Evaluating grants, assessing community or organizational needs and collecting data for strategic planning or outcome measures
EXPERTISE in quantitative and qualitative techniques, analyzing existing studies and surveys, searching archives, using complex government databases, and synthesizing and distilling information.
EXPERIENCE identifying trends in data, developing performance indicators, locating and synthesizing data for monitoring the external environment, and developing white papers and reports that require bringing together findings from multiple sources. (See selected research examples below.)
I locate sources, conduct interviews, find the essential information in archives and evaluate and analyze data.
Combining writing and research skills, I:
∞ Present complex information clearly & accessibly for general audiences
∞ Can use data to tell a story
Photo by Christina Leimer
Professional Background
I hold a Ph.D. and have 20 years of experience managing strategic planning, institutional research and organizational effectiveness departments in colleges and universities where I focused on strategic goals, performance metrics, learning outcomes, student success and equity.
I’m a former Fellow at Fielding Graduate University’s Institute for Social Innovation.
As a journalist, author and editor, I’ve conducted interviews, scoured archives, reported news, and coordinated book production with multiple authors.
As a researcher in higher education, I’ve been a thought leader in effectiveness research and organizing for evidence-based decision making. I’ve presented keynotes at professional conferences, published groundbreaking research in scholarly journals and edited a tradebook called Imagining the Future of Institutional Research. I’m a co-founder of the Association for Higher Education Effectiveness.
My doctorate is in Human and Organizational Systems. My graduate and undergraduate degrees are in Sociology. In my dissertation, I analyzed the higher education system and made recommendations for more effectively addressing policymakers’ and the public’s expectations of the academy.
In my quest to understand how societies and cultures change, I conducted multiple studies of contemporary American funeral and memorial rites, including the impromptu shrines at the Oklahoma City bombing site.
My seminal research on spontaneous memorials with colleagues Lowery and Haney was included in textbooks and led to other scholars conducting research on the topic.
Photo by Christina Leimer
Research & Presentation Examples
Selected Invited Presentations
- 36th Annual California Association for Institutional Research conference Keynote entitled IR & IE: What’s Needed to Meet Today’s Challenges
- North Carolina Association for Institutional Research conference Keynote entitled Creating the New IR
- North East Association for Institutional Research Closing Plenary entitled Visualizing the Future of Institutional Research
- Association for Institutional Research Plenary Session Panelist, entitled World Class IR Through World Class IR Jobs: What Can We Do To Reduce Job Turnover and Improve Employment Experiences?
- University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus Lecture & Workshop entitled Integrating the Quality Functions and Organizing for Evidence-Based Decision Making, Improvement and Change
- Western Association of Schools and Colleges 2013 Academic Resource Conference Co-Presenter of Workshop entitled Organizing for Evidence-based Decision Making and Improvement
Selected Applied Research
- Environmental Scan for Strategic Planning, College of Marin
- Does Service Learning Help Students Succeed? California State University, Fresno
Purpose: Determine whether a program is meeting its goals.
Service learning ties community service to academic content and critical reflection. It’s an active, experiential form of learning. At this university, more students and more faculty members are participating in service learning and more funding is supporting this approach, but does it really help students? Read the Study
- Stasis & Change: Faculty Satisfaction, Stress & University Priorities, California State University, Fresno
Purpose: Monitor patterns across a timeframe during which organizational and environmental circumstances have changed.
This study uses survey results in two time periods to see how faculty life and institutional priorities have changed over 7 years at one university. Read the Study
Selected Scholarship
- Spontaneous Memorialization: Violent Death and Emerging Mourning Ritual, Omega: Journal of Death and Dying
The impromptu shrines of flowers, cards, crosses, teddy bears and other mementos at murder sites call some of Americans’ most fundamental cultural values into question. Our investigation of this practice was groundbreaking in the field of death and dying. Abstract
- Organizing for Evidence-Based Decision Making and Improvement, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning
This research and practice synthesis describes a new organizational model Christina developed to help colleges and universities use evidence for planning and decision-making and make data use an engaging part of campus culture. Abstract
- Will IR Staff Stick? An Exploration of Institutional Researchers’ Intention to Remain In or Leave Their Jobs, Research in Higher Education
Institutional researchers produce data and research to help managers and faculty make decisions about academic programs, student support services and college and university operations. But employee turnover among IR professionals is high. Why? Abstract