This month’s publication review was contributed by David Jamieson-Drake, Director of Institutional Research at Duke University (david.jamieson.drake@duke.edu). David reviews Imagining the Future of Institutional Research, New Directions for Institutional Research, Number 143, edited by Christina Leimer and published in fall 2009 by Jossey-Bass under the sponsorship and policies of AIR. Subscription information for the NDIR series is available here: http://www.airweb.org/?page=91.

Imagining the Future of Institutional Research, the newest NDIR volume, is a speculative-sounding title for a very practical, down-to-earth assessment of trends impacting institutional research today, along with recommendations for addressing these trends that institutional researchers will find useful and thought-provoking. Historically IR has sought to optimize its role in executive support: how can IR information best be brought to bear on institutional threats and opportunities for improvement? Evolving and increasingly politically-charged external demands on higher education institutions as well as opportunities in the form of new technologies both impel and invite institutional researchers to broaden their traditional roles very significantly. From publics to privates, from community colleges to doctoral research institutions, the authors map evolving institutional demand for IR-related products to a range of configurations of IR solutions best suited to meet those demands.

IR professional ethics demand that we not only convert data to information, but do all we can to engage such information appropriately for institutional change. In the first chapter, “Institutional Researchers as Change Agents,” Randy Swing takes this traditional formulation a step further, and envisions IR as engaged throughout institutional processes of change as “change agents.” Swing outlines the five key stages of change agency: building awareness; developing focus; increasing knowledge; resolving to change; and various options for institutionalizing change, from incorporation to replacement. At each stage, Swing develops the theme of change agency per se, argues for an expanded role for IR, and examines both analytical and interpersonal/organizational dimensions of change. Swing’s emphasis on the human side of the institutional change equation introduces a leitmotif that will recur in most subsequent essays. The analysis is a thoughtful contribution to discussions of how to engage IR more centrally in the fabric of institutional life and growth. Essentially Swing argues that IR should assume greater direct responsibility for greater engagement.

Beginning with the observation that higher education has been caught up in an “accountability movement” whose scope transcends our industry, Vanessa Morest proposes that postsecondary institutions’ most effective response is to develop a “culture of evidence” that is primarily oriented toward internal institutional constituencies – faculty, staff, et al. (see Chapter Two, “Accountability, Accreditation, and Continuous Improvement: Building a Culture of Evidence”). Within this culture of evidence, institutional research would continue to play its traditional role in data gathering, but would also be more directly involved in operationalizing the information in new ways, and expanding its use of qualitative research; consequently, IR may need to be repositioned in the organizational matrix and enlarged to play its expanded role. Morest effectively details both the structural and conceptual shifts institutional leaders – both from the top down and the bottom up – must address as they seek to infuse a culture of evidence into their institutions’ corporate self-awareness.

In the chapter titled “Institutional Researchers’ Expanding Roles: Policy, Planning, Program Evaluation, Assessment and New Research Methodologies,” Anne Marie Delaney further pursues the notion of institutional transformation, suggesting new roles that take advantage of IR’s distinctive skill set and organizational position to add new value to the institution. She outlines the institutional and departmental conditions necessary for these improvements to occur, and defines particular skill sets necessary to address the range of reconfigured demands on IR. This is a very well organized and concise review of proactive recommendations for IR improvement and their genesis in the higher education political environment.

Particularly recognizing the highly constrained resource environment higher education institutions are now experiencing, how does one define, create and maintain the ideal IR office for a given institutional context? Some of the professional and institutional characteristics necessary for success are universal, while others are contextual. In the chapter titled “Laying the Foundation: Institutional Research Office Organization, Staffing, and Career Development,” Christine Leimer and Dawn Geronimo Terkla outline the professional and institutional attributes most necessary for IR productivity and utility, then discuss how to create and maintain such an office. They pay particularly useful attention to the integration of the two sets of concerns: the intellectual attributes required of IR professionals from entry level to leader, and the institutional structures which must be emplaced both to leverage IR products fully and to help IR professionals continue to develop professionally.

In the chapter “Increasing Demands and Changing Institutional Research Roles: How Technology Can Help,” Bao Huynh, Mary Frances Gibbons, and Fonda Vera offer a remarkably concise yet thorough review of technological advances relevant to institutional research, from data acquisition, through analysis and visualization, to presentation. In addition to the more traditional focus on database management for reporting purposes and statistical analysis, they very imaginatively and even enjoyably extend their view to include technologies that have had wide social impact such as Facebook, podcasting and GIS, showing how these popular technologies can both support traditional IR activities and spawn altogether new ones to address the ever-broadening demands on institutions in which IR is embedded.

The mildly arcane title of Kelli Parmley’s chapter, “Raising the Institutional Research Profile: Assessing the Context and Expanding the Use of Organizational Frames,” belies an entirely practical, accessible, and thought-provoking exploration of the oldest problem in institutional research: getting listened to by institutional decision makers. First, Parmley sheds light on the nature of IR’s challenge in getting a seat at the decision making table by considering three universal dimensions of higher education institutions – shared governance, the influence of higher education’s particular brand of organizational complexity on corporate decision making, and verticality or “layering” of decision making within higher education institutions. Second, she applies Bolman and Deal’s four organizational “frames” or assumptive contexts to the challenges institutional researchers face in getting a chair at the decision making table. Finally, and perhaps most helpfully of all, she offers a series of practical recommendations for IR professionals seeking better engagement with decision makers (that’s all of us) based primarily on her own wide-ranging and mostly successful professional experiences.

As institutional decision making in higher education evolves toward greater transparency, decision making paradigms shift in the direction of collaboration. However, legacy higher education organizational structures tend toward vertical “silos” of decision making responsibility which structurally resist movement toward collaboration. In the concluding chapter, “Taking a Broader View: Using Institutional Research’s Natural Qualities for Transformation,” Christina Leimer observes that the cross-functional span of institutional research’s interests and contacts positions it distinctively well to inform institutional transformation, foster horizontal human connections, and promote interdisciplinary collaboration and institutional learning. However, in order to contribute in this way, IR needs to be appropriately positioned organizationally and also must take steps to activate its organizational leavening potential, which Leimer compellingly outlines.

Individually, the chapters in this NDIR volume offer a range of actionable proposals for significantly enhancing the value of IR in higher education institutions. Taken together, they present an optimistic and expansive vision of institutional research’s potential contributions to higher education in its current historical context.

Of course, these potential reconfigurations of IR roles and responsibilities raise important issues and new challenges, among them:

How can higher education institutions (and IR) meet external demands for institutional accountability with respect to student assessment and productively engage faculty members in this process?

How can IR manage the potential conflict of interest between change agency’s requirement for engagement and ownership on the one hand and dispassionate research in support of executive decision making on the other?

Increasing external demands and IR skill sets both permit and, perhaps more accurately, require this consideration of expanding the traditional mission focus of IR. What are the potential costs or tradeoffs of this mission expansion?

In sum, this volume offers a practical and thought-provoking vision of the future of IR that could serve as a worthy springboard for planning discussions about an IR office’s mission and scope.

Many thanks to David for writing this book review.