Oakton Community College		January, 2003........

Each spring the Office of Research works with program chairs and deans of programs scheduled for review the next year to develop and administer a survey of alumni of these programs.  The Illinois Community College Board (ICCB) sets the schedule for surveys and career programs to be reviewed each year.

We use an instrument that combines items the ICCB requires us to ask and questions that chairs and deans suggest.  Though the ICCB requires us to survey only associate and certificate recipients from the prior year, we usually expand our survey populations to include students who took key courses or a substantial number of courses in the programs, even if they didn’t officially “graduate,” and students who left two or three years previously, not just a year ago.  An outside market research company conducts telephone interviews with our alumni. 

This In the Abstract provides some interesting findings from surveys conducted in the last two years.   Respondents were from these Oakton programs: Computer Information Systems (CIS), Computer Office Technology (COT), Electronics and Computer Technology (ELT), Facilities Management and Engineering (FME), Fire Science (FIR), Health Information Technology (HIT), Law Enforcement (LAE), Local Area Networks (LAN), Management and Supervision (MGT), Manufacturing (MFG), and World Wide Web (WWW).  There were 501 respondents in all.