By Joseph Curtin, Assistant Commissioner – Institutional Research & Analysis, Utah System of Higher Education
I am pleased to announce that representing RMAIR at this year’s Annual Forum in New Orleans will be RMAIR 2015 – Best Paper winner Renate Otterbach, University of San Francisco “Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Methods to Identify Modifiable Factors for Retaining First-Time Freshmen” as well as the RMAIR 2015 – Best Presentation Mark Leany and Robert Loveridge, Utah Valley University “Course Enrollments – Our Interactive Dashboard, from the Why to the How”. This year’s AIR forum will be held in New Orleans on May 30th to June 3rd. For those of you who will be attending the National Forum please consider applying for a RMAIR Train-the-Trainer grant.
The Train-the-Trainer grant provides $500 to members to attend a workshop at any conference related to institutional research, but emphasizes support for the AIR Forum because of its matching grant program. AIR Forum Support awards will be matched by AIR for a total of $1,000. Presentation of the workshop at the RMAIR Conference is a mandatory condition of the award. Members receiving awards who do not present must repay all awards to RMAIR and, if AIR matching funds were awarded, to AIR. Members should email the Train-the-Trainer application to the RMAIR Secretary (secretary@rmair.org), describing why they should be considered for the Train-the-Trainer program subsidy as well as what benefits that their training would bring to RMAIR.
In addition to the RMAIR presentations, please add to your schedule at the Forum the RMAIR SIG meeting that is usually held on the Wednesday evening. I can’t guarantee a post-meeting dinner like last year, but you should be able to take advantage of the opportunity to connect with your RMAIR colleagues.
Highlights of the 2016 AIR Forum include:
- Compelling keynotes by thought leaders in higher education: Higher Education in the New Normal of the 21st Century – An Era of Evidence-Based Change by David Longanecker, Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education President, and Data-driven Behavioral Nudges: A Low-cost Strategy to Improve Postsecondary Education by Ben Castleman, author and University of Virginia Assistant professor;
- More than 300 concurrent sessions reviewed and presented by your peers;
- The opportunity to network and share ideas with 2,000 colleagues from around the world.
Register by February 26 and save $25 off the regular registration fee. To register or for more information, visit the 2016 AIR Forum website.
Finally, The RMAIR Annual Conference is scheduled for October 26th -28th in Bozeman, Montana. Thanks goes to Rebecca Belou (Rebeccabelou@montana.edu), RMAIR 2016 Local Arrangements Chair, and Dawn Ressel (dawn.ressel@umontana.edu), RMAIR 2016 Program Chair, for their work in putting together this year’s meeting. Please consider submitting a proposal for a pre-conference workshop, paper, or other work for presentation at the conference. Also, now would be a good time to invite faculty and students who teach or are studying education-related topics to join us and present some of their research. A call for proposals should go out late-spring or early summer so now is a good time to start making plans for Montana.