We are the Swarthmore College Office of Institutional Research. We decided to begin this blog as an attempt to personalize our office and our work, and as a way to share information quickly and informally. Since we are involved with many different projects that touch different areas of the College separately, many people are unaware of our office’s overall mission, our skills and interests as researchers, or the full scope of our work. We hope that by sharing our observations about our work, profession, and the higher education environment, our colleagues will come to know and understand us better, and will call on us when they are in need of institutional research.
We each have different styles of blogging. Robin tends to focus on institutional research, assessment, and higher education in general, while Alex’s focus tends to be more on some of the data analysis tools used in institutional research as well as ways to visualize higher ed data.
We’d love to hear from you! You can always reach us using our office contact info or feel free to participate in the comments.
Robin Huntington Shores
I received a PhD in Social Psychology in … well, it was a LOT of years ago! I wanted to work in an applied field, and my first job was as “Coordinator of Market Research” at the worldwide continuing education arm of a large research university. The position was part of an institutional research office, and I ended up doing a lot more institutional research than market research! After that I continued in IR in a range of settings: a system headquarters, a mid-sized public research university, and since 1999, here at a private liberal arts college. So I’ve covered a lot of ground, learned a few things, and look forward to learning a lot more.
What is most enjoyable about working in Institutional Research is the people. My natural inclination is to hole up in my office and plug away at projects. But the nature of IR work brings me in contact with really wonderful people at all levels and across all areas of the college, as well as with people outside the college – my counterparts at other colleges and universities, people who work at agencies and consortia, and others. I’m fascinated to learn about what other people do, to explore the ways that IR can support their work, and to discover the implications of our research. It’s a fun profession!
Alex McClung
Alex is now the Director of Institutional Research at Drew University. He was a member of Swarthmore’s IR office from 2008 to 2013, and his posts remain a part of our blog. Below is his introduction.
Before joining the office in December 2008, I worked as a graduate research assistant at the New York State Office of Mental Health during my studies as doctoral student in sociology at SUNY Albany. My doctoral dissertation focuses on how cultural taste differs by place (more info). I am originally from that land of limbo up the thruway from NYC known as “the Hudson Valley.” It is this area of NY the world has to thank for such exports as Snooki, Armand Assante, and the Teutuls. When I’m not trumpeting the wonders of the Hudson Valley or making pie charts dot plots, I enjoy cooking, hiking, and reading detective fiction. I also have several on-again, off-again, love-hate relationships with NY sports teams and the teams of Italian calcio.
I hope to use this space to share/learn about some of the tools of data analysis, management, and visualization. While many of my favorite blogs already do this, they don’t do so in a higher ed context.