In the early 1920s, the Chinese Ministry of Communications reformed the technical colleges under its control. The era constituted a dogmatic vacuum: Confucian elements had largely been abandoned, and Nationalist Party propaganda had not yet been instated. At Shanghai Jiaotong University, the US-educated civil engineer Ling Hongxun (1894-1981)…

This article focuses on the history of the Fort Wayne Folk School in Fort Wayne, Indiana and its founder Terry Doran. From its outset, the Fort Wayne Folk School incited both excitement and harsh criticism from local authorities and the public. Terry's process of remembering and reclaiming a new narrative for the Fort Wayne Folk School provided a…

This article presents a case study of the integration of the scholarship of teaching and learning at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Prishtina in Kosovo. We discuss the challenges and opportunities inherent in bringing together a specific cultural, economic, and political context with the beliefs and practices of SoTL in the health…

While the Two or More Races category has been the de facto mechanism to count multiracial college students since 2010, little research has critically examined how this category has been used in institutional research contexts. Extending previous scholarship on monoracism in higher education, we define "quantitative monoracism" as the…

Information Technology (IT) and Institutional Research (IR) units working together with planning, a focus on collaboration, and a willingness to create partnerships can help accelerate their institution's efforts to improve the data landscape. This chapter includes an overview of the challenges facing these two functional areas, the benefits of a…

Wichita State University (WSU) began the SEM process in 2015 with a steering committee co-chaired by the university registrar and the chief data officer (CDO). Work leading up to and undertaken throughout that process and the implementation of the SEM plan it produced helped to form an extraordinary partnership between these two professionals.…

Institutional research/effectiveness offices are instrumental in advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (D.E.I.) efforts. Ideally they have the knowledge, perspective, and network within an institution to impact practice, process, policy, and planning in order to guide the institution toward a goal of being fully inclusive. With an…

Institutions have many unique cultures and organizational structures that can strengthen or inhibit the planning and implementation of initiatives to enhance data-informed decision-making, build supporting infrastructure, and align the necessary human resources. This chapter discusses different strategies for aligning resources and organizing…

Educational researchers developed an online repository of effective practices contributing to or enhancing the teaching culture at multiple higher education institutions as part of a larger project exploring institutional teaching culture. The repository was designed to be a companion document to the Institutional Teaching Culture Perception…

Colleges have access to more data than ever before, and to unlock its full potential, the right culture, processes, and technologies are needed. Given the pressures now facing campuses, the demand for evidence-based approaches to strategy have intensified. As a result, more attention has been placed on the importance of the relationship between…

This chapter begins with an overview of the history of the Association for Institutional Research's use of ethical guidelines. The Association reworked these principles during 2019, the next chapter discusses the rationale and process for this rework. Next, AIR's new Statement of Ethical Principles is presented and discussed, and finally the…

This article outlines the impacts of COVID-19 on higher education and provides a contextual assessment of how higher education systems can provide support to institutions and stakeholders through a formulated planning process which helps identify, plan, and achieve strategic goals in response to fluctuating priorities.

In this chapter, we walk the reader through a set of scenarios that administrators might face when using different types of data on campus. We also provide guiding questions to help institutional research professionals explore how to think about these scenarios with ethics in mind.

Institutional researchers can be confronted with ethical quandaries. Pressures from their institutions can conflict with professional standards and general ethical requirements. Analyses that appear to be neutral can conceal hidden assumptions that are unintentionally harmful to those individuals whom institutions have a responsibility to protect.…

It may seem like stating the obvious to note that providing excellent instruction is a key priority at colleges and universities in the United States given the underlying educational mission of those institutions. However, over the past few decades, there has been a remarkable trend in these institutions towards baking greater intentionality into…