Tag: Grants

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RMAIR – Update

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:

  1. 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;
  2. More than 300 concurrent sessions reviewed and presented by your peers;
  3. 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.

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RMAIR 2015 In Review

By Jeff Johnson, Assistant Director of Institutional Effectiveness & Planning, Utah Valley University

“Dear God, please don’t let me screw up.”
—Test Pilot’s Prayer, attr. to astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr.

I am quite pleased to say that, thanks to some combination of divine grace and an outstanding team of institutional research professionals, I’ve managed to not screw up RMAIR during my year as president. It has been a very successful year for the association, with many accomplishments to celebrate.

Our annual conference is the focus of RMAIR’s efforts, and this year’s was outstanding. Nearly 100 paid attendees met in Las Vegas earlier this month, the most in recent memory. A fascinating keynote from Stephen R. Porter on the validity and future of student surveys led off a program of 34 presentations organized by program chair Serge Herzog. Local arrangements chair Theresa Farmer’s stellar work on the venue and logistics gave RMAIR members plenty of opportunities to rekindle old relationships and make new connections, and kept costs much lower than we expected. Thanks to the wonderful work of sponsorship chair Tondra De, we raised $16,900 from sponsors. While the final bills aren’t in, we expect to make at least $5,000 on the conference in spite of not charging membership fees this year. I can’t thank enough Theresa, Tondra, and Serge, along with Christina Drum, Mya Starling, Andrea Esguerra, and Mike Ellison for what they did to produce a successful conference.

We have had great financial success as well. We expect the conference to make between $5,000 and $8,000 for the association after all is finalized. That will leave us with approximately $30,000, consistent with our goal of having a reserve of between 1.5 and 2 times the typical conference costs. Working with treasurer Quinn Koller, we have also put in place streamlined processes for financial management of the conference that should allow our success to continue while easing the administrative challenges.

Our previous financial success allowed us to offer free membership this year. That has brought in several entirely new members as well as maintaining membership of many previous members who would not have joined this year because they were not attending the conference; historically very few people have paid membership dues when they weren’t attending. The board has thus decided to continue to offer free membership for 2015-16.

I am pleased especially to have been able to honor several members this year. Thanks to a partnership with AIR, we were able to match our grants with AIR Travel Grants. Serge represented RMAIR at the AIR Forum as the best paper. We also awarded the best presentation grant to Stephanie Kane and Fran Hermanson. We didn’t award any Train the Trainer grants, however, so I encourage you to consider applying for 2016.

The board continued its work to implement the strategic plan while also rethinking its place in the organization. Vice President Joe Curtin implemented the outreach elements, targeting especially institutions with graduate programs in higher education. Incoming Vice President Dianna Renz will be reaching out to IR offices that are not currently involved in RMAIR, building on work done last year by Mya Starling. This coming year we are due for a new plan. This will be informed by our experience with the existing one and will aim to be more realistic about our capabilities and commitments.

Our future will also need to recognize, however, that RMAIR is in a changed environment in which our history of informality is challenged by increasing regulation and a transfer of much of the legal and financial responsibility for the association from AIR to us. Banking regulations designed to prevent terrorist financing and laundering of drug money require us to demonstrate that any change in the account holders is consistent with the bylaws; hence the importance of bylaws that clearly define election rules in ways that will be accepted by courts and lawyers, not just our members. Non-profit status and incorporation are necessary to protect the organization and its officers—it would have been quite easily for officers to have accidentally committed tax fraud before we gained 501(c)(3) status.

The bylaw review has identified several areas in which we will, of necessity, have to change in ways that we aren’t all comfortable with. The contemporary world leaves us with only the alternative of not existing. The board will be working on this in the coming year, and will seek input from and will communicate fully with the members as we do. It is the greatest challenge that RMAIR faces right now. I ask your patience and understanding as we continue this process.

These are only a few of our accomplishments. I can claim little credit for them; they happened on my watch but they happened because we have exceptional people in RMAIR. I am humbled to have worked with such an effective board over the last year: Joe, Quinn, Secretary Tammy Scott, and Past President Ann Murray. I also relied heavily on the generous advice of two former RMAIR Presidents, Nick Valcik and Dawn Kenney. I am pleased to welcome Dianna to the board as Vice President and President Elect. I have great confidence in the coming year’s leadership, and wish all of us continued success.