Penn State’s College of Engineering posted to its website the results of a recent climate survey that indicates on Page 97 of the town hall presentation that 53 percent of staff and 50 percent of faculty would leave the college given the opportunity.
This is a huge shift in a short period of time because up until approximately two years ago, employees considered engineering the premier unit in which to work — the survey now indicates that most would leave. It saddens me to learn my friends and colleagues are now working in a climate in which most would escape.
During the days immediately prior to my June of 2015 retirement, I alerted top-level university administrators of climate changes that I experienced that are now substantiated by engineering’s own climate survey results. These people feigned interest in my opinion and basically responded with yup-yup-yo, yup-yup-yo everything is fine, but engineering’s own survey says otherwise.
The survey included responses from current students, faculty and staff but not long-time employees who had recently left the college (past 18-24 months). Inclusion of this population would likely uncover other climate issues not addressed or measured by their survey.
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The purpose of this letter is to call wider attention to this survey metric so that the college and the university might actually address this one particular and very important issue.
Walt Beatty, State College
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