Launched in 1985 at Arizona State University, the Hispanic Research Center's (HRC) efforts to promote Latino and Chicano art and issues have flourished in recent years. In 2004, the HRC hosted the Arizona International Latina/o Arts Festival in collaboration with the Mesa Southwest Museum. The HRC has also founded a mentoring institute for…

Virtually every college today feels the pressure to prepare its graduates for an increasingly international world, one in which an understanding of other cultures, economies, and political systems is critical for success. Traditionally, American higher education has relied on study-abroad programs to supply students with many of those…

During the last two decades, median instructional spending per full-time equivalent (FTE) student at American 4-year colleges and universities has grown at a slower rate than median spending per FTE student in a number of other expenditure categories including academic support, student services and research. Our paper uses institutional level…

This paper describes quality enhancement (QE) focused response to the 2006 National Student Survey (NSS) by a post-1992 Higher Education Institution. Recognising the increasing importance of the NSS to a wide range of stakeholders, the University established a task team to explore, from a QE perspective, why the institution received particular…

Background: Service-learning in the Service-Learning Asian Network (SLAN), is organized as part of the academic structure of member institutions, and includes both international and community (domestic) service-learning. SLAN began with the exchange of students between SLAN institutions and has progressed to multicultural service-learning exchange…

Many studies have been conducted on the internationalization of higher education. Yet little is known about institutional plans for internationalization. This article presents the results of a study conducted with the American Council on Education's Center for International Initiatives on the types, prevalence, development, implementation, and…

This article focuses on understanding successful Latina/o college student retention at 4-year institutions. Deficit models fail to consider how Latina/o students use different forms of capital (i.e., social, cultural, economic, and human) in earning a degree. Using data from the UCLA's Cooperative Institutional Research Program, factors associated…

National Board Certification is a voluntary assessment program designed to improve student learning by recognizing and rewarding highly accomplished teachers and improving overall teaching effectiveness. While state licensing systems set basic requirements to teach in each state, National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) successfully demonstrate…

What is institutional research (IR)? One of the most widely definition of the institutional research is by Joe Saupe, who emphasized institutional research as a set of activities that support institutional planning, policy formation, and decision making. Institutional researchers and IR functions are embedded in the offices of strategic planning,…

There is a growing body of literature about assessment in higher education. Much of it is devoted to advocating the benefits of assessment, describing how assessment initiatives and programs might be organized within an institution, identifying key attributes of successful assessment projects (leadership, resources, faculty engagement), and…

Over the past several decades, student transitions have become a primary focus for many higher education staff and faculty. Not surprisingly, these educators have concerned themselves primarily with the transition into college, because high first-year attrition numbers reflect how challenging this transition is for many new students. Attention has…

Geographic analysis has been adopted by businesses, especially the retail sector, since the early 1990s (Thrall, 2002). Institutional research can receive the same benefits businesses have by adopting geographic analysis and technology. The commonalities between businesses and higher education institutions include the existence of trade areas, the…

The NEAIR (North East Association for Institutional Research) 2012 Conference Proceedings is a compilation of papers presented at the Bethesda, Maryland conference. Papers in this document include: (1) Can a Marketing Campaign Increase Response Rates to Online Course Evaluations? (Kimberly Puhala); (2) Developing Community College Peer…

The campus of Salahadin University--peaceful, bustling, and collegial-- is a rare sight in Iraq, where sectarian violence has brought the higher education system to the verge of collapse. Home to the country's historically repressed four million to five million ethnic Kurds, it is an oasis of stability and tranquility while much of the rest of…

Regional accrediting agencies today require higher education institutions to develop and demonstrate a culture of evidence-based decision-making and improvement as part of its emphasis on effectiveness. However, scant literature or examples exist to guide colleges and universities in developing such a culture. Cultural change is usually prompted…