Winona State University

Office of Assessment

Title III Coordinator / Activity Director: SUSAN HATFIELD

Susan Hatfield, Ph.D. will serve as the Title Three Coordinator and Activity Director in addition to her role as the Winona State University Assessment Coordinator. As the Title III Coordinator / Activity Director, she will oversee the project, manage the project budget, chair project team meetings, monitor deadlines, and represent the project to both internal and external audiences in addition to submitting the necessary reports and maintain contact with the Department of Education. She will also arrange for consultant visits. She will devote 20% of her time to Coordinating / Directing the Title III grant (partially funded by the grant), and 50% of her time (fully funded by the university) as the Assessment Coordinator to activities in support of the grant.

As the Assessment Coordinator, Dr. Hatfield will provide the Assessment Theory behind the menu of Assessment Applications being developed. She will continue to monitor trends in assessment and in accreditation. She will work closely with departments to identify assessment scenarios that will lead to continuous improvement and meet the demands of accrediting bodies.

Dr. Hatfield has been the chairperson of Winona State University's Long Range Planning and Assessment Committee since 1988 and has an administrative assignment as the Assessment Coordinator. She reports directly to both the Vice President of Academic Affairs (as the Assessment Coordinator) and the President of the University (as the chairperson of the Long Range Planning and Assessment Committee). Dr. Hatfield holds the rank of full professor with tenure in the Communication Studies Department where she has been since 1981. A nationally recognized speaker and consultant on university and department level assessment, Dr. Hatfield has been an invited speaker at over 20 regional, national, and international assessment meetings, meetings and workshops in the last three years. She has visited numerous campuses to learn about assessment and benchmark Best Practices.

Her experience as the Communication Studies Department chairperson (1991-1999), Long Range Planning Chairperson (1988 - present) and Assessment Coordinator (1995-present) have provided her with significant experience managing & wrangling people, budgets and projects. Trained as a social scientist at both the Master's Level and Doctoral Level, Dr. Hatfield's degrees are in Communication Theory with an emphasis is Organizational Communication.

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Head Data Analyst: DENNIS MARTIN

Dennis Martin is the Director of Institutional Research at Winona State University, a position he has held for the past fifteen years. He will serve as the Head Data Analyst for this project. As such, he will oversee the creation of the scenarios and the interpretation and presentation of the data. The Head Data Analyst will direct the two data analysts and two student interns.

As Director of Institutional Research, Mr. Martin works extensively with data collection and analysis of student information both from the university database as well as surveys and other assessment instruments. Mr. Martin will devote 30% of his time to this activity which will be 100% funded by the university.

Mr. Martin has served on the Long Range Planning committee since its inception in 1986 and was instrumental in the development of the university's Quality Assurance and Assessment Plan.

During the past five years he has collected extensive data on university-wide assessment measures as defined in the university assessment plan. All this information is collected, analyzed and shared with faculty, staff and administration in two major publications as well as in various presentations which the Office of Institutional Research compiles and presents. In addition to collecting information from our students, faculty and staff using surveys and exams, Mr. Martin's office is also the main source of student data from the student information system database. This extensive database, developed by the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system office, includes a wide range of information on students, faculty and staff at all levels of activity across the university and among the various schools in the Minnesota public higher education system.

At a system level, Mr. Martin has served on the Minnesota State University System and The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system assessment committees for the past four years. He is currently a member of the system Level of Instructional Allocation study group, the Enrollment study group, and the steering committee for The Association of Institutional Research In The Upper Midwest, where he has been a member since 1979.

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Data Analyst: THERESA WATERBURY

Theresa Waterbury is a Research Analyst (Office of Institutional Research) at Winona State University. She will dedicate 60% of her time to this activity which will be 100% funded by the university. Ms. Waterbury's professional experience involves seven years of extensive work in the area of Quality Improvement. This includes providing leadership for the development and implementation of a Quality Improvement System designed to effectively utilize data for the purpose of improvement. After identifying key success indicators by collaborating with internal and external customers, she designed a database to centralize data collection and to expedite data analysis. This approach led the way for innovative improvement directed toward the key success indicators.

As a research analyst at Winona State, Ms. Waterbury's main areas of focus are assessment, institutional and departmental data compilation, analysis and reporting, development of presentation materials and benchmarking studies. Approximately 40% of her time is spent working on assessment applications which include distribution, data input (scanning technology), analysis and reporting of Expectations Survey, College Outcomes Survey, Institutional Priorities Survey, Student Satisfaction Inventory, and Incoming Student Survey (CIRP). Ms. Waterbury represents Institutional Research on the NCA steering committee. She is currently in the process of participating in extensive SPSS (survey research, advanced anova and regression techniques) and Front Page (web development) training.

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Data Analyst: To be hired.

Job Duties: The data analyst will design surveys, conduct research, and analyze data to support university planning and assessment activities. The data analyst will conduct data analyses using descriptive, inferential and other statistical techniques as required by the research design. The data analyst will assist in designing, managing and auditing university planning and assessment databases. The data analyst will be required to design and create reports for the Director of Institutional Research in response to a variety of information requests from internal and external constituents of the university, and have responsibility for the design, compilation and distribution of the University Fact Book.

Job Qualifications:

- Demonstrated knowledge and performance ability in research design and statistical analysis (to include but not limited to survey research, descriptive statistics, regression and correlation analysis, factor analysis, analysis of variance and various nonparametric techniques.)

- Good written and oral communication skills, to include preparation and presentation of various statistical and research reports including interpretation and analysis of data to academic situation.

- A working knowledge of database design and manipulation.

- The ability to work effectively with a variety of people at different administrative levels and a customer service attitude and approach to internal and external constituents of the university.

This position will be hired in the second year of the grant and funded in the following percentages by the grant: 90-70-50-30%. The position will be reviewed annually, and if viewed as necessary will continue to be funded by the university beyond the grant period.

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Technical Analyst:

Job Duties: The Technical Analyst will be responsible for managing the technical infrastructure including servers, programming, local and wide-area networking, security, and software applications. Specific duties include:

- Direct the support group for NT and RS/6000 server administration.

- Work with consulting partners and in-house programmers to design and maintain databases, applications and rule systems.

- Direct the support for network access. This includes local and remote users accessing networked information.

- Manage all web network development and access.

- Develop and maintain data and application security using firewalls, passwords and other related methods.

- Select and support a standard method for query access and data mining.

Job Qualifications include: Knowledge of and demonstrated experience with technological and application infrastructures. Minimum BA is MIS, CS, or equivalent experience. Microsoft certification helpful. Must have knowledge of UNIX, DBMS, and +programming aptitude.

STUDENT STAFF

As our mission states, Winona State is dedicated to student development though faculty-student contact, active learning, and cooperative learning. This grant will offer opportunities for a number of students to work closely as part of the project team. Three student internships will be funded (in whole or in part) with grant funds, and two additional student positions will be funded by the university.

The positions funded by the grant are for highly talented math/statistics, computer science, or Management / Information Science majors and include:

Research Analyst Intern

Job Duties: Collect and Analyze student assessment and background data. Develop data queries and interfaces between Access and Excel applications. Assist in automating processes for data retrieval and analysis. Create Excel charts and graphs to display and analyze student enrollment and assessment data. Conduct basic statistical analysis on student demographic, enrollment and assessment data. Write simple programs and Access queries to retrieve and display in a variety of formats across multiple data sets.

Job Qualifications: Working knowledge of all Microsoft Office applications: Basic programming skills in Visual Basic, C++ or other 4th generation languages. Intermediate or advanced skills in Microsoft Excel and Access. Basic understanding of survey research design and analysis and a working knowledge of elementary parametric and nonparametric statistics.

These two positions will be hired in the first year of the grant. One position will be funded 100% by the grant, while the second position will be funded at 50% grant, 50% university. The positions will be reviewed annually, and if viewed as necessary to the continuation of the project will continue to be funded by the university beyond the grant period.

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