Marin Clarkberg

Data Solution

Summary of Paper

The office of Institutional Research and Planning uses institutional data to provide an integrated, analytic view of the university as a whole, in the context of its history and in the context of its peers. We are tremendous data consumers, but also data refiners. The data resources we depend on go beyond CIT-maintained data repositories. In this session, I will discuss our efforts to develop these resources as a campus resource.

Sharing Data for Analytic and Planning Purposes

The office of Institutional Research and Planning has used to institutional data to inform institutional planning and strategic decision-making for several decades. Over that period, we have maintained a highly curated collection of data to address strategic and analytic questions. We also collaborate with institutional research offices across two consortia in which Cornell is a member, exchanging data with one another so that we may put Cornell's data in the context of elite higher education more generally.

Both of these consortia have developed a small but highly functional data warehouses, currently housed at MIT. This puts data, ready for analysis, at our fingertips.

Informed by our experience with this MIT-housed resource, we are working towards a small IRP data mart. Our current focus is on providing a clean, rational, easy-to-understand subset of our data for consistent use across the office. In time, this resource could become shared across campus.