Mission. The goal of the Office of Institutional Research and Planning (IRP) is to provide relevant and accurate information about St. Olaf in order to
This particular expression of the IRP mission is only one year old. Indeed, the Office itself is only three years old, being established in 1998 following a reorganization of the former Office of Educational and Institutional Research (OEIR). During its first two years the IRP office focused primarily on the first two of its current four goals. It added the latter two goals in 2000 as part of a change in staff and in preparation for the forthcoming North Central accreditation review.
People. When IRP was created in 1998 it had a professional staff of 1.5--a half-time Director (Jim Tallon, Professor of Sociology) and a full time Research Associate (Joy Johnson). During 1999-00 the Director's time was increased to 2/3. Then in the spring of 2000 the office was restructured and expanded further. Susan Canon was named Associate Director (full-time), Jim Tallon (who moved to New York on special leave) became Senior Consultant (half-time), and Lynn Steen, Professor of Mathematics, became Director (one-fourth time). At this time, the responsibilities of the office were expanded, particularly to include the latter two goals named above--monitoring progress towards institutional goals and communicating with various public constituencies. Susan Canon's prior position as data manager for the Dean of the College ensured close links between IRP and the data needs of the Dean's Office.
Program. During the period 1998-2000 the office focussed on two major kinds of activities--preparing college data for submission to external agencies, and developing and overseeing a system of regular surveys of students, faculty, staff, and alumni. During this period IRP reported jointly to the Treasurer and the Dean of the College; the Office now reports to the Provost.
Place. Although IRP personnel changed in June 2000, staff location did not: Johnson remained in the (temporary) IRP office in Larson Hall; Canon and Steen remained in the space they occupied before their new assignments; and Tallon moved to New York. Thus IRP operated during 2000-01 from four offices in three different buildings and two different states.
IRP activities during the past year can be viewed in two categories--extensions of work performed by the office in prior years, and new undertakings associated with its expanded staff and mission. We begin this report with continuing duties and progress towards new undertakings
External Reports. This work involves gathering college data on students, faculty, finances, and resources, and reporting this data to government agencies such as IPEDS, private organizations such as The College Board, and private consortia such as the Higher Education Data Sharing (HEDS) consortium. The data is gathered from offices all over campus and entered either on paper or computer forms. While continuing these data reports as before, this year the office began to put many of these reports on the Web (primarily through the Common Data Set)--not only for the current year, but also for 3-4 prior years. We also increased efforts to ensure data accuracy and consistency--a never ending battle against entropy.
Internal Surveys. Continuing an effort begun last year, the IRP staff prepared a systematic plan for regular surveys of students, faculty, staff, and alumni that included a mix of external and internal instruments. These include the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) survey from UCLA administered to entering students during Week One, the new National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) from Indiana University administered to a sample of first and fourth year students, the Minnesota Private College's annual survey of prior year's graduates, analysis of a faculty survey undertaken in May 2000, and in April a first-ever survey of biweekly and administrative staff. This latter survey, designed by Jim Tallon, was conducted on-line as a pilot project of what will likely become the standard for all future on-campus surveys.
In addition to these scheduled major surveys, IRP staff worked on a variety of special surveys and studies including:
Reports of major surveys were summarized for St. Olaf faculty and interested staff via e-mail messages called "IRP Notes" and posted on the internal web site for on-campus access. In addition, the Executive Summary of the faculty survey, completed during the summer of 2000, was expanded for presentation to the Board of Regents at two meetings in the fall of 2000.
Internal Reports. Much time of the IRP office is devoted to a variety of internal data reports for various offices and programs on campus, often too numerous and too incidental to record. During 2000-01, these activities included providing data for the Admissions, Alumni, Communications, and Provost's offices as well as for senior student projects in sociology. As a general rule, but with some exceptions, IRP internal reports are undertaken only upon request of a Vice President or other college-wide office (e.g., Human Resources, Government and Foundation Relations).
Professional Development. With two new staff members, much time this year was devoted to transition training. For Susan Canon, this has meant training two new people in the Office of the Dean of the College who were taking over her former duties, as well as learning more about institutional research for herself. Last summer Susan herself attended the HEDS Summer conference and an NCHEMS Management Seminar on MIS for Strategic Planning; in the fall she attended the AIRUM conference and audited Foundations of Social Science Research at St. Olaf. This coming summer she will make a plenary presentation at the HEDS summer conference on St. Olaf's system of tracking and planning faculty assignments. During the past year Joy Johnson attended the HEDS Seminar and Conference (January 10-13, 2001). She also audited Statistics 263, Statistical Problem Solving and is currently engaged in a follow-up statistical project with Bill Carlson.
Data Collaborative. Based on the recommendations of Victor Borden, an external consultant who visited St. Olaf in May 1999, Susan Canon organized a "data collaborative" consisting of various campus data stewards to encourage efficiency, collaboration, and consistency. This group identified as a priority the need for a common web-based system for students to make changes in their own address information that would then be propagated electronically to all offices with a need to know. The information thus received will still have to be entered individually into the half-dozen or so different databases used for student records around the campus, but at least this system will ensure that all offices receive the same information at the same time. This project has taken longer than had at first been anticipated, but the web site is ready for testing this summer and will be implemented in time for the arrival of students this fall.
Special Reports. At the Provost's request, the Director prepared two special reports this spring: one on options for evaluating the College's strategic plan, the other on objective contexts by which to assess faculty salary and compensation. Actions on recommendations for assessing the strategic plan await decisions about the North Central review. The salary project involved significant work in the AAUP archives to gather historical data on peer comparisons, data which, once gathered, can provide a firm basis for monitoring future performance. Much of the data and analysis from this study has been placed on the St. Olaf Web site for faculty review.
Public Information. Much of the Director's time this year has been devoted to establishing a tradition of public reports about information gathered or received by the IRP office. This has involved three different but related activities: preparing summaries, tables, and graphs suitable for broad audiences; sending occasional "IRP Notes" by e-mail to St. Olaf faculty and interested staff; and mounting reports--both original reports and summaries--on the IRP Web site. The work this year barely scratched the surface, but provided valuable experience in grasping the contours of this aspect of IRP's mission.
Mission. We do not expect any major change in the IRP mission for the coming few years, although during the next two years some IRP priorities may be fine-tuned to accommodate needs of the North Central review.
People. Director Steen, associate director Canon, and research associate Johnson will continue in 2001-02 on the same basis as in 2000-01; Senior Consultant Tallon, as a consequence of his retirement from the St. Olaf faculty, will serve next year as an outside consultant working on special projects. Based on a plan recommended in January by an ad hoc faculty task force, the IRP office hopes to share with OAPE a new technical support position that will be required to develop and prepare reports for the North Central Review. (This position, although recommended by the committee, has not yet been approved nor is it clear that it is even on the formal list for possible consideration.)
Program. Much of the IRP work for next year and beyond will be a natural extension of its current agenda. In 2001-02, the office will be especially busy since we will conduct six and possibly seven surveys (as compared with four this year). Five are part of our long-term plan--a HERI survey of sophomores and juniors, a HEDS survey of seniors, the annual MPC survey of recent graduates, a HEDS survey of alumni who graduated five years ago, and a HERI survey of faculty. To this we will add a HEDS survey of alumni who graduated ten years ago (which was postponed from this spring because the instrument was under revision) and possibly a survey of parents (which is planned for the following year but may be advanced to assist with the North Central review).
We expect also that Jim Tallon will undertake, as part of the North Central study, a special longitudinal analysis of student data available from prior IRP surveys and external data sources. There is also some possibility that IRP will also be asked to assist the Wellness Center with an alcohol and drug survey from the Core Center at Southern Illinois University.
This summer, with the assistance of an added student worker, the IRP office will make a major effort to inventory and archive on the IRP web site many reports and data that are now stored in a great variety of computer and paper sources. As part of this effort–a bare-bones data warehouse–the IRP web site will become much more visible as a source of data both for college offices, departments, and programs as well as for external college constituencies.
Place. Until a few months ago, the plan to deal with the scattered IRP offices had been to utilize a small fraction of the space vacated in the Administration Building had the Advancement Division moved out. The arguments for IRP being proximate to several administrative offices--Dean of the College, Registrar, Treasurer, Administrative Computing--are strong, even in this era of electronic connections. So until such time as appropriate space is available in the Administration Building, we expect that IRP will continue in its current dispersed offices.