Teams from 24 CIC colleges and universities traveled to Long Beach, California, last fall to learn to make better use of comparative data in institutional decision-making. The Data and Decisions Workshop, held October 4–6, 2007, assisted college and university leaders in making strategic decisions based on targeted data about their own institutions and up-to-date information about peer institutions.

Cosponsored by the Association for Institutional Research, the three-day workshop focused on such topics as the role of strategic assessment in institutional management, conducting reviews of institutional vulnerabilities and competencies, and identifying types of comparison groups and methods for constructing them. Participants learned how to access and make use of the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) as well CIC’s benchmarking reports, the Key Indicators Tool (KIT) and Financial Indicators Tool (FIT).

Three- and four-person teams represented each college at the workshop, the seventh in the series. In addition to the staff member responsible for institutional research, teams consisted of senior administrators, including chief academic, finance, and student affairs officers, as well as presidents. Teams collaborated on an institutional project and presented their strategies at the workshop. To date teams from more than 150 CIC member institutions have benefited from participating in a Data and Decisions Workshop.

Presenters for the workshop were Mary Ann Coughlin, professor of research and statistics at Springfield College (MA); Edward Delaney, president of Strategic Analyses; Harold V. Hartley III, CIC senior vice president; Richard Howard, director of institutional research and reporting, University of Minnesota; Gerald McLaughlin, director of the office of institutional planning and research at DePaul University (IL); and Josetta McLaughlin, director of the school of management, marketing, and information systems of the Heller College of Business Administration, Roosevelt University (IL).

The Data and Decisions Workshops are supported by a grant to AIR from the National Center for Educational Statistics. The 2008 workshop will be held October 2–4 in Hartford, Connecticut. Application materials will be available at the end of March on the CIC website at www.cic.edu/conferences_events/workshop/2008_data_decisions.asp.