The University’s Office of Institutional Research and Assessment was recently created through a merger of the Office of Institutional Research and the Office of Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment.
Syracuse University’s Office of Institutional Research and Assessment (OIRA) was recently created through a merger of the Office of Institutional Research and the Office of Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment. The streamlined operation, located at 400 Ostrom Avenue, serves all members of the University community. The office is comprised of two departments: Institutional Research, overseen by Assistant Vice President Seth Ovadia, and Institutional Effectiveness, overseen by Senior Assistant Provost Jerry Edmonds.
In this Q&A, Ovadia and Edmonds discuss the new OIRA and how the merger brings together valuable services for the University community.
Ovadia: It allows our teams to work more closely together and makes it easier for everyone on campus to take advantage of the services we provide.
Institutional Research (IR) has deep and valuable expertise in terms of campus data systems. Institutional Effectiveness (IE) has deep and valuable expertise in institutional practices. Bringing them together creates synergies, matching data expertise with operational knowledge of how to generate student and faculty success.
Edmonds: In IE, our primary focus is providing services to schools, colleges and divisions. We have very strong relationships and work from our experience with and understanding of academic operations, learning outcomes and academic priorities.
We are process oriented in how we work with academic departments and administrative units, leveraging data expertise with a service orientation to improve and enhance decision making by leadership, faculty and staff. We aim to produce actionable insights.
Ovadia: Very few. There has always been an alignment between our offices. All the existing commitments, relationships, partnerships and projects that each unit had been participating in will continue as before.
Edmonds: This change gives our campus partners one place to go with their questions and one coordinated place to reach out and get in touch.
Seth Ovadia
Ovadia: We help people access existing data and collect new data to improve the faculty, staff and student experience and improve the University as a whole. OIRA can draw upon a vast library of existing data to answer questions. We can also help when the data does not exist because we have a team of social scientists who are experienced in survey development, administration and analysis.
We are structured in three groups: Institutional Reporting manages most of our official University data reporting, such as surveys for state and federal governments, guidebooks and ranking organizations. Members of the Research team use existing and newly collected data to answer complex questions such as identifying predictors of student success, assessing the impact of programmatic interventions, and identifying opportunities for improving the student experience. The DataInsights group partners with OIRA staff and many other departments across campus on the development and adoption of Tableau dashboards.
Jerry Edmonds
Edmonds: Working with our campus partners, we cultivate and improve the Syracuse University experience through equity-centered practices, advancing the culture of evidence-based decision-making, creating efficiencies and providing operational support for strategic initiatives and accreditation.
We have strong relationships with the schools, colleges and divisions, working closely with deans, associate deans, faculty and staff on various initiatives. We support, advise and manage projects for the provost, associate provost for academic programs, associate provost for faculty affairs and senior vice president for international programs and academic operations. We maintain the University’s relationships with educational consultants Hanover Research and EAB. We also manage the Middle States Commission on Higher Education accreditation process.
Ovadia: There’s a wide range. Right now, we are working with the College of Law to determine their students’ cost of attendance; administering an academic strategic plan benchmarking survey for faculty; and running a program evaluation survey of students in the living and learning communities. We conduct the Sexual and Relationship Violence survey every two years, program evaluation surveys for Syracuse Abroad each semester and the undergraduate and graduate Admitted Student Questionnaires every summer.
The past fall’s Orange Survey offered valuable insights on the academic, social, financial and co-curricular aspects of the student experience. We have also done surveys on bicycle safety on campus and have helped the staff of the Syracuse University Art Museum understand who their clients are. Dashboard projects have included providing data for academic program reviews, reporting census enrollment and providing information about the outcomes for students who transfer from Syracuse.
Edmonds: The IE team is comprised of professionals with expertise in instructional design, project management, student development and higher education. We support a wide range of strategic projects including the faculty portfolio system; the transition of scoring systems from Scantron to Gradescope; and the implementation of the Shared Competencies.
We also lead the Assessment Leadership Institute and professional development; maintain ongoing course feedback; manage the annual program review process and coordinate the One University Assessment Celebration. IE also facilitates school and college requests for market studies for new or existing academic programs.
Institutional Research is housed at 400 Ostrom Avenue and can be reached at 315.443.8700 or through email: ir@syr.edu. Seth Ovadia is at: saovadia@syr.edu.
Institutional Effectiveness, also housed at 400 Ostrom Avenue, can be reached at 315.443.4119 or through email: iea@syr.edu. The website also lists email addresses for specific functional areas. Jerry Edmonds is at: gedmonds@syr.edu.
