Institutional Research

from David Torres, Director Institutional Research

Institutional Research provides the District with needed information about RCC students, courses, programs and the region. We help examine the policy, procedures and outcomes of district functions to better inform decision and policy making. IR often provides help to department chairs in the form of data to support program review. In the program review packet, we provide five (5) fall terms’ worth of demographic and outcomes data about students in their discipline. For questions that are more generic (as in, less specific), sometimes data can be provided in less than an hour, but if the question is specific and complicated, then the time frame can be between two weeks and a month.

What information can you get from institutional research?

IR provides information about students, instruction, and staff. We have studied student course taking and subsequent success. We also can examine student course histories to look for trends. We study the effect of remediation and provide information support for prerequisite validation. Department chair scan use our services to understand enrollment patterns and student success in their departments.

When does institutional research provide the summary of enrollment data from the previous year?

Every fall and spring our department makes available to the college “Research Notes” a quick, two-page summary of enrollments at the district and the three campuses, comparing them to previous years’ counts. We also keep historical records of student enrollments for the district and the campuses.