University Safety Initiative
University Safety Survey
The Office of Public Safety and University Initiatives & Policy collaborated in spring 2024 to administer the University Safety Survey, aimed at gaining insights into the experiences of students, faculty, staff and designated campus colleagues regarding campus safety and security.
Message from Chief Safety Officer
Dear U of A Community,
As a Tucson native, I am honored to serve as the Chief Safety Officer for the University of Arizona. My priority is to provide a safe environment for students, faculty, staff, and everyone who visits and enjoys the university. Before working at U of A, I spent 24 years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including leading the FBI’s Tucson Office.
On October 5, 2022, we lost Dr. Thomas Meixner, a valued and esteemed faculty member at the university, as part of a tragic shooting on campus. Our community was deeply affected by this profound loss. Since then, the university has taken many steps to improve the safety and security on campus. The university hired the PAX Group, LLC, nationally recognized security experts, to conduct an independent review of safety on campus. Their review identified 33 recommendations for improved safety protocols on campus and collaborative work began immediately in Spring 2023 to implement these recommendations.
The Office of Public Safety (OPS) was created in May 2023 to meet the safety and security needs of the university and to increase collaboration between the many offices that do this work across campus. Over the past two years, the Office of Public Safety has been intently focused on maintaining a safe and inclusive campus environment through our office’s core values which are to promote safety, facilitate learning, empower through education, foster awareness, listen & respond, and increase transparency. To help achieve these goals and hear directly from the university community, we launched the University Safety Survey in Spring 2024.
I am proud to share the results of this survey with the campus community. The questions we asked were topics I felt were important to know in order to take meaningful, impactful action. The insights we gained have been and will continue to be invaluable to guiding our efforts. We remain committed to engaging with and learning from our community members to continually improve our safety practices.
As always, if you have any questions or concerns regarding safety, you are welcome to contact my office at publicsafety@arizona.edu.
Thank you for your time and partnership.
Sincerely,
Steve Patterson
Vice President and Chief Safety Officer
Office of Public Safety
September 10, 2024
About the Survey
The Office of Public Safety (OPS) and University Initiatives & Policy (UIP) collaborated in spring 2024 to administer a University Safety Survey. The objective of the survey was to better understand the experiences of students, faculty, and staff related to campus safety and security at the University of Arizona.
The survey explores a wide range of topics including respondents’ sense of safety on campus, views of safety-related communications, interest in learning more about recent safety enhancements, and input on future safety initiatives. Survey results are being used to guide institutional changes and initiatives aimed at improving campus safety.
The safety survey was administered from March 27 - April 15, 2024 and sent to all faculty, staff, students, and Designated Campus Colleagues (DCCs). In total, 3,076 responses were collected, representing about 4.5% of students, staff, and faculty. Individual responses are considered confidential. However, aggregate data has been analyzed in order to identify trends and make data-informed recommendations.
Survey Goals
Goal 1
Identify campus safety strengths and opportunities for improvement.
"We want to be aware of the areas that concern our community, and we want to be consistently improving all aspects of safety. These data driven insights will continue to help all members of the Office of Public Safety work diligently to prioritize safety initiatives and resources."
- Eric Kazmierczak, Deputy Chief Safety Officer
Goal 2
Better understand the community’s feeling of physical safety and awareness levels of available resources.
"Meeting the expectations of our University community starts with understanding their concerns and service needs. Once these things are understood, we can work with our community and public safety partners to improve services and find meaningful solutions to enhance everyone’s quality of life and ensure the U of A remains a great place for students, faculty, staff, and visitors."
- Chris Olson, UAPD Chief of Police
Goal 3
Use results to make data-informed decisions that will continually improve campus safety.
"Our goal to prevent concerning behaviors from becoming safety issues relies on the effectiveness of reaching each member of our community. Through the insights gleaned from these findings, improvements to outreach and resources are being implemented to better inform and safeguard our community."
- Jessie Semmann, TAMT Director
Goal 4
Collect longitudinal data through regular administration of the survey that will allow the University to identify trends and track progress over time.
"It is essential that we, as a community, collaborate to approach risk strategically. When possible, timely and relevant data should be used to guide our decisions.”
- Miguel Delgado, Chief Risk Officer
Key Findings
The findings from the 2024 survey provide current data about perceptions of safety as well as a baseline for future assessments. Some key findings explored in this report include the following:
Looking Forward
The University Safety Survey was crafted to produce actionable results that would directly influence the direction, priorities, and investments of the university related to improving safety and security. OPS is committed to collecting feedback and basing their initiatives on the priorities of the university community. In several instances, the results of this survey confirm initiatives that are already underway. The data has also identified additional areas of focus and helped prioritize future actions.
Understanding perceptions of safety on campus is essential to understanding the root of concerns and improving available resources. This survey is one of many tools which can be used to hear from the campus community.
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In addition, the university has created a Campus Safety Commission composed of students, faculty, staff, and community members to advise the university’s Chief Safety Officer on matters related to the development, implementation, and evaluation of safety policies and practices.
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All community members are encouraged to raise questions or suggestions with this group.
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In addition, we will be reaching out to those who indicated on the survey that they would be willing to be part of a focus group in order to gain better insight and understanding of these results and meaningful actions we can take moving forward.
The safety survey is intended to be administered on a regular basis. This instrument can be used to show changes in community sentiment over time as well as adapt to gather data around new technologies and innovations.
OPS always welcomes feedback via publicsafety@arizona.edu.
FAQ
Survey results are being used to gain a deeper understanding of the University community’s feeling of physical safety and awareness levels. In particular, data-informed insights are guiding institutional initiatives aimed at improving safety. In addition to sharing a summary report of institution-wide data, the Office of Public Safety may create more detailed reports to better understand specific issues and experiences. All reports will be in the aggregate, using de-identified data.
The survey contained many general safety topics that are applicable to any University of Arizona location. It also contained specific questions related to Main Campus and Health Sciences campus. In future years, the survey may also include more specific questions for additional locations such as Phoenix Bioscience Core. Respondents were welcome to add specific concerns/recommendations in the open-ended response field at the end of the survey.
Yes, responses to the survey will remain confidential. Individual responses are not available to anyone other than the data analyst administering the survey. For analysis purposes, institutional data (e.g., college or division, demographics) will be included but all individually identifiable information has been excluded from the dataset. De-identified data, in the form of aggregate reports, will be shared with the University community, including senior leadership, in order to strengthen campus safety. Results for subgroups of respondents smaller than 10 people are not reported in order to maintain confidentiality.
All personally identifiable information is stored in secure systems and will only be used in ways that adhere to the University’s stringent privacy and security policies. Visit the University’s Privacy website to learn more.
The 2024 University Safety Survey was sent to all University of Arizona students, faculty, staff and designated campus colleagues. To take the survey, participants logged in using NetID.