Institutional Research and Decision Support

Our mission

Empower decision makers, enhance institutional effectiveness, and maintain compliance through accurate and actionable data analysis

What we do

Institutional Research and Decision Support consists of three domains: Institutional Research, Business Intelligence and Data Analytics.

• Institutional Research is responsible for compliance reporting, institutional surveys, external surveys, and ranking information. Institutional research supports analysis in these areas as well as meet data requests across campus.
• Business Intelligence is responsible for disseminating accurate and interactive data dashboards. Business intelligence works closely with the Data Governance committee to develop a single authoritative data warehouse and reporting environment to support official information.
• Data Analytics is responsible for the strategic level predictive analytics to meet Quest 2025 goals and support analysis that spans across many areas of the institution.

How we work

Teamwork: We work closely with academic and administrative data managers and users across the institution. We foster teamwork with other units for knowledge sharing and collaborative project teams. IRDS team members work in an open and highly interactive team environment. We value creative problem solving team scenarios.

Stewardship and Education: We develop the information and disseminate with documentation to support accurate interpretation of the data. We provide research briefings and interactive dashboards to generate discussions for evidence-based strategies.

Identify Information needs: Proactive engagement with stakeholders to anticipate questions through review of the data, policies, state, national and global conversations. This facilities early planning of research questions so that we are prepared to serve needs.

Initiatives

Major Institutional Research and Decision Support initiatives include:

• Data Governance - authoritative Dashboard Portal
• Data Governance - Data Steward Toolkit
• Streamline the processing of data requests received through the VCU online ticketing system. Ensure accuracy and security.
• Strategic Plan Metrics Dashboard under development
• Redesigning the public facing interactive dashboard
• Department level metrics dashboard under development