analyzed using content analysis. To give “voice” to the quantitative data, some anonymous comments may be quoted in publications related to this survey.

Rankin Climate, our consultant, has developed a repository of tested questions from administering climate assessments at more than 250 institutions across the nation. The UMD Climate Survey Working Group worked collaboratively to select and develop the survey questions, using a combination of questions from Rankin Climate’s collection and UMD-specific questions informed by the results of community focus groups.

Everyone! The survey was administered to all students, faculty and staff at the University of Maryland.

The target was for all students, faculty and staff at the University of Maryland. Every response matters and is valuable in providing the most beneficial feedback and results. The survey ultimately had an overall response rate of 23%.

The consultant, Rankin Climate, provided a final report that provides high-level summaries of the findings and identifies themes found in the data. The report will inform the development of the university’s action plan.

Submitting the survey to the university's Institutional Review Board (IRB) was an important step of the campus climate study project. First, to assure potential participants that their responses to the survey will remain confidential. Second, to ensure the privacy of the data; the data security plan submitted to the IRB specified that the Principal Investigators (PIs) responsible for analyzing and managing the data would not be expected to share the data with others. Lastly, an IRB review offers reassurance to the community that the process will be conducted ethically and professionally.

The primary investigator from the University of Maryland for the IRB process is Michelle Appel, Assistant Vice President for Institutional Research, Planning, and Assessment (IRPA). This project has IRB approval.

Participation in the survey was completely voluntary. Additionally, participants did not have to answer every question and could skip any questions.

Confidentiality is a top priority. Here are a few steps taken to ensure your information stays private:

• The survey was run on a firewalled web server with forced 256-bit SSL security and IP addresses were stripped when the survey is submitted. Paper and pencil surveys were also available; these were sent directly to the consultant.

• In order to avoid compromising confidentiality, no group data for groups of fewer than five individuals will be reported. Smaller groups will be combined or other measures taken to eliminate sharing potentially identifiable demographic information.

• Any comments submitted as part of the survey will be handled separately from demographic characteristics. Identifiable information submitted in qualitative comments will be manually redacted by the consultants; UMD will only receive the redacted comments.

• Participation in the survey was completely voluntary, and no questions are required. Participants could skip any question(s) they did not wish to answer.


Rankin Climate employs a comprehensive research data security protocol to safeguard the integrity and confidentiality of the collected information. This protocol encompasses various aspects, including data encryption, handling of personally identifiable information (PII), physical security measures, and procedures for addressing potential data breaches. Here are the key points of this security protocol:

Data Submission: Data collected from online participants is transmitted to a secure server hosted by the consultant.

Server Security: The server is hosted on SaaS hosting platforms compliant with SOC2 standards, ensuring a high level of security. It is protected by a Next-Gen Fortigate Firewall to prevent unauthorized access.

Data Storage: The data is stored in a SQL database accessible exclusively via VPN and restricted to authorized personnel.

Encryption: Communication with the server is secured using HTTPS TLS 1.2 encryption.

Access Control: Only Rankin Climate associates involved in the project have access to the raw data. These associates have undergone CITI (Human Subjects) training and approval, and they have prior experience with similar projects.

Data Backup: Regular hourly and daily backups of the server's data are performed. Backups are stored offsite for added safety.

Data Merging: The consultant maintains an aggregate merged database that includes data from more than 250 institutional surveys. The University of Maryland project data will be integrated into this database, which is securely hosted by the consultant. Institutional identifiers are not included in the full merged dataset.

Retention Period: Raw unit-level data with institutional identifiers is retained on the server for six months and then securely destroyed.

Paper Surveys: Paper and pencil surveys are returned directly to the consultant, stored in a locked file drawer within a locked office, and subsequently destroyed after merging with online data.

Breach Notification: In the event of a data breach or suspected breach, the consultant will promptly notify the committee chairs responsible for overseeing the project.

Data Release: At the conclusion of the project, the consultant will provide the primary investigator with a data file.

Research indicates that surveys like this yield higher response rates and garner more credible findings when led by an independent consultant.

A steering committee of staff and administrators reviewed potential vendors and selected Rankin Climate, LLC. The steering committee included representation from the Office of the President, Office of Diversity & Inclusion, Division of Information Technology, Office of Faculty Affairs, Division of Student Affairs, Office of Institutional Research, Planning and Assessment, Office of Marketing and Communications, Office of the Provost, and University Human Resources. Rankin Climate, LLC has been working with college campuses for over 20 years and has conducted similar assessments on more than 230 college campuses nationwide.

Please see this list of confidential and non-confidential support resources.