Suggestions for improving campus to go to McRobbie soon

After sending a survey to 5,000 students on campus, members of IU’s Vision of the Ideal College Environment hope to change IU-Bloomington for the better.\nVOICE, which formed last fall, is creating a report on how IU is currently serving students’ needs and what can be changed based on the survey, said Alexandra Chtchedrina, VOICE co-chair and executive writer. The group began when McRobbie thought more student involvement and opinion would be beneficial to improving the campus environment.\nAfter sending 4,000 surveys via e-mail to undergraduate students and 1,000 to graduate students, the group is formulating ideas on how to make the changes a reality and will present the report to IU President Michael McRobbie by the end of the summer. After McRobbie receives the report, he will then be able to make decisions whether or not to implement the changes suggested in the report, said Chtchedrina, a former IDS staff member.\n“We asked the fundamental questions about the University and how students think the environment of the college atmosphere should be,” she said.\nAfter compiling the survey answers, the VOICE members broke down into several committees and sub-committees to better focus on how specific areas of the University could be improved, including Residential Programs and Services, the Indiana Memorial Union and technology and transportation services.\nResearch Specialist for the Office of the President Kelly Kish said McRobbie is excited about VOICE and the work the group has done.\n“(McRobbie) is hoping for across-the-board comments,” she said. “He wants to see what students like and what they don’t, so he’s anxiously waiting for the report.” \nOne of the major suggestions in the report is an interactive map of the Bloomington campus. The map would contain different “filters” that would allow students to see what IU and Bloomington have to offer. The new technology created by VOICE members would be something no other university has done before, Chtchedrina said. VOICE is working with University Information Technology Services and the School of Informatics to design the program and possibly sell it to other universities as well. A few of the main filters, according to VOICE’s preliminary report, would be a food filter, a road map of IU, events filter and transportation filter. The food filter would allow students to locate the nearest dining hall and see the menu and prices. The road map would illustrate one-way streets, parking permit spaces and live traffic updates. \n“The transportation filter and the event filter will matter most because students want to do events outside of class, but in order to get there you need to travel, so those two go hand in hand,” Chtchedrina said. \nJunior Elisha Cain said that when she was a freshman more information about transportation and events would have been helpful. \n“I think that would have been very beneficial when I came to IU, especially when I first started driving in Bloomington and all of the one-way streets,” she said. “It would have been great to have something like that.”\nChtchedrina said the members of VOICE hope their effort to help students get heard and more involved in the decision-making process will create an ideal campus environment and the ideal student after graduating from IU. \n“VOICE is an opportunity for students to get involved with what they are passionate about,” Chtchedrina said. “It’s not just an intellectual exercise, but it’s something that produces change and something students want and need.”