Director of Institutional Research and Assessment

Job Title:

Director of Institutional Research and Assessment

Department:
Academic Operations

Reports To:

Assistant Vice President of Academic Operations

Job Classification:
Exempt

Location:

Marshalltown, IA

Summary:

The purpose of this position is to lead and support data informed and evidence-based decision making across the District for both credit and noncredit programming. The position serves as a strategic resource to employees and senior leadership for the collection, analysis, interpretation, visualization, and communication of internal and external data that inform planning, policy, resource allocation, workforce alignment, and continuous improvement.

The role fulfills internal and external requests for institutional data including governmental and regulatory reporting requirements such as IPEDS and other state, federal, workforce and accrediting agencies. The position plays a vital role in institutional effectiveness, program review, strategic planning, and assessment by translating complex data into actionable insights for decision makers across academic, workforce, and student support areas.

This position also serves as the District's Accreditation Liaison Officer for the Higher Learning Commission and the Iowa Department of Education ensuring compliance, data integrity and alignment between institutional evidence and accreditation expectations.

Job Responsibilities:

* Compile, maintain, analyze, interpret, and disseminate institutional data on a term, semester, and annual basis for credit and noncredit programs including enrollment, student success, and retention, completion outcomes, workforce participation, equity indicators, and program effectiveness to support data informed decisions.

* Serve as the District's primary contact for federal, state, and external reporting requirements ensuring accuracy, consistency, and alignment of institutional data across submissions, reporting workforce, and noncredit reporting along with other mandated reports.

* Design, administer, analyze, and communicate results of academic assessment, district wide surveys, student engagement, employee engagement surveys, workforce and noncredit participant surveys, and other institutional surveys. Develop longitudinal and trend analyses translated into actionable insights for senior leadership and planning teams.

* Develop analytical queries, dashboards, and reports. Collaborate with the Database Administrator and IT staff to extract, integrate, validate, and analyze data from multiple students, workforce, and financial systems. Provide clear, timely, and decision-focused analyses in response to ad hoc and recurring data requests.

* Serve as district Accreditation Liaison Officer for the Higher Learning Commission and the Iowa Department of Education to support continued accreditation, including monitoring HLC/DE policies and procedures, maintaining a copy of official HLC/DE documents and reports, ensuring completion of annual Institutional Update, providing oversight for the timely submission of substantive change requests, and providing progress reports to the district and administration.

* Partner with the Executive Leadership Team and academic and workforce leaders to support strategic planning, goal setting, performance monitoring, and institutional effectiveness initiatives across credit, noncredit, and workforce education using dashboards, key performance indicators, and longitudinal analyses.

Education and Experience:

Master's degree required with a minimum of four years of progressively responsible experience in institutional research, data analysis, assessment, or a related field within higher education.

Experience with noncredit and workforce data preferred. Experience in community college preferred.

Abilities:

* Knowledge of higher education and workforce, education data, trends, accountability frameworks, and performance metrics, particularly within community colleges.

* Ability to integrate and analyze credit, noncredit, and workforce data to support strategic and operational decision making.

* Strong ability to translate data into clear, actionable insights for non-technical audiences.

* Knowledge of research…