Annual Summer Conference 2016
Hyatt Regency Hotel, Buffalo, NY
June 8 – 10, 2016
Conference Theme - IR 2.0: Emerging Roles of Institutional Research in Higher Education
Welcome to Buffalo, NY, also known as “The Queen City” and “The City of Good Neighbors”, is the
second most populous city in New York State. The conference theme for this year is IR 2.0: Emerging
Roles of Institutional Research in Higher Education. By attending this conference, you will discover the
ever changing contexts and cultures of higher educational institutions and the roles of Institutional
Research to keep up with those changes. Although the function of IR was conceived to be a mechanism
for centralizing and facilitating the compilation, analysis, and reporting of data regarding an individual
college or university, today the institutional research function in higher education provides a complex
and diverse set of activities that are designed to enhance administrative decision-making, respond to
the external demands placed upon institutions, inform institutional policy development, provide
empirical data to underpin institutional planning, and budgeting, and many more.
This conference will showcase how the IR professionals are contributing in a very diverse capacity across
their campuses that are aligned with their institutions’ visions, missions, and academic priorities.
Get to Know Your Officers
Carol Marriott, AIRPO President http://airpo.org/
Craig Abbey, AIRPO 2016 Conference Local Arrangements Co-Chair
Yves Gachette, AIRPO 2016 Conference Local Arrangements Co-Chair
Nasrin Fatima, AIRPO 2016 Conference Program Chair
Julie Walsh, AIRPO Treasurer
AIRPO Officers for the 2015-16 year are:
President – Carol Mariott (Genesee Community College) 2015-16
Vice President-elect – Lucy Walker (SUNY New Paltz)2015-16
Immediate Past-President – Michael Randall (University at Buffalo) 2015-16
Treasurer – Julie Walsh (SUNY New Paltz) 2015-18
Secretary – Rachel Link (University at Buffalo) 2014-17
AIR liaison – Craig Abbey (University at Buffalo) 2013-16
Executive Committee Members:
2015-17 Term:
Comprehensive Colleges – Mary Ann Preston (SUNY Oswego)
Community Colleges, Large – Angel Andreu (Monroe CC)
System Administration – Teresa Foster (SUNY)
2014-16 Term:
Doctoral Institutions – Nasrin Fatima (Binghamton University)
Colleges of Technology – Marian Whitney (Morrisville State College)
Community Colleges, Small to Medium – Mary McLean-Scanlon (Finger Lakes CC)
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8, 2016
9:30 AM – 11:30 AM
Pre-Conference Workshop - Use of Statistical Data and Predictive Modeling.
Presenter: Rand Langston.
Location: ECC City
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Pre-Conference Workshop 1 – Creating Dashboard Using Excel. Presenter:
Craig Abbey.
Location: Hyatt Regency Hotel -Grand F
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Pre-Conference Workshop 2 - SUNY BI Training: Enrollment dashboards:
Customizing dashboards for your campus. Presenter; Stuart Dutfield.
Location: ECC City
Session Contents:



Enrollment queries
Create your own custom query
Retention dashboards and gradation dashboards
a. Cohort tracking
b. Completers by high school
c. Associate or baccalaureate outcomes

SIRIS and Clearinghouse data availability
12:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Conference Registration
6:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Dine Around Town
THURSDAY, JUNE 9, 2016
7:30 AM – 11:30 AM
Conference Registration
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM
Continental Breakfast
Location: Regency Ballroom
8:00 AM – 8:55 AM
AIRPO Executive Committee Meeting
Location: Regency Ballroom – Table will be marked
8:00 AM – 8:55 AM
Breakfast Table Topic - Campus Enrollment Management BI.
Presenter: Virginia Taylor, Genesee Community College.
Location: Regency Ballroom (table will be marked)
As the notion of business intelligence gains momentum, more and more SUNY
campuses are interested in undertaking a Business Intelligence Initiative.
Consider joining this roundtable discussion if you have in interest in learning
more about the reporting options developed as part of the SUNY Business
Intelligence Initiative (SBII) and/or what SUNY campuses have developed in BI at
the campus level. The goal of the session is to discuss experiences resulting
from the use of the internal SUNY-wide data management system and/or locally
built BI reporting systems or dashboards.
9:00 AM – 9:30 AM
Welcome Speech by Provost Charles F. Zukoski, University at Buffalo and
Provost Melanie Perreault, Buffalo State College
Location: Grand A
9:30 AM – 10:40 AM
SUNY System Information/Updates Session
Location: Grand A
10:40 AM – 10:55 AM Coffee Break
Location: Grand B Foyer
10:55 AM – 12:00 PM SUNY Degree Works
Location: Grand A
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Lunch and Business Meeting
Location: Regency Ballroom
CONCURRENT SESSIONS
1:00 PM – 1:55 PM
Scalpel or Chainsaw? An Examination of the Impact of Removing Students
from the SUNY SOS Sample.
Presenter: Joel D. Bloom, University at Albany.
Location: Grand E
The SUNY Student Opinion Survey uses a validation question (“Please select
‘NA’…for this question”) to remove students who might not have provided
sincere responses. Students who got part-way through the survey are also
removed from the sample if they do not reach the validation question, which is
almost half-way through the survey. The resulting data loss is large.
I will examine first whether the problem this loss of data is intended to solve
even exists. Next, I will examine the impact of the deletion by comparing
respondents on both demographics and survey responses by group: (1)
complete, valid surveys; (2) partial, valid surveys; (3) partial excluded surveys;
(4) invalidated surveys with signs of “straight-lining;” (5) invalidated surveys
without signs of “straight-lining.” Finally, I will examine the impact of the data
loss on ability to conduct higher levels of analysis, including college- and
program-level results.
1:00 PM – 1:55 PM
A Campus-Based Implementation of OBIEE.
Presenters: Cherie Chatt, Tom Kinsey, Carol Marriott, Annette Zuber; Genesee
Community College.
Location: Grand G
Genesee Community College began a campus implementation of OBIEE in 2012
known as Genesee Strategic Intelligence (GSI). Today, GSI houses multiple
dashboards providing users with anytime/anywhere access to data needed to
inform decisions pertaining to admissions, enrollment management, course
scheduling, program review, student outcomes, and finance. Participants will learn
about how the campus organized itself for this project implementation. In addition,
a team of GSI report writers will demonstrate the Enrollment (MIS), Admissions, and
Student Outcomes dashboards, explain how each is used to inform decisions, and
provide an overview of the data elements available in each subject area.
2:00 PM – 2:55 PM
Benchmarking and Beyond: Use of the Delaware Cost Study data and New
Directions in Institutional Improvement and Effectiveness Research.
Presenter: Tom Eleuterio; University at Delaware.
Location: Grand C
Benchmarking using the Delaware Cost Study data has permitted appropriate
productivity and cost comparisons at the discipline level for nearly two decades.
The Higher Education Consortia which provides data to the cost study has
collaborated in three new research projects that focus on establishing workload
expectations and projecting the number of faculty needed to respond to
changing demands for programs. The use of longitudinal data from many years
of the cost study permits a broader understanding of the dynamics in these
important areas. In addition, public pressure regarding the cost of employing
university faculty has renewed a need for a more thorough understanding of
how faculty are spending their time both inside and outside of the classroom.
The Faculty Activity Trifecta (FACT) study will allow colleges and universities to
appropriately analyze the discipline-level faculty activity in the areas of
instruction, scholarship, and service. The presentation will report the status of
these research projects and ask for feedback from AIRPO members.
2:00 PM – 2:55 PM
From Access to Success: Defining Success for Community College Students.
Presenter: Agatha Awuah; Onondaga Community College.
Location: Grand F
Is success a process or an outcome? Some view success as a progress toward a
goal– as long as the students are enrolled and not failing. Others view success as
outcome-based and create outcome measures and indicators as achievement
points by which to signal success. Accrediting agencies now require all
institutions to identify and measure the achievement of learning outcomes as
the primary indicators of an institution’s success. The session will investigate the
intermediate milestone each community college school measure toward
student success
3:00 PM – 3:30 PM
COFFEE BREAK
Location: Grand B Foyer
3:30 PM – 4:25 PM
BI Making It Work For Us.
Presenters: Eric Blau, Claire Goverts, Stewart Dutfield; SUNY Oneonta, SUNY
Brockport, SUNY IR.
Location: Grand E
IR offices are being tasked with more and varying data requests. BI is a great
tool to assist IR staff meet these demands. We hope to show the wide ranges of
information BI is able to fulfill while highlighting its functionality. We intend to
explore BI’s functionality in multiple ways. A demonstration of analysis using
subject area stars will be given. We hope that this will demystify the process,
show the ease of functionality, and display the detailed levels of analysis that BI
is capable of producing. Expanding on that demonstration we will display a user
created dashboard for the Common Data Set and explain how this can
streamline reporting from year to year. Finally we will would like to start an
open dialogue with BI users about desired dimensions, new SUNY wide
dashboards that would help productivity, and the creation of workgroups to
focus on the creation of topic specific dashboards for accreditation information,
surveys, and other recurring reports. To address BI concerns, needs and
questions we would like to submit a survey to AIRPO members to help focus the
discussion portion of the presentation.
3:30 PM – 4:25 PM
Utilizing Data to Improve Student Success and Retention: An Exploration of
UAlbany's Predictive Analytics Initiative.
Presenter: Steven Doellefeld, Susan Herrmann, Jayme Wood; University at
Albany.
Location: Grand G
Like most institutions of higher education, the University at Albany
is continually seeking ways to improve both the academic and social
experiences of our undergraduate population. These efforts are in part derived
from the notion that a student who is integrated into the campus community is
more likely to be successful, and a successful student is more likely to persist to
graduation. In 2015, we took a bold step forward, combining cutting edge data
analytics and building student success teams across campus to initiate "The
UAlbany Advantage” which will empower students to reach new levels of
success.
This session will explore the cultural, technological, and organizational
changes necessary for the successful implementation of the UAlbany
Advantage, focusing on synthesizing high touch engagement teams, campuswide objectives and data informed decision making. We'll detail our successes
and challenges, the project structure, engagement team model, and the
predictive analytics comprising the initiative.
3:30 PM – 4:25 PM
Vendor Presentation: SUNY Excels in Performance Management.
Presenter: John Miller; Nuventive.
Location: Grand C
In this session, we will discuss how creating dashboards of key performance
indicators in Nuventive’s Performance Management platform helps move
institutional initiatives from the strategic plan forward and simplifies your
business day. It also supports operational plans at the department or program
level, giving people information from a variety of different sources in the
context of their plans allowing them to take the actions needed to drive
improvement at any level in the institution. Performance Management was
design to give end users direct access (I call it self-service) to their relevant
information and not interrupt the IR departments with daily request for data
and reports. Come to this session to learn how Performance Management can
get the right information to the right people at the right time and allow
Institutional researchers to be more productive with what you need to
accomplish.
4:30 PM – 5:25 PM
Practical Campus Business Intelligence.
Presenter: Mark Molnar, Michele Sedor, Jon Havey, and Laura Szefel; University
at Buffalo.
Location: Grand F
Once the big thinkers have blessed the 50,000 foot concept views, the checks
have been cut, and the software has been installed, someone has to actually
sweat the messy details of making campus Business Intelligence (BI) a reality. At
the University at Buffalo (UB), the Office of Institutional Analysis (OIA) is often
called upon to step into the breach to get the job done. This presentation will
focus on identifying how UB OIA leverages both its position within the campus
processing infrastructure as well as its relationships with personnel down in the
trenches to help create workable BI solutions. Case studies involving
implementation of a data quality initiative to enhance the accuracy of UB’s
enrollment information, the creation of a Tableau-based FactBook dashboard
based on these data, and our efforts to “hack” UB’s PeopleSoft Campus
Solutions system to identify on-line majors will be presented to inform the
discussion.
4:30 PM – 5:25 PM
Institutional Research and Employment Outcomes.
Presenter: Lisa Montiel and Santiago Guerrero; SUNY System Administration.
Location: Grand E
As the pressure increases on higher education institutions to ensure that their
graduates are employable, we at SUNY System Administration’s Office of
Institutional Research and Data Analytics are taking important steps toward
integrating employment related data to the analyses we perform. By the
summer of 2016, SUNY System Administration plans to have a signed
Memorandum of Understanding with DOL to obtain earnings data of SUNY
graduates from 2002 onward. In addition, SUNY System Administration is
advocating for New York to join a multi-state wage record exchange to report
on the labor force participation of our graduates working outside of the state.
As we advance on these data sharing initiatives, we want to engage campuses in
a conversation about the possibilities of the wages data. In this session, we will
discuss with campuses the intricacies of the data sharing agreement, explore
the limitations of the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages data, and
collectively develop a wish list of reports and analyses campuses would like to
generate with the wage data. The conversations from this session will help us
design the reporting capabilities that we envision developing for campuses.
4:30 PM – 5:25 PM
Vendor Presentation: A New Approach to Enrollment Projections with IBM
SPSS Modeler.
Presenters: Nicole Alioto, Ph.D., IBM SPSS Predictive Analytics Education
Specialist; Mary McLean, Director of Institutional Effectiveness, and
Michael Dunn, Coordinator of Data and Administrative Assessment, Finger Lakes
Community College.
Location: Grand G
Student information systems, survey data, course evaluations, social media,
and more – data are being generated and stored in many different places in
many different formats. How can institutional researchers be efficient and
effective in the analysis of these data and sharing of actionable insights?
Using IBM SPSS Modeler, Finger Lakes Community College (FLCC) developed an
enrollment prediction model using temporal causal modeling that accurately
predicts the future year’s FTE within 1 percentage point. At a time when
declining enrollment is a concern for all institutions of higher education, this
insight has empowered the budgeting office to create an accurate institutional
budget for the coming year. In addition, the model has aided new student
registration staff in planning for new student events and planning for fall
courses. IBM SPSS Modeler enabled FLCC to create a sophisticated model more
powerful and accurate than the typical ARIMA.
FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 2016
7:30 AM – 9:30 AM
Conference Registration
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM
Continental Breakfast
Location: Regency Ballroom
8:00 AM – 8:55 AM
AIRPO Executive Committee Meeting
Location: Regency Ballroom
Breakfast Table Topic – Campus Collaboration with Qualtrics – sharing real
time response data with changing technology.
Presenter: Claire Goverts, SUNY Brockport.
Location: Regency Ballroom
Wish you had a more efficient way to share survey response rate data with
others on campus? And in real time? With decreasing survey response rates
there is a need to collaborate more and engage colleagues on campus in survey
promotion. Being able to easily share real time response rates can help. This
table topic will show how IR created survey pool to response dashboards in
Qualtrics Beta reporting. Due to changes in Qualtrics no longer supporting the
setup, IR’s exploration of other data displays and tools will be included. Both
Qualtrics updated reporting along with Oracle BI are included as options.
Discussion will focus on what information is needed by survey stakeholders and
how we can look at sharing it efficiently.
9:00 AM – 9:55 AM
Key Note Speaker – Bruce Johnstone, Distinguished Service Professor of Higher
and Comparative Education Emeritus, University at Buffalo.
Location: Grand A
CONCURRENT SESSIONS
10:00 AM – 10:55 AM SICAS-IR-FAUG Updates.
Presenters: Erin Campbell/SUNY Plattsburgh; Deirdre Dibble/SICAS Center.
Location: Grand E
10:00 AM – 10:55 AM SUNY Institutional Research and Planning Office Survey Development.
Presenter: Carol E. Runge; Cayuga Community College.
Location: Grand G
Are you seeking comparative data for your unit review and/or to demonstrate
institutional effectiveness to your organization? Would you like to help develop
a resource that would assist you with demonstrating your office’s value and
simultaneously help others on your campus understand workload issues?
Please join this concurrent session that would enable you and your colleagues
to critique, edit, and modify a draft survey designed to capture information
about the following topics:

Organizational Structure

Resources

Workload Allocation

Decennial Trends related to Change

Future Outlook
The final survey that would be distributed among all 64 SUNY IRP offices.
Participants will have to the opportunity to work in small groups to also
customize the survey for each of the following campus types: 1) Community
Colleges, 2) Comprehensive, 3) Technology, and 4) Doctoral Degree-granting
colleges and universities. Join us for a great discussion!
11:00 AM – 11:55 AM CSI: SIRIS.
Presenters: Scot Beekman, Meigo Fitzpatrick, and Maureen Cashman; SUNY
Broome, SICAS.
Location: Grand C
11:00 AM – 11:55 AM It’s Not All about the Benjamins: Developing a Cost per Program Model with a
Conscience.
Presenter: Sarah Todd; SUNY Canton.
Location: Grand F
As campuses continue to be required to do more with less, campus leadership is
faced with the task of identifying which areas to continue or increase funding
and which areas to potentially defund. The task of creating a cost per program
model is nothing new to many IR professionals, but it can still be a daunting
undertaking. This workshop will give an overview of how to approach
developing a cost per program model for each academic major on campus
including the current cost per program, optimum program enrollment to
maximize revenues, and the impact of one additional enrollment on program
costs/revenues. As the benefit of an academic program cannot be boiled down
to simply the dollars it brings in (or loses), additional variables were introduced
to the analysis to enhance the discussion. These variables along with a
discussion of additional information that might be important to the model will
close out the presentation.
12:00 PM
Conference Adjourns
12:05 PM
Lunch Box to go…
Location: Regency Ballroom