Planning and Institutional Effectiveness

The planning and institutional effectiveness (PIE) team informs and aligns institutional efforts and priorities. Our work centers around the following key areas: (1) structuring and facilitating institutional and unit-level strategic planning efforts; (2) ensuring integrity and compliance for academic and administrative support unit assessment and effectiveness; (3) designing and monitoring quality enhancement initiatives across the institution; and (4), the administration, coordination, deployment, analysis, and reporting on institutional surveys. We support and partner with stakeholders throughout the VCU community.

Institutional effectiveness covers our survey work as well as our compliance and integrity efforts. Institutional surveys support PIE’s decision-informing efforts. Survey results provide input to institutional planning efforts. They can describe what motivates respondents, what is important to them, or most often, what respondents think of our efforts. Satisfaction, service levels, and opportunities for improvement are common areas where institutional surveys can generate discussion, help us base decisions on objective information, and compare results across time or peers.

Our compliance integrity work supports PIE's alignment efforts and ensures that we are in compliance with SACS-COC Comprehensive Standard 3.3.1 which states, "The institution identifies expected outcomes, assesses the extent to which it achieves these outcomes, and provides evidence of improvement based on analysis of the results..."

Areas of Focus

·   Quality enhancement for planning, assessment, and survey efforts

·   Compliance and integrity assurance and monitoring for assessment

·   Institutional survey administration, deployment, analysis, and reporting

 For assistance accessing information related to our programs, please contact the Office of Institutional Research and Decision Support at irds@vcu.edu.