Position Title

Executive Director of Institutional Research

Job Description

• Actively engage the Catholic Franciscan mission and identity of Marian University by modeling the Franciscan Sponsorship Values and honoring the legacy of the founding congregation through transformative education, unity in diversity, leadership through service, integrating faith and life, and institutional policies.
• Provides strategic leadership and vision to institutional research functions, including: identifying information needs; serving as steward of data and information; communicating with staff to direct data analysis projects for internal and external stakeholders; providing institutional information and analytic support to the Institutional in order to facilitates strategic planning, enrollment management including fiscal reporting such as discounting and financial planning analysis, and other processes requiring sound strategic analysis.
• Serves as campus leader of data management, data analytics, and business intelligence to support centralized collection, management, analysis and reporting of information to drive-data informed conversations and decisions. Develops a strategic plan for increasing and maintaining the University’s analytic and data capability.
• Directs the University’s institutional research activities, including collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and reporting information on the characteristics of the institution for use in decision-making. Creates and maintains data standards, business rules and definitions, informs data governance and reporting practices.
• Establishes effective data gathering practices; ensures practices are implemented to ensure accurate and timely submissions of data for institutional decision-making and data-informed policy development as well as annual reporting, compliance for reporting, accreditation reporting, external ranking requests, departmental accreditation request, and external agencies.
• Completes analyses, prepares reports, and communicates complex and often technical information to a range of stakeholders that demonstrate value of data-informed decision making within the larger, holistic mission and vision of the University that considers relevant environmental factors.
• Leads the Office of Institutional Research in balancing its day-to-day operations with strategic initiatives; prioritizing internal and external projects and requests, ad-hoc regulatory, and public-relations need of the University; supervising staff and maintaining the IR budget to attain department and divisional goals.
• Provides support to functional areas responsible for institutional and programmatic accreditation, teaching and learning, and student surveys. This includes data to support academic program review, market research, productivity, academic program cost/revenue analysis, annual academic reporting, professional accreditation, and administrative of campus-wide student surveys.
• Provides strategic leadership and vision to institutional research functions, including: identifying information needs; serving as steward of data and information; communicating with staff to direct data analysis projects for internal and external stakeholders; providing institutional and analytic support to the Institution in order to facilitate strategic planning, enrollment management, and other processes requiring sound strategic analysis.

• Knowledge of and a commitment to the mission of Marian University.
• Adheres to Marian University’s policy and procedures.
• Shows courtesy and respect in interactions with fellow employees, student subordinates, and supervisors.
• Communicates regularly with supervisor about department issues.
• Meets department productivity standards.
• Participates in developing department goals, objective, and systems.
• Assists to establish department measurements that align and support the accomplishments of the University’s strategic goals.
• Adheres to the department budget.

Required Qualifications

• Master’s degree minimum. Ph.D. preferred. Demonstrated experience in institutional research, data management, business intelligence, educational research or related field.
• Five years of significant, relevant experience in a higher education management role that includes supervising employees, collaborating with campus stakeholders, and planning/executing data management strategy including data collection, analysis, interpreting and reporting. Experience serving in a highly-visible leadership position at multiple levels of the organization.
• Comprehensive knowledge of project management as it relates to Institutional Research operations as well as industry best practices related to institutional research and data management in higher education.

Preferred Qualifications

• Three or more years’ demonstrated experience writing complex date queries and audience-specific reports using Microsoft SQL, Crystal Reports or other business intelligence software.
• Experience with visual analytics and dashboard creation. 
• Knowledge of higher education management and organization. 
• Familiarity with data warehousing and reporting functionality. Demonstrated ability to prioritize competing projects.