Keeping your eyes on the prize: Maintaining priorities in periods of transition and reduction

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH, no. 147, Fall 2010 © Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/ir.354

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Keeping Your Eyes on the Prize: Maintaining Priorities in Periods of Transition and Reduction

John Hughes

This chapter describes the system office for community college institu-tional research (SOCCIR) for the State of Florida. The Division of Florida Colleges has a long history of providing reports that contain information on issues of interest to both the individual members of the system and the public. Fact books have been produced by the office for over forty years, and articulation reports, indicating the movement of students from com-munity colleges to the state’s universities, for over thirty years. In the beginning, these reports were based on summary information supplied by each college and then compiled by the division office. Now they can be created directly from the student-level data submitted by each college to the SOCCIR.

Florida has one of the oldest and most comprehensive educational data systems in the country. Since the early 1990s, Florida’s colleges have submitted to the SOCCIR information on individual student demograph-ics, courses, grades, placement scores, and awards earned. This informa-tion has enabled the system office to produce analyses and research reports based on unit-record data for more than ten years. The following sections describe the responsibilities and structure of the system office and discuss the challenges and opportunities facing the office as it seeks to use the rich array of information available at the state level.

Florida’s story offers insights on how a transitioning higher education system tackles its mission with a wealth of data.

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66 SYSTEM OFFICES FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGE INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH • DOI: 10.1002/ir

State Background

With just under 19 million residents, Florida is the fourth most populous state in the nation. Although it has a significant population of people at retirement age or older, the state also has many younger residents. About 25 percent of the population is estimated to be below the age of twenty. The state is ethnically diverse as well. About 60 percent of the state is white non-Hispanic, 16 percent is black non-Hispanic, and 20 percent is Hispanic.

Florida’s Administrative Setting

Florida has two higher education systems. The State University System comprises ten universities and one college whose primary missions are to provide baccalaureate and graduate-level degrees. The Florida College System comprises twenty-eight public postsecondary institutions: com-munity colleges, a junior college, and state colleges offering selective four-year degrees. Collectively they are referred to as Florida Colleges. The original master plan for the system provided postsecondary educational opportunities within commuting distance for at least 90 percent of the state’s population. With only twenty-eight colleges, that goal has been met with the addition of campuses and centers throughout the state. The mis-sion of the Florida College System includes providing remedial education, delivering the first two years of postsecondary education with the goal of helping students transfer to a baccalaureate program, and awarding degrees that allow individuals to immediately enter the workforce.

The Florida College System serves over 850,000 students each year. The small number of institutions and large student body means that most of the colleges in the system are large. Florida’s smallest college enrolls about 3,000 students per year, and the largest, Miami Dade College, enrolls well over 100,000 students across its seven campuses. The large average size has not prevented Florida colleges from being productive. Each year, Florida has several institutions that are recognized as top pro-ducers of degrees by Community College Week. The system as a whole has the highest three-year persistence rate and the second highest one-year persistence rate among two-year public institutions in the southern region.

Florida’s colleges serve a broad and diverse population. All of them fulfill the traditional two-year college mission of offering associate degrees and vocational certificates. Many also offer General Educational Develop-ment (GED) programs and all have services for students requiring developmental education. Universities, with the exception of Florida Agri-cultural and Mechanical University, are not permitted to offer remedial education and must partner with their local colleges to provide any needed instruction in this area. Many colleges also have partnerships with

KEEPING YOUR EYES ON THE PRIZE 67


universities and colleges, both private and public, to provide access to higher-level degrees. However, some institutions have begun to offer selected baccalaureate degrees in their own right. Currently fourteen insti-tutions have become state colleges or the equivalent and either offer bac-calaureates or are in the process of developing this type of program.

The State University System and the Florida College System have sep-arate governing boards. The state board of education was established by the Florida legislature to oversee education policy. Initially, the board had responsibility for all education within the state, from kindergarten through graduate school. However, in 2002 the voters approved a consti-tutional amendment to create the board of governors, a statewide govern-ing body for the university system. Thus, the board of governors oversees the eleven state universities and colleges, while the state board of educa-tion oversees the K–12 public schools and the Florida College System.

Both the members of the state board of education and the board of governors are appointed by the governor. The state board selects the com-missioner of education, who heads the Florida Department of Education. The department is responsible for all education from kindergarten through college, and also establishes the educational standards for prekindergarten programs. The Division of Florida Colleges is housed within the Depart-ment of Education.

In addition to the state-level structure, Florida has a local governing body for each college. States fall into two broad categories of state-level governance—centralized and decentralized, with Florida falling into the decentralized category. At one time, a statewide board provided oversight for Florida’s community colleges. Even then, however, the board’s role was primarily that of coordinating rather than governing. Today each col-lege has its own local board of trustees. The trustees, appointed by the governor, set many of the major policies for their local institutions. Among their various responsibilities are selecting their institution’s pre-sident, setting tuition within a range established by the legislature, establishing programs at the associate level or below, and allocating and managing their budgets. In short, although the state board of education sets broad policy statewide, local colleges and their boards have significant discretion in their day-to-day operations.

Structure of Florida’s SOCCIR

The system office for community college institutional research in Florida is housed with the Division of Florida Colleges (DFC), formerly the Divi-sion of Community Colleges, in the Florida Department of Education. With twenty-four staff members, the DFC is the smallest division within the department. This reflects significant recent reductions in staff due to budget cuts. The division nevertheless remains responsible for providing state-level administrative support, oversight, and policy guidance for the



state and community colleges. It has three primary offices: Public Affairs and Administration, Office of Financial Policy, and Office of Student and Academic Success (OSAS).

The institutional research (IR) unit with the DFC, the Office of Eval-uation, is housed within the OSAS, the largest of the division’s three offices. This placement reflects a conscious choice by the division’s leader-ship. OSAS is responsible for instructional and student support services. Placing IR in this unit helps focus the unit on research to support student success. The director of the IR unit is the associate vice chancellor for evaluation and reports to the executive vice chancellor. The unit has two additional staff positions.

The SOCCIR in Florida is primarily funded through the division’s budget, which in turn is funded by the department’s budget. The division does have some grant funds, but the overwhelming majority of funding ultimately comes from state general revenues. This means that the budgets for the DFC and the IR unit depend on state revenues, which have declined significantly since 2008.

The most direct consequence of the budget cuts for the IR unit was the reduction of one position, reducing the total IR staff to two. However, the division will be able to restore the position through grant funding. Although a three-person unit is small relative to other state offices and many local institutions, the size must be seen in the context of a division that has only twenty-four total staff to allocate to all responsibilities. With so few total staff, allocating three people to research and evaluation repre-sents a considerable outlay of the division’s scarce resources. This reflects the high value the chancellor and executive vice chancellor place on the unit’s activities.

The SOCCIR in Florida has good human and technical resources. Two of the current staff members have doctoral degrees and experience conducting program evaluations and research. Each staff member is expe-rienced with at least one brand of analytical software such as SAS and SPSS. SAS Enterprise Guide is the primary analytical tool used in the office, although the division also has access to geographic information sys-tem software and technical support from other divisions. For example, the department has a unit that can develop custom, in-house applications and databases.

One unique feature of Florida’s current structure is that some of the functions that were formerly housed within the division are now shared with other divisions within the Department of Education. For example, the Office of Financial Policy has four staff because several financial and budget analysts report to the Division of Finance and Operations. Simi-larly, management of the data system takes place within the Division of Accountability, Research, and Measurement (ARM).

Housing the college data collection system in ARM means that the SOCCIR does not have a direct link to the office that collects and



processes the system’s data. This is the result of both the history of the office and a recent department restructuring. When the IR office began, its duties were viewed as more than just data analysis and thus the positions were never included in management of information systems (MIS) section of the division. That office, Community College and Technical Center MIS (CCTCMIS), was expected to focus on supporting the data collection and reporting for Florida Colleges and the state’s technical centers, which may be located at a community college or within a K–12 school district. Even-tually the CCTCMIS office was moved to ARM, which also houses the K–12 data system and the education data warehouse. Having the CCTC-MIS in another division has both advantages and disadvantages.

Housing the community college data system within ARM provides CCTCMIS with the expanded data and technical resources of the Depart-ment. As noted above, ARM includes the K–12 data system as well as the education data warehouse. This means that the community college data are located in the same division as most of the other major educational data collected by the department. This facilitates cross-sector data collec-tion and research. For example, the CCTCMIS can work directly with the education data warehouse to develop cross-sector reports such as the high school feedback report that tracks student performance in college for the graduates of each high school. Similarly, the CCTCMIS provides data for the Florida Education and Training Placement Information Program, which tracks educational and employment outcomes for all Florida K–12 and postsecondary graduates. In addition, this organizational structure provides CCTCMIS access to some of the tools and resources available to the other data systems. For example, ARM recently received a major fed-eral grant for developing longitudinal tracking systems, and CCTCMIS has access to some of the grant funds.

However, having CCTCMIS in a separate division from the DFC and the SOCCIR has disadvantages. The most obvious is that the CCTCMIS has its own separate mission and function, and supporting the IR unit is just one of them. The CCTCMIS does give high priority to IR requests, and there is a strong collaborative partnership. But it is sometimes unclear how responsibilities and workload should be divided. In particular, both offices receive data requests from the commissioner’s office, the legisla-ture, and the media. Because CCTCMIS produces a wide variety of stan-dard reports, they are able to respond to many of the requests. Others, however, require specialized analyses. In those cases, it is often not clear which office should be responsible for fulfilling the request. This is dis-cussed in more detail below.

In addition, having the SOCCIR and CCTCMIS in separate divisions means that the IR unit does not have access to identifiable data on stu-dents under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. CCTCMIS has helped overcome most of these limitations by providing the IR unit with access to deidentified unit record data and its analytical tools.



CCTCMIS conducts its work using SAS on both the mainframe and a local server. The SOCCIR has access to a restricted space on the server that con-tains exact copies of the files collected by CCTCMIS from the colleges but with the identifying information stripped out and replaced by an anony-mous identification field. This enables the IR office to conduct original analyses without having to tie up staff time for CCTCMIS.

Functions and Activities of Florida’s SOCCIR

The SOCCIR unit is small but has a broad range of responsibilities. The primary responsibilities center around program evaluation and research using institutional and statewide information that is not available at the local level since the colleges do not have access to each other’s data. Spe-cifically, the unit is responsible for:

• Responding to internal and external data requests• Conducting research related to institutional and system performance• Providing technical support to staff with the department and division• Coordinating Florida’s Achieving the Dream and Developmental Educa-

tion grants• Collaborating with external researchers

Broadly defined, much of the SOCCIR’s work involves responding to some form of data or information request. Obviously the evaluation unit’s primary mission is to serve as a general-purpose data resource to the DFC. The chancellor and other offices within the division often need informa-tion to help inform policy decisions and guidance. Outside the division, requests for information come from a wide variety of sources. The com-missioner’s office, other divisions within the department, the media, the legislature, and the general public also regularly submit requests for information.

Requests range dramatically in complexity and purpose. Because Florida has a strong open records law, almost all information collected by the department is available through public records requests, and the law requires completing the requests in a reasonable period of time. The media and the general public often seek information such as the number of stu-dents enrolled in a given program, budget allocations and expenditures, and data trends over time. When in session, the legislature also makes reg-ular requests for data and information.

The majority of work is in response to requests from internal division staff who need information to help with day-to-day operations, policy decisions, and guidance for the colleges. Some of these requests are for simple counts of students that make their way into fact sheets, PowerPoint presentations, memos, and talking points. Other requests require more complex programming or analyses. For example, the division authorized a



one-year pilot program to use the K–12 statewide assessment, the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, to determine whether that instrument could assess college readiness. This was intended to potentially minimize the number of standardized assessments students must take, as well as to maximize cost efficiencies. The key question was whether students deter-mined ready for college using the comprehensive assessment test would pass the required college English and math courses. At the end of the year, an analysis of student success in English and math guided the decision to extend, expand, or repeal the pilot program.

Most often the information required to complete a request is available in the standard data collected by CCTCMIS. Occasionally, however, the information must be collected directly from the colleges. This can be a sig-nificant challenge because the type of information needed varies greatly. Some requests may involve administrative data held at the local institution and thus would go to the local IR office. Other questions may focus on local policies and procedures and require academic or student support personnel to reply. Each college has a designated reports coordinator who serves as a liaison with the division to facilitate completing these requests.

The DFC relies on the evaluation unit to respond to data requests and coordinate with the MIS office. Some requests are completed by the MIS office and some by the evaluation unit. Which unit responds depends on the nature of the request. CCTCMIS generally handles requests associated with predefined and standardized reports. The evaluation unit typically responds when a request requires analysis or interpretation of the data or is not something to be standardized. In addition, the evaluation team coordinates many of the reports given to the legislature and department leadership to ensure consistent and accurate data. These include both per-formance and accountability reports, as well as presentations and bill analyses.

The evaluation unit’s second major priority is producing research reports relevant to the Florida College System. These reports have a vari-ety of formats and lengths, depending on their topic:

• Program reviews are in-depth analyses of state programs or policies. Their purpose is to provide detailed information about the effectiveness of a given program and its associated outcomes. These typically take several months to complete and may include literature reviews and more complex analyses. In 2008, the unit completed program reviews of study-abroad programs, newly authorized baccalaureate programs, and educator preparation institutes.

• Zooms are research reports discussing broader issues relevant to Flori-da’s colleges. These are not evaluations of specific programs but instead focus on specific topics. In 2008, the unit completed reports on out-comes for high school students taking acceleration mechanisms and the success of students moving through the academic pipeline. Most



recently, a Zoom was published tracking the outcomes for dual-enrolled students as they transition to state universities. One of the key ques-tions in this report was whether the students from some colleges tended to transfer to a university and then struggle to be successful. Table 6.1 provides one part of the analyses that were done for this report. The table shows the distribution of A, B, and C grades for courses taken by students while dually enrolled and for those same students after trans-ferring to a university.

• FYI reports are short data briefs that provide comparative information for the colleges. In 2008, the unit completed an FYI regarding the age distribution of students in developmental education. Most recently the unit published two reports showing statewide results for each lower- and upper-division accountability measure. Figure 6.1 presents one such measure, the percentage of associate in arts transfer students with a 2.5 grade point average in the university system. While this figure provides statewide results, these reports typically also provide data on all twenty-eight colleges so that the institutions can learn more about each other.

The unit distributes all of its reports directly to the colleges before it posts them on the office’s Web site for various groups to use.

Third, the evaluation unit serves as a technical resource for the divi-sion. This support takes several forms. Among the most common are developing surveys, consulting on performance and accountability mea-sures, and assisting with data interpretation. For example, the Department of Education must identify and submit accountability measures for each of its major activities. To meet this requirement, the division has developed a series of measures that are reviewed each year. One of the expectations

Figure 6.1. Percentage of Associate of Arts Transfer Students with a 2.5 GPA and Above

Source: Division of Florida Colleges (2010b).

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when the measures are reviewed is that the department will evaluate their validity and reliability. The IR office plays a key role in identifying the key accountability measures, assessing their quality, and helping collect the results.

Since 2004, the evaluation unit has been responsible for managing Florida’s Achieving the Dream, a grant from the Lumina Foundation. The grant’s management was originally housed in the evaluation unit because the primary work has focused on data collection and reporting. As part of the grant, Florida participates on the cross-state data team, which works to establish common outcome measures for student success and provide comparative data for these measures. Florida’s comprehensive data system has enabled it to be one of the first states to produce the selected mea-sures. The most demanding activity, however, has been hosting an annual statewide conference related to strategies developed by individual institu-tions that improve student success. The conference has been a significant success, allowing college faculty and staff to interact with peers and col-leagues from around the state. Most recently, the division has been awarded a second grant, this one focused specifically on developmental education. The SOCCIR will be responsible for managing this grant in conjunction with Achieving the Dream.

The unit’s final major responsibility is collaborating with external researchers. The wealth of data available from the education data ware-house and CCTCMIS attracts many different types of researchers, ranging from college faculty to researchers at think tanks. This raises several chal-lenges. The data warehouse must respond to the various research requests and, given staffing limitations, only a few requests can be granted each year. To manage these requests, it works with each of the program offices (such as Florida Colleges, Workforce, K–12) to determine which requests offer the most benefit to the department. When this involves data from the Florida College System, the evaluation unit serves as the liaison to the educational data warehouse. As part of this process, evaluation staff may work directly with researchers to help shape the research questions. Once data are made available to researchers, the evaluation unit continues to work with the researchers to ensure that they understand the data and appropriately interpret the results. This is critical since many data fields are collected for a specific purpose that may not meet the researchers’ needs or require additional context to be properly understood. This pro-cess can result in valuable partnerships that allow the division to have access to additional resources and support.

Changes in Florida’s SOCCIR

State governing structures and offices rarely remain stable for long. Over the past few years, the state office for community college institutional research in Florida has experienced several changes. Some directly and



dramatically affect the unit, while others have more indirect conse-quences. The major changes fall into three broad categories:

• Changes in staffing• Restructuring and reorganization• Addition of baccalaureate programs

Changes in personnel have had the most dramatic and direct effect on the IR unit. The IR unit can trace its beginning to the mid-1990s, when the prior director was hired. The chancellor understood the scope and value of the data being collected by the state office and wanted someone to put the information to use. With that general mission, the newly hired director had a relatively open mandate, and the director used it to define the roles and expectations for the system office.

In 2008, however, the director and one staff member retired, and the third staff person transferred to another division within the department. These changes resulted in a significant loss of institutional knowledge, as every member of the unit had to be replaced. The importance of this point cannot be overstated when it comes to the effect on current operations. The knowledge lost when these staff members left starts with their under-standing of the Florida College System and its history. But it also includes their detailed knowledge of many of the activities of the evaluation unit. For example, the division has several standard reports that were originally developed by these staff members. Although there is often sufficient docu-mentation to replicate them, their purpose and use can be unclear. These staff members also had valuable contacts within the department and at the national and institutional levels. Many tasks are shared with CCTCMIS or other divisions in the department. Prior staff members understood these roles and who did what within the division and department.

Pulling the CCTCMIS office out of the DFC and placing it into ARM dramatically affected Florida’s state-level IR unit for community colleges. Originally the division included the community college MIS staff. The staff had the same basic responsibilities in terms of data collection and reporting, but reported to the chancellor. In the 1990s the department began the development of the educational data warehouse. The warehouse was intended to be a one-stop shop for all key education data. Policymak-ers expected it to provide consistent and reliable information about all of the state’s major programs. To support this goal, when the warehouse was under development, the commissioner of education consolidated all of the department’s major data systems (for example, K–12, DFC, and State Uni-versity System) that feed into the warehouse into a single division: ARM. When the community college MIS office was pulled into ARM, it was com-bined with the technical center MIS to form CCTCMIS. The result was a new unit responsible for both technical center and workforce data and community college data.



Such a change has many consequences, some of which have been dis-cussed already. The most obvious is that CCTCMIS must respond to the priorities of ARM and not necessarily the division. Also significant are the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act consequences, already described. But other changes, though smaller, still affect the IR office and how it operates. For example, budgets were separated, and it became more difficult to share resources. Training is an excellent example. The CCTC-MIS has traditionally managed all of the analytical software for the division. It holds the contracts with SAS for both the software and the training. It is now more difficult administratively for it to share training credits with evaluation staff, although it continues to try to do so.

The creation of the educational data warehouse itself is a significant change for Florida and for the IR office. It contains K–12, community col-lege, and state university data dating back to the mid-1990s. The ware-house is also linked to unemployment wage records through a contract with the Agency for Workforce Innovation. All of these data are then linked through a K–20 identifier, which makes it possible to track students across educational sectors and into the workforce. For example, the ware-house provides wages for students who enrolled in a college or university. This is broken out by whether the student graduated and can also be examined at the level of individual programs. Participants in those pro-grams can then be linked back to high school grades and transcripts. And this could be linked all the way back to elementary test scores and even a prekindergarten assessment. These new opportunities for cross-sector col-laboration are only beginning to be fully explored.

The creation of baccalaureate programs and the Florida College Sys-tem also affects the IR unit. In 2001 the Florida legislature authorized St. Petersburg Junior College (now St. Petersburg College) to begin offering select baccalaureate programs. The legislature then gave similar authoriza-tion to other colleges. The allowable programs are limited to applied areas such as teaching, nursing, and management, and each program must receive approval from both the local board of trustees and the state board of education. Since 2001, half of the twenty-eight colleges in the Florida College System have been authorized to offer baccalaureate programs.

Although the number of four-year degrees granted by the Florida Col-lege System remains very small, their existence has changed the state sys-tem and affected the IR unit. The most obvious changes are the names of the colleges and the system. Beginning July 1, 2009, the division was renamed the Division of Florida Colleges, and the system was renamed the Florida College System. Most of the baccalaureate-granting colleges have removed the words community and junior from their names to become “colleges” or “state colleges.”

More important, though less obvious, are the myriad other changes that occur as the system’s institutions become four-year colleges. Colleges with open door admissions policies now must develop admission criteria



for their upper-level programs. This not only requires new local processes but also raises issues at the state level. For example, the State University System collects admissions data from its universities such as on students who apply but are not accepted or students who are accepted but do not enroll. These kinds of data are not necessary for traditional two-year col-leges since they have an open door policy. State colleges, however, must track this information, and at the state level the IR office must be prepared to report it. Similarly, the Florida College System, which has tracked artic-ulation from community colleges to the universities, must now begin to track students trying to enter the upper division at a state college, some of whom may be university students. Thus, the new baccalaureate programs bring with them increased data collection demands.

The increased attention baccalaureates have brought has also increased reporting and tracking requirements. The state has had to develop new accountability measures to track baccalaureate progression. Where traditional graduation rates may not appropriately apply to com-munity colleges, the state colleges must now begin to measure and use such information. The change in status creates challenges for handling federal reporting as well. Community colleges already struggle to fit their data into the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) that was designed more for traditional four-year colleges and universities. But now CCTCMIS and the IR office have to develop ways to provide data for a system that has a mixture of schools.

In short, the move to baccalaureate status has created pressure to increase IR capabilities to parallel those traditionally seen at four-year institutions. This has translated to the state office as well, where there has been an increase in workload for many reasons, not the least of which is that the media and legislature want timely and detailed information about the new baccalaureate programs.

Prospects for Florida’s SOCCIR

The future of any state IR unit depends on its ability to provide products and services that meet the needs of state and local policymakers. Simply put, if the unit cannot provide value to its primary stakeholders, parti-cularly in times of budget shortfalls, it may cease to exist or be severely constrained by resource reductions. With only twenty-four total positions, the division’s leadership must carefully allocate its limited resources. Justifying the existence of the unit and its staffing allocation is a simple reality.

Fortunately in Florida, owing to the good work of the prior director, the state’s IR unit for community colleges is in a strong position. Over the past decade, the unit has developed a solid reputation built on a broad array of reports and publications that promote the Florida College System and provide actionable information. As a result of this and their own



professional experiences, the division’s leadership and the college presi-dents recognize the value of IR in general and the IR unit specifically.

The issue, then, is how the SOCCIR can maintain its past level of suc-cess and build toward a strong future. The major challenge is meeting the existing job expectations during a time of increased demand and limited resources. The most public mission of the unit is to conduct in-depth research on issues of interest to the colleges. Day-to-day, however, many other demands press on the unit. Florida’s public records law grants access to the media and the public, and requires the department and the division to respond to requests in a timely fashion. Legislators will always be a top priority, and responding to their requests is never optional. Nor is provid-ing support for the commissioner or other divisions. Moreover, the legis-lature and department require a variety of accountability reports. Some are tied to legislative requests, some are linked to funding formulas, and oth-ers are simple requirements. But they all take significant time and effort and typically have strict deadlines. Add to this the many other activities described in this chapter, and it is readily apparent that protecting the time needed to conduct more detailed analyses is a constant challenge.

Actionable research is of most value during times of limited budgets. Information about what is working and not working, identification of high-performing institutions and programs, and data about need and demand for services all help refine resource allocations. Thus, one of the biggest challenges facing an IR department is meeting the daily require-ments for information while finding the time to provide the more detailed, nuanced analyses necessary to drive the system forward. If the unit is to meet these challenges and thrive, the answers must lie in the effective and efficient use of its resources.

Meeting the ongoing and regular requests for information requires having ready access to the knowledge already accumulated in the division. Most of the information requested has already been collected, but the divi-sion does not have a librarian or similar function, and it typically relies on its personnel and their independent knowledge. As a result, the answers are stored in notebooks, file folders, computer directories, and book-shelves. For a unit and division that have been active and productive for several years, this creates a significant accumulation of information. Because it is often tasked with retrieving this information, the IR unit must know how to find this information. That can reduce the amount of time needed to fulfill requests and free staff to move on to larger projects.

Establishing effective work flow management can help institutional-ize the unit’s knowledge base. There are opportunities for improvement that are not new, costly, or complex; they simply must become part of the day-to-day processes. For example, compiling all final reports with clear references to the source material and archiving them together can make it possible for future staff to identify the source of any findings and replicate if needed. Creating a library of common requests and the source code



behind them can contribute to consistency and improve response time. Fully documenting source code, though requiring time up front, will pro-vide significant savings later when the code can be reused. In short, the first requirement for the unit going forward is to look internally to see how it can improve its own processes.

Increasing staff capacity through training and professional develop-ment is a second step. While training and professional development budgets are limited, distance learning opportunities, whether with a pro-fessional organization or an institution of higher education, remain. Tak-ing advantage of these can enable the IR unit to upgrade the skill sets of its staff and make them more effective.

The SOCCIR is working with CCTCMIS to leverage technology to manage its workload. SAS is the primary analytical tool that both CCTC-MIS and the IR unit use. The two units have pooled resources to move to the SAS Enterprise Guide platform. This will enable the IR unit to develop Web-based reporting applications so that users can find answers to com-monly asked questions, such as the number of students enrolled. It is also expected to reduce the time required to create programs and automate and document them.

Another solution is to look outside for partners who can provide skills, resources, and time. Coordinating with external researchers is a unit responsibility, but it can be much more than that. Managed properly, these partnerships can be beneficial to everyone. External researchers, particularly academics, often have sophisticated analytical skills that can bring a level of rigor often missing from state agency research. They also have knowledge of the field that can help place the findings in context. Most important, external partners have time to devote to the research and can effectively help augment the IR unit’s staff.

The key to making this work is to identify questions that directly apply to state policymaking and interest external funders and researchers. The latter is much easier than the former since many researchers, particu-larly academics, already know what they want to study. Many college fac-ulty and graduate students want access to the data available in our system. The division can work to identify the research questions that can best shape and improve policy and then seek research partners to help address those questions. This too can be challenging, but it can result in highly effective partnerships.

Conclusion

Florida’s colleges have a long history of reporting college-level informa-tion. That reporting has evolved from summarizing paper reports submit-ted by colleges to the division, to using electronic unit record data to produce those same reports more efficiently. Although limited in size, the state’s SOCCIR has had two significant advantages. First, the IR unit has



had the support of the division’s leadership, who provide the opportunity to conduct research and evaluate programs. Second, the unit has access to one of the most comprehensive educational data systems within the United States. These data have allowed the unit to produce information that has been used by individual colleges to improve their processes and programs, resulting in improved student success.

Going forward, the state community college IR unit must continually work to improve. Staff training and professional development are neces-sary to maintain and improve skills. Improved work flow can increase effi-ciency to better maintain institutional knowledge and meet increasing demands. Technology can be leveraged to improve responsiveness. Exter-nal partnerships, if managed well, can provide additional resources and expertise. Putting all of this together will be necessary to keep the unit functioning successfully during periods of budget fluctuations.

References

Division of Florida Colleges. Zoom 2010-01: Dual Enrollment Outcomes. Florida Depart-ment of Education, 2010a. Retrieved Aug. 31, 2010, from http://www.fldoe.org/cc/OSAS/Evaluations/pdf/Zoom2010-01.pdf.

Division of Florida Colleges. FYI 2010-01: Lower Division Accountability. Florida Department of Education, 2010b. Retrieved Aug. 31, 2010, from http://www.fldoe.org/cc/OSAS/Evaluations/pdf/fyi2010-01.pdf.

JOHN HUGHES is the associate vice chancellor for evaluation at the Division of Florida Colleges.

Keeping your eyes on the prize: Maintaining priorities in periods of transition and reduction

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