How can access to good institutional and comparative data lead to better decision-making on campus? What are some effective strategies for improving the institutional research capacity at your institution? Are there easy-to-use tools that enable CAOs to have ready access to benchmarking data? These were some of the questions addressed in a workshop during the CAO Institute, “Using Data for Decisions: How Institutional Research Can Help Build Institutional Strength.” The session was led by Mary Ann Coughlin, assistant vice president for academic affairs and professor of research and statistics at Springfield College (MA), and Terrence Russell, executive director of the Association for Institutional
Research (AIR). Case studies were presented by Anne Harrison, vice president for academic affairs at Elms College (MA), and Jill Russell, executive assistant to the president at Springfield.

Using an approach termed “data informed triage,” Harrison described the radical steps taken at Elms College to overcome declining enrollment, poor retention, and dour finances. Institutional data made the troubling trends more clear, and suggested some points of immediate intervention, including new staff, new admissions goals, an integrated first-year experience program, and better-targeted institutional aid to first-year students. Four years later, first-year enrollment at Elms was up 130 percent, the retention rate had risen 22 percentage points, and there was a financial surplus. According to Harrison, some of the factors critical to the turnaround were:

The situation was different at Springfield College. Jill Russell reported that when the current president arrived in 1999, the college already had a well-established institutional research function. However, in order for the college to make the best use of a new long-range plan, as well as prepare for an accreditation review, it needed to use data to inform strategic decisions. New data-based mechanisms included regular program reviews and a task force on outcomes assessment. The president’s cabinet undertook an annual review of the college’s “evolving” strategic plan using benchmarking data and environmental trends, established a time-line for accreditation and program reviews, and identified additional data needs.

Coughlin also presented a variety of online data tools that CAOs can access through the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), including the easy-to-use Executive Peer Tool. It provides campus administrators with direct access to institutional data with comparisons of up to 100 institutions. This resource is available at http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/. Terrence Russell shared with participants the wide variety of research resources available from AIR, including training and support for institutional researchers, as well as resources for outcomes assessment, program evaluation, and comparative research. AIR and CIC collaborate in an annual three-day training event for campus-based teams. The next Data and Decisions Workshop will be held April 20–22, 2006 in Hartford, Connecticut.