Phil Squattrito, co-chairman of the transition team and chemistry professor, said the progress report’s completion will be delayed for the second time because creating a survey for the report took longer than expected.

“It took a bit longer than we had hoped to get the survey out into the field to have people take it,” he said.

The original submission date for the progress report was Oct. 1. Squattrito said the team must decide whether or not to produce a second report, or consolidate the survey’s findings with the final report due Feb. 1.

Students, faculty and staff were notified by University Communications Tuesday that University President George Ross’ transition team would e-mail a survey to a random sampling of students.

Squattrito said the survey’s results will help gauge students’ attitudes toward the university in general, feelings about what its strengths and weaknesses are, and what areas the president should focus on in the future.

“They’re trying to get a fair amount of information so there will be multiple pages and the students will go through and respond,” Squattrito said.

The survey must be submitted by mid-December.

A strategic planning process will kick off during the spring semester to help Ross ascertain a viable direction for CMU to follow over the next five-plus years, Squattrito said.

The transition team wanted the survey to be as comprehensive as possible, Squattrito said, so every sub-team could collect data at the same time.

“We didn’t want to have a lot of different surveys,” he said. “We’re mindful of the fact that you can over-survey. If people get too many of these things, they might ignore them ... We tried to get everything we thought we would need into one survey so it’s possible there won’t be any more from us.”

The survey results will be summarized in the final report, which also will include recommendations to Ross, Squattrito said.

“We’ll be able to summarize and say to the president, ‘OK, among the students, these are the top priorities, these are the strengths, these are the areas the university needs to do better in,’” he said.

Brittany Mouzourakis, Student Government Association president and co-chairwoman of the student priorities sub-team, said it has been difficult to coordinate all the sub-teams to create the survey, but they want to get it right the first time.

“It is a big process and we want to make sure that the questions we’re asking on the survey get to the heart of what we’re trying to discover,” the Garden City senior said.

Kathy Wilbur, co-chairwoman of the transition team and vice president of Government Relations and Public Affairs, said Ross is not uncomfortable with the delayed results.

“(Ross) wants (the reports) to have the most accurate information,” she said. “We have some time, but we do want this done obviously as accurately and as scientifically-based as possible.”

Mouzourakis stressed the importance of students taking the time to fill out the survey.

“The more responses we get, the better we can create our reports, therefore, the better Dr. Ross can plan priorities and strategic management of the future of CMU,” she said.