Archive for January, 2009

As discussed in this space last quarter, each year many proposals for funding of technology projects go before the Systems Governance Group (SGG) for discussion. These projects range from security and backup for Stanford’s data to enhancements to Stanford’s many administrative systems. (more…)

Stanford faculty, assisted by Jenny Bergeron of IR&DS, are working to create mission statements for their academic programs that will appear in the Stanford Bulletin in the 2009-2010 academic year. While many programs created mission statements for the 2008-09 Bulletin, many had not yet done so and IR&DS is stepping forward to help. (more…)

Last spring, when DSS converted from using the “old star” to the new EDW tables, we created a new universe called “OF GL Data”. This new universe provides greater functionality than the old star, but has also raised some common questions. We will address those here and provide some tips for using this universe successfully. (more…)

The federal government has made changes to the way race and ethnicity are collected and reported by colleges and universities, and Stanford will be implementing these changes over the next year or so. For those of you that use race and ethnicity data, it is important to understand those changes, when they go into effect, and how they might affect the data you use. (more…)

As has been previously reported in this newsletter, Stanford is undertaking several assessment and evaluation projects in connection with our re-accreditation. These projects involve many studies, but in particular, the Class of 2012 is serving as the basis for data collection around the themes of our reaccreditation — “Away from Campus”, “Variations in Educational Environments”, and “Fundamental Skills”. This class (the current freshmen) have already taken a prefreshman survey, and the WASC accreditation project will continue to survey this class extensively over the next four years. (more…)

Lillian Lee has been serving as a replacement for Missy Damon during Missy’s maternity leave. Lillian has done a great job of filling in for Missy, applying her experience and smarts to a number of projects. Thanks, Lillian! Lillian will now move on to her next challenge. We are happy to report that Lillian will stay on as Anita Craig’s replacement at 50% time as of February 23, 2009. Lillian will sit in Room 206 in Building 60 and can be reached at Lillian.lee@stanford.edu and 5-4648. (more…)

Missy Damon will return from maternity leave on January 20, 2009.

We are sorry to report that Anita Craig will not be returning to IR&DS. Although she is doing well, her current state of health will not allow her to return to work for the foreseeable future. Lillian Lee will assume her responsibilities.

We’ve imported all of the old newsletter articles into this online format so that everything is searchable and easier to organize. In case you like the old PDFs, though, those are available too!

IRDS Newsletter: Winter 2009 [PDF]