The intent of this volume is to illustrate for faculty and administrators the work of institutional researchers and how institutional research can provide support and assistance to help further the higher education enterprise.
My initial charge to the authors was to "write a chapter that will describe how institutional research can help faculty and administrators better understand their institutions and the higher education environment." This collection of chapters dispels the myth that IR professionals are simply "bean counters." The authors expound on a variety of areas in which institutional researchers may offer useful insights: assessment, accreditation, strategic planning, faculty workload analysis, peer group identification, benchmarking, comparative institutional analyses, and understanding student populations from prospective applicants to alumni.
In addition to these topics, there are myriad other areas where institutional researchers have or could lend assistance: program evaluation (both academic and administrative), campus climate intelligence, fundraising analysis, curriculum development, formulation of performance and institutional effectiveness measures, and creation of management information tools (such as balanced scorecards and dashboards).
Throughout the pages of this volume, the authors remind us of the importance of institutional researchers' being included in the institutional dialogue. Bringing them into the discussion early allows the institution to be proactive, with the potential of yielding great benefits to the institution. Trudy Bers laments that the most serious barrier affecting IR' s ability to contribute to assessing student learning outcomes is that institutional researchers are often "absent from the table." Barbara Brittingham, Patricia O'Brien, and Julie Alig discuss the benefits to the institution of including institutional researchers in the accreditation process; they argue that such involvement will raise the visibility of institutional researchers and lead to IR's future involvement in other major campus initiatives. Jennifer Brown notes that there is a need for IR professionals to be fully engaged partners not only on their campus but also beyond their institution if they are to inform the discussions that have an impact on major new data collection efforts.
When institutional researchers are engaged partners, good things generally result. There are numerous examples of institutional researchers working with senior administrators to create management information 97