Building Capacity in Institutional Research and Decision Support in Higher Education by Karen L. Webber

Author:Karen L. Webber
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

9.6 Models of Organizational Placement for IR

Decision support is a term that often is used in the context of institutional research, distributed across an institution. Bringing together subject matter experts on a variety of strategic issues positions the institution to respond to these external environmental challenges in a proactive, mindful manner. Shared networks of institutional decision support can be created to effectively distribute the responsibility of using analytics to inform decision making, planning and policy formation . This is the basis for the “Statement of Aspirational Practice for Institutional Research” (Swing & Ross 2016). The authors make a case for “leveraging talent across the institution” with the institutional research professionals acting as coaches and mentors. In this case, institutional research refers to a campus-wide competency in which the use and dissemination of data and information are governed and shared across offices and departments. This “hub and spoke” model (Fig. 9.1) places the IR office in the center with campus partners occupying the spokes to support an institution’s constituents such as the executive leadership team, governing board, and other stakeholders. The success of this structure lies in the capacity of the IR staff to work effectively with their colleagues and be available to educate and empower them to share the responsibility for building an institution-wide culture of data-informed decision making . In this model, the IR leadership works alongside the executive leadership team and has a seat at the table to define issues, explain options, and make recommendations based on the information at hand. It should be noted that AIR’s “Statement of Aspirational Practice for Institutional Research” suggested a student-focused paradigm that keyed on success. This aligns well with institutional research’s perceived traditional strength in topics related to students such as admissions, enrollment, co-curricular participation, retention and graduation. However, the model can also apply across the institution. Data related to finance and budget, human resources, research, economic development, and advancement can be leveraged to create a robust decision support infrastructure. Although IR should (and does) collaborate with many other key leaders on campus, IR leaders must be leaders for tasks related to data analysis, interpretation of information and recommendations of actions. While actual decisions are made by the executive leadership team, their confidence in those decisions must be rooted in good data and value-added information that comes from IR. The fine balance of collaboration and distribution of data requires IR to be positioned at the center, and in doing so, can retain value and confidence from senior officials.

Fig. 9.1Aspirational Model for Institutional Research (Source: Association for Institutional Research)

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