Since the reaffirmation of accreditation for California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) in 2002, both the resources available to Institutional Research and their utilization have increased significantly. Two staff positions were added to the workforce and, in 2006, the office was renamed Institutional Research and Assessment (IR&A) to better reflect its broad-based campus role in providing empirical evidence for a variety of activities.
Indicative of the emphasis placed on the use of data by the university is the direct involvement of IR&A in many primary management and assessment activities such as the Enrollment Planning Committee (including subcommittees for student success and diversity benchmarking), the Resource Planning Process, the Program Assessment and Review Council, and the WASC Steering Committee. The office has also been charged with facilitating several national surveys and college guides, including the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE).
In addition to these activities, the office is also represented on two ad hoc committees, one promoting a dialogue about graduation rates by departments and another identifying and analyzing high failure rate courses. IR&A works closely with analytical user groups on campus to promote the increased use of data for student success. The office has designed and implemented robust web-based data reports that address specific academic department needs, including program review and student learning outcomes assessment.
IR&A also facilitates the student evaluation of faculty, which requires the distribution of over 250,000 surveys each academic year. Additionally the office offers various survey research services that evaluate the quality of services, effectiveness of advising, and preparedness of graduates.
The campus has also fully implemented PeopleSoft financial, human resource, and student administration software as part of the CSU systemwide Common Management System (CMS) project. Through extensive consultation with a broad cross-section of stakeholders, a robust suite of reports has been developed to support undergraduate and graduate admissions, academic advising, athletics, lass management, enrollment tracking, registration, and student record maintenance. The current data gathering and analysis systems also facilitate the data collection and analysis needs identified during the self-study accreditation review process.
