Catholic Identity & Mission Assessment

Data and insight to give you the edge

"I know of no other tool as comprehensive and mission-focused as this one.”

— Alicia Cordoba Tait, D.M.A., President, Aquinas College

Learn about the benefits of CIMA!

Interested in Having Your Institution Participate? It’s Easy!

To participate in CIMA, fill out the registration form and then pay your initial, one-time consortium fee. This fee activates your CIMA account and enables you to access any available survey. You will receive access to the “Welcome to CIMA” webpage and information on how to access your Google Drive shared folder, where all CIMA information is exchanged. You can take this initial step at any time throughout the calendar year.

We hope you will consider joining this endeavor to strengthen Catholic identity on your campus. If you have any questions, please contact Rebecca Sawyer. 

Join CIMA

"The CIMA suite comes closer than anything else to providing Catholic institutions with valid insights into the elusive and even ineffable dimensions of mission."

— Mark Gunty, Ph.D., Office of Strategic Planning and Institutional Research and Department of Sociology, University of Notre Dame

CIMA & Your Institution

Our institutions have changed over the years in response to student needs, social trends, and changes in college and university staffing. With these adjustments comes the question of whether and how Catholic identity, as well as the charism of the founding and sponsoring group, are expressed on campus and assimilated by students. In order to address these questions, the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities has developed the Catholic Identity & Mission Assessment (CIMA) project. CIMA helps ACCU member institutions understand how Catholic higher education adds distinct value to the student experience through pointed surveys to four primary student and alumni groups.

The newest version, CIMA 2.0, is shorter and will take students less than 10 minutes to complete, still giving you valuable information on your students and their experience of Catholic identity and mission on your campus. This version was created in response to user feedback and was thoroughly vetted through the CIMA Advisory Board, composed of presidents, mission officers, and institutional researchers.

Learn More About CIMA

Survey Instruments

CIMA consists of four related surveys, each focused on a particular population

FAQs

Read answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about CIMA

Institutional Assessment Principles

CIMA engages with a number of the ways in which institutions express their Catholic identity