The MSU Postdoctoral Association (MSU-PDA) is the entire community of postdoctoral scholars at MSU. The mission of the MSU-PDA is to provide representation and a collective voice to address the concerns and advocate for the needs of MSU postdocs, and to promote interactions between MSU postdocs on an academic, social, and cultural basis. The MSU-PDA is governed by the MSU-PDA Steering Committee which is composed of postdoc volunteers who act as liaisons between postdocs and the administration, organize events for the postdoc community, and disseminate information relevant for postdocs.
 
The MSU Office of Postdoctoral Affairs (MSU-OPA) provides increased support for the work and work lives of the university's postdoctoral scholars, and continued support for the activities of the MSU-PDA . The office has many responsibilities, including enhancement of career development resources available to postdoctoral scholars, as well as improvement of the postdoctoral experience at MSU.
 
The MSU-PDA Steering Committee and the MSU-OPA are asking you to fill out the following survey to gauge your overall engagement and satisfaction with the current MSU-PDA and MSU-OPA communications and programming. This data collected will guide our future efforts to help set the responsibilities/expectations for the MSU-PDA and MSU-OPA, and support advocacy efforts and policy changes pertaining to the postdoctoral community at MSU. Lastly, we are also interested in getting information about local postdoc representation across MSU.
 
Your participation will require approximately 5-10 minutes. There are no known risks or discomforts associated with this survey and taking part in this survey is completely voluntary. If you choose to complete the survey you can stop at any time without adversely affecting your relationship with anyone at Michigan State University. Your responses will be kept strictly confidential, and digital data will be stored in secure computer files. Further, any report of this research that is made available to the public will not include your name or any other individual information by which you could be identified. 
 
If you have questions or want a copy or summary of this study’s results, you can contact the researchers at pda@grd.msu.edu. Your opinions are very important to us, and we thank you for sharing them.