When first-year optometry student Ian Leberer filled out a satisfaction survey for the Office of Residential Life and Housing, he didn’t know he would also be helping himself.
On Jan. 10, the Rolling Hills resident won $2,500 off his housing bill after being randomly selected from the residential respondents to the Educational Benchmarking Inventory survey.
Gina Mercanti, graduate assistant for Residential Life and Housing, said the survey is a satisfaction survey sent via e-mail to all residential students to find out how the office can improve and how satisfied students are with their resident assistants. She said 45 percent of the residents filled out the survey.
Mercanti said the prize was an incentive for filling out the survey.
But Leberer said he did not do it for the incentive and almost forgot about it until Mercanti called him.
“At first, when they said I won, I thought I had won a $50 gift card or something, not something big,” he said. “But when I found out what it was I thought, ‘This is pretty cool. It’ll help me with my tuition.’”
Leberer said he would use the money he saved on his room and board fees to buy equipment for optometry school.
