The Analytics and Institutional Research Team of Mt. Hood
Wise decisions are based off data. Without data we can’t make informed decisions. And if our college were making decisions without good data, it would be in total disarray.
This is where the focus of this article comes in: the department of Analytics and Institutional Research (AIR) at Mt. Hood Community College. While AIR is not an office that students often ever directly interact with, its services and products shape the way Mt. Hood operates.
AIR’s mission is simple. Its staff wants to provide reliable research, while also supporting the decision making that comes with this data. Instead of just finding the correlation between two pieces of data, they want to find the cause, as well.
Simply put, in order to make positive change, one has to find the root of the problem and make decisions. Led by Sergey Shepelov, MHCC associate vice president for AIR, the team’s job is to support that.
However, the execution of this mission is a bit more complicated, as AIR interacts with every department on campus. I also learned from Shepelov that AIR handled the college’s accreditation, a lengthy and detailed process which is coming up for conclusion in late January 2024. The team also works on assessment processes and planning support for instruction across the campus.
Sergey Shepelov – Image sourced from AIR’s website
No matter when or how, all this data collected eventually has a impact on the college and in making it a better place to learn.
Shepelov said one example came from one of the limited-entry programs on campus. The AIR team identified that there was unintentional bias baked into how the program decides who to admit into the program, he said. With the support of AIR, the college moved to a system where it would verify applicants met the requirements and would then put them into a lottery to decide who will receive a spot. As a result and using this new system, Mt. Hood was able to cut down on some of the bias that previously existed with interviewing and selecting program candidates.
While this department doesn’t have a lot of “student-facing” elements besides the occasional survey sent to students through their Saints email, that may be changing soon.
The AIR team is looking to conduct focus group sessions with students, said Shepelov. This would allow AIR staff to gather more-detailed responses to questions than traditional surveys are able to collect. He said that this group would potentially meet every other week and have several things to discuss.
Shepelov said he definitely wants AIR’s mission to expand. In the future he would like his department to be viewed as the center for excellence on campus. He mentioned AIR’s vision statement, which states that the AIR team works to “provide leadership, best practices, quality service and professional consulting related to information needs, process improvement, assessment, planning and accreditation.”
For now, it is safe to say that without the AIR team, the college probably wouldn’t be as efficient as it currently is.
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