Data Standards & Practices Task Force

Under the overall leadership of the President & Senior Staff, a task force led by the Chief Information Officer and the Director of Institutional Research is presently engaged in a project designed to review the way that data is collected and analyzed to produce:

• A set of clear, consistent definitions of terms and practices;
• A relatively small number (~200) of regularly run, reviewed, and updated reports used for deriving official reporting numbers;
• A “flat” institutional dataset that is updated at a number of fixed points throughout the academic year to allow for longitudinal and trend analysis.

Once complete, this project will result in better information to support decision-making, increased consistency in reported numbers, and decreases in the amount of time we spend on reporting.

Project Documents

• Project Overview

Minutes

• Meeting One (3/9/12)
• Meeting Two (3/22/12)
• Meeting Three (3/29/12)
• Meeting Four (4/5/12)

Upcoming Work

• Peer Comparison Groups (the creation of a reference group of similar institutions based on application patterns and institutional characteristics)
• Major Migration Analysis (reporting that examines the pathways students take from enrollment to the declaration of major)
• Integrated Enrollment Forecasting (statistical modelling that predicts enrollment patterns based on student characteristics)