The Mission of the Office of Planning, Assessment, and Institutional Research (OPAIR) is to support the College strategic plan, the "closing the assessment loop" efforts, and respond to internal and external reporting needed for Frederick Community College to be effective.OPAIR supports a culture of inquiry in which Frederick Community College (FCC) engages in sustained, evidence-based planning, assessment, evaluation, and decision-making. In addition, OPAIR facilitates the development of creative and effective methods to assess and improve student learning and institutional effectiveness by:
- Completing and submitting federal, state, and accreditation compliance reports accurately and on time;
- Managing research activities by providing meaningful and accurate data with visualizations to tell the story for the overall effectiveness of the College;
- Collaborating with the College community to support, coordinate, and provide directionality for FCC planning processes;
- Ensuring the efficacy of College research and institutional effectiveness through "closing the assessment loop" efforts;
- Facilitating the development, execution, and data presentation for College surveys
Research is prioritized by the following hierarchy:
- Mandatory federal, state, programmatic accreditation, and institutional accreditation through the Middle States Commission for Higher Education reporting
- Requests from the Board of Trustees, the President's Office, or Senior Leadership Team members
- Grant related requests
- Research and reporting that supports strategic planning or institutional priorities and their execution
- Reports for evaluating academic programs and student support services
- Internal requests from the College community
- External Public Information Act requests
- Requests that the FCC Institutional Review Board has approved
- Urgent requests from the President or senior leaders may take precedence over the order of priority.
OPAIR Process:
The general process for most data, surveys, and research requests begins after receiving a virtual request form that is available to all staff and faculty via Communication Central. The process generally includes the following steps:
- The submission is assigned to the appropriate researcher upon receiving the request form. Requests may be assigned to any member of the OPAIR team. However, internal requests are generally completed by the Senior Research for Institutional Effectiveness and external requests by the Senior Researcher for Institutional Research and Compliance.
- The assigned researcher meets with the requesting party to determine a timeline and deliverable(s) for the request.
- Once the deliverables are completed, they are provided to the requestor for review and feedback. Once agreed upon, the deliverables are finalized.
- Where feasible and beneficial, depending upon the nature of the deliverables, some information may be placed on the OPAIR website or the IE intranet site on the Communication Central page for external or internal consumption. The researcher and the OPAIR staff make this determination.
Reports that are routine, annualized, or required in periodic and predictable intervals are completed based on the External Compliance Reporting Schedule, which can be accessed by employees on the Institutional Effectiveness Team page on Communication Central.