Office of
Institutional Research and Digital Transformation
The Office of Institutional Research and Digital Transformation maintains the data infrastructure that supports institutional effectiveness, strategic planning and evidence-based decision-making at PAU. Institutional research provides accurate, accessible data to internal and external stakeholders and supports compliance with accreditation and federal reporting requirements. Digital transformation carries a distinct mission: to advance the university’s technology and data capability continuously, rather than in multi-year cycles.
What the office does
Institutional research
Providing accurate, accessible data to internal and external stakeholders, on the schedules and to the definitions each audience requires.
- Direct analytical support to the President and university leadership
- Federal reporting, including IPEDS
- Accreditor reporting and program review data, with the Office of Institutional Effectiveness
- State authorization reporting
- Enrollment, retention and outcomes analysis for planning and decision-making
- Data governance, and the definitions behind every published figure
- Co-ownership of the university data lake, with digital transformation
Digital transformation
Coordinating the university’s technology strategy, and advancing its systems and data capability through continuous, rapid iteration.
- Building and integrating the enrollment, student and business systems
- Ownership and administration of the university’s revenue operations platforms
- Co-ownership of the university data lake, with institutional research, and the pipelines that feed it
- Automating work that people should not be doing by hand
- Using AI as a force multiplier across the university’s technology and data work
- Delivering in short cycles, so improvements reach staff and students while they still matter
What we publish
Two pages carry the university’s public figures, and this office maintains both. Supporting filings and dashboards are linked from them, so that a figure is corrected in one place.
- PagePAU at a Glance Who studies here, what happens to them, and who teaches them, for the current academic year.Read more
- PageOutcomes and Data The figures accreditors require, the filings they come from, and program costs.Read more
Related resources
Maintained elsewhere, and useful alongside PAU at a Glance and Outcomes and Data.
How data are used at PAU
Reporting is where the work begins rather than where it ends. Data collected here is intended to reach the people making decisions, in a form they can act on, while the decision is still open.
The cycle
- Collect. Enrollment, progression and outcome data from the student record; surveys of students, alumni and employees; assessment data through Watermark; federal and comparison-group data from IPEDS.
- Reconcile. Every published figure resolves to a defined source and a stated population, so the same question returns the same answer wherever it is asked.
- Release. To three audiences, described below.
- Act, and measure again. Program review, assessment planning, enrollment strategy and budget all draw on the same figures, and what they change shows up in the next cycle.
Who receives what
Leadership
The office builds and releases the internal dashboards used by the President and university leadership, and provides the analysis supporting planning and budget decisions.
The university
Broad internal reporting for faculty and staff, so that the same figures are available across the university, together with program-level data for review and assessment.
The public
PAU at a Glance and Outcomes and Data, refreshed on the census and filing schedules they depend on, together with the federal and accreditor filings they link to.
Institutional findings also feed program review, annual assessment reporting and the annual State of the University report, and reach the PAU Assessment Committee, on which this office sits.
One place for the university’s data
Digital transformation has brought the university’s operational records together into a single governed store. Systems that were once read one at a time, each with its own definitions, now land in one place on a regular schedule and are described in common terms.
- 20+source systems brought together
- 75M+records held in the shared store
- 250+defined views the reporting is drawn from
- 50years of conferred degrees, unbroken since 1976
What the data covers
- Admissions and applicants
- Enrollment and student records
- Course activity and academic progress
- Degrees and completion
- Retention and persistence
- Clinical training placements
- Continuing education
- Assessment and curriculum
- Alumni outcomes
- Institutional finance
- Peer and sector benchmarking
- Web and outreach activity
The systems behind the university’s core reporting refresh daily. Because a figure is defined once and drawn from the same place each time, the same question asked in two offices returns the same answer, and a number can be traced back to the record it came from.
Institutional research capacity
A small team with institution-wide scope. That reach rests on infrastructure rather than on volume of effort: reporting is built once and rerun, from defined sources, rather than assembled by hand each time it is requested.
Scope
- Federal, accreditor and state authorization reporting
- Leadership dashboards and decision support
- Enrollment, retention, completion and outcome analysis
- Survey administration and analysis
- The university’s public data pages
What makes that possible
- A shared data lake, co-owned with digital transformation, so figures are computed once from defined sources rather than rebuilt per request
- Documented definitions behind every published metric
- Automated pipelines from the student, enrollment and assessment systems
Working with Institutional Effectiveness
Coordination runs through the Office of Institutional Effectiveness and the PAU Assessment Committee, on which this office serves. Institutional research supplies and governs the data; institutional effectiveness leads assessment and accreditation.
The two functions report into a shared cycle rather than parallel ones.
Accreditation and compliance
This office supplies the data behind PAU’s accreditation and compliance reporting, working in partnership with the Office of Institutional Effectiveness: WSCUC requirements, federal reporting, state authorization, the APA disclosures for the doctoral psychology programs, and program review.
Questions about PAU’s accreditation status itself belong with the Office of Institutional Effectiveness, and the recognitions are listed on the Accreditation page.
Our team
Jeff Harr
Senior Director of Institutional Research and Digital Transformation
Leads PAU’s institutional research function and digital systems strategy, reporting to the President. Responsible for data governance, institutional reporting, technology roadmap development, and integration of the university’s enrollment and business systems.
MBA in Sustainable Development and Planning, The Ohio State University; certificate in Organizational Design, Cornell University.
Christopher Olbrych
Institutional Research Administrator
Manages PAU’s institutional data systems and leads federal and state compliance reporting, including IPEDS and WSCUC. Builds the dashboards and analysis that support university planning.
Previously an economist with the IRS, working in data science and research. Master of Education in Higher Education Leadership, Florida Atlantic University.
Contact
Prospective students
Questions about institutional data and outcomes: admissions@paloaltou.edu
Researchers and external requests
Data not available through PAU at a Glance or Outcomes and Data: institutional-research@paloaltou.edu
PAU community
Request forms are on the intranet, or write to institutional-research@paloaltou.edu