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Institutional researchers as agents of organizational learning in hispanic-serving community colleges

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Institutional researchers as agents of organizational learning in hispanic-serving community colleges

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INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCHERS AS AGENTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL
LEARNING IN HISPANIC-SERVING COMMUNITY COLLEGES

by

John Lee

____________________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

May 2012

Copyright 2012 John Lee

ii
DEDICATION
To my parents, Yun Chiu and Yuk Sun Lee, for always valuing education.

iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
So many of my experiences and the people I am surrounded by has helped
make this journey come to an end. It seemed like it was only yesterday during the
summer of 2009 when I sat through numerous breakout session with dissertation
chairs to seek out a topic that I would eat, breathe, and sleep for three years.
First and foremost, I want to think my chair, Estela Bensimon. She
constantly pushed and challenged me to becoming a better researcher and writer and
not settle for good enough. Her dedication to this research and reading of numerous
drafts has been a major contributing factor in me getting to this point.
In addition, I would like to thank my committee members, Alicia Dowd and
Georgia Lorenz. Not only are they members of my committee, but I had the
wonderful opportunity of having them as professors in my courses that has prepared
me for this point.
People tell you that when you begin a something as challenging and rigorous
as a doctoral program, the support of your family and friends will be vital to your
success. Words could never be more true. In particular, I would like to thank my
fellow graduate student, Sabrina Chong for her support and companionship to our
weekend trips to Flying Saucers Caffine and Art in Santa Monica. We did it! Then
there’s Carla Aljoe all the way in Providence, RI, who kept me company and could
quite possibly be the best soundingboard on my long drives home in traffic to keep
me motivated throughout my graduate school years.

iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication ii

Acknowledgments iii

List of Tables viii

Abstract ix

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1
Statement of the Problem 1
Data Use 3
Educational Performance for Hispanics 5
Institutional Researchers 10
Organizational Learning and Practices in Data Use 12
Research Questions 14
The Study 14
Significance of the Study 15
Researcher’s Subjectivity 17
The Report 18

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 19
Hispanic Serving Institutions 19
Role of HSIs 21
Cultural Identity of HSIs 24
Outcomes of Hispanic Educational Achievement in HSIs 25
Institutional Researchers 26
Traditional Definitions and Roles 26
Institutional Research in Community Colleges 28
New Roles of Institutional Research 29
Organizational Role 32
Summary on Institutional Researchers 40
Conceptual Framework 42
Organizational Learning 42
Institutional Researchers as Agents of Organizational Learning 47
Questioning Data to Raise Awareness of Hispanic Inequities 49
Current Practices in Disaggregating Data 52
Potential Data Indicators to Tract Hispanic Performance 55
Developing a Culture of Evidence 56
Summary 61

v
CHAPTER 3: METHODS 63
Chapter Overview 64
Research Approach 65
Design Rationale 66
Researcher’s Role 68
Sampling 69
Methods 71
Document Analysis 71
Website Analysis Protocol 72
Interviews 73
The Participants 75
Central Community College 76
Hispanic-Serving Identity of CCC 76
Basic Skills Achievement of Hispanics at CCC 77
CCC Institutional Research Office 78
Sunrise City College 78
Hispanic-Serving Identity of SCC 79
Basic Skills Achievement of Hispanics at SCC 79
SCC Office of Institutional Effectiveness 80
Mountain View College 81
Hispanic-Serving Identity of MVC 82
Basic Skills Achievement of Hispanics at MVC 82
MVC Office of Institutional Research 83
Data Analysis 84
First Analysis Method 85
Second Analysis Method 85
Verification Procedures 86
Limitations 87
Ethical Concerns 88
Conclusion 89

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS 90
Christine Le – Central Community College 91
Christine Le as Agent of Organizational Learning 93
Knowledge Acquisition 93
Information Distribution 95
Information Interpretation 97
Hispanic-Serving Culture at Central Community College 98
Hispanic-Serving Meaning for Institutional Research Role 98
Role at a Hispanic-Serving Institution 99
Understanding Equity 100
Hispanic-Serving Assessment 100
Scott Taylor – Sunrise City College 101

vi
Scott Taylor as Agent of Organizational Learning 104
Knowledge Acquisition 104
Information Distribution 106
Information Interpretation 108
Hispanic-Serving Culture at Sunrise City College 111
Hispanic-Serving Meaning for Institutional Research Role 112
Role at Hispanic-Serving Institution 112
Understanding Equity 113
Hispanic-Serving Assessment 114
Kurt Thomas – Mountain View College 115
Kurt Thomas as Agent of Organizational Learning 118
Knowledge Acquisition 118
Information Distribution 120
Information Interpretation 123
Hispanic-Serving Culture at Mountain View College 125
Hispanic-Serving Meaning for Institutional Research Role 126
Role at a Hispanic-Serving Institution 127
Understanding Equity 128
Hispanic-Serving Assessment 129
Cross Case Analysis 130
Institutional Researcher Role 130
Capacity of Institutional Researchers as Agents of Organizational
Learning 132
Knowledge Acquisition 132
Information Distribution 134
Information Interpretation 138
Defining their Roles 141
Institutional Researchers’ Perceptions of HSIs 141
Making Meaning of their Roles at HSIs 144
Supporting the HSI Identity and Mission as Institutional Researcher 146
The Challenge 146
Understanding of Student Population 147
Further Disaggregating of Data 147
Understanding Equity 148
Conclusion 150

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION 152
Important Findings 153
Interpretation of their Positions as Agents of Organizational Learning 154
Knowledge Acquisition 155
Information Distribution 156
Information Interpretation 156
Producing Knowledge about Hispanic Students’ Outcomes 158

vii
Definition and Role within the Hispanic-Serving Institution 159
Institutional Culture and the Role of Institutional Research 161
Institutional Culture 161
Institutional Researcher Role 163
Overview 165
Recommendations 165
Reflecting on Institutional Research Practices to Support
the HSI Identity 166
Becoming an Equity Advocate 167
Provide Sufficient Services for Hispanic Students 167
Understanding Student/Community Realities 168
Disaggregating of Data as a Standard Procedure 169
Develop Strategic Alliances 170
Additional Limitations 171
Conclusion 172
Student Learning Outcomes 172
Federal HSI Title V Grants 173
American Graduation Initiative 174

REFERENCES 176

APPENDICES:
Appendix A: Website Analysis Protocol 183
Appendix B: Interview Protocol 185

viii
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1.1: Fall 2010 Success Rates of Students in all Basic Skills Courses
by Race/Ethnicity 7
Table 1.2: Population Ages 25+ with Bachelor’s or Higher in California by
Race/Ethnicity in 2007 8
Table 1.3: Percentage of California Community College Transfers to UC’s in
2009 by Race/Ethnicity 9
Table 3.1: Los Angeles County Community Colleges & Hispanic
Enrollment (%) 70
Table 4.1: Background of Institutional Researchers 130
Table 4.2: Priorities of Institutional Researchers 131
Table 4.3: Practice on Disaggregation of Data 137
Table 4.4: Institutional Researchers and the Hispanic Serving Institution 143

ix
ABSTRACT
This study examined three institutional researchers from three different
Hispanic-serving community colleges in southern California to examine how they
would use data to act as agents of organizational learning and raise awareness of
Hispanic students’ educational outcomes within their respective institutions. This
study was of a qualitative nature, and findings were based on data comprised of
interviews and content analysis. Based on the data collected, this study found that
these specific researchers’ roles were not shaped by their affiliation with Hispanic-
serving institutions and that using data to raise awareness of Hispanic students’
educational outcomes was not a primary concern. However, even though raising
awareness of Hispanic students’ educational outcomes was not a primary concern,
these three institutional researchers exhibited qualities that would suggest the ability
to take on the role of agent of organizational learning through the use of data to call
attention to Hispanic academic achievement. These qualities or practices include:
(1) reflecting on the current role and institutional research practices to support the
HSI identity, (2) not viewing Hispanics as deficient, (3) providing and promoting
sufficient services for the success of Hispanic students, (4) understanding and
knowledge of students’ histories and community realities, and (5) further
disaggregation of race/ethnicity into further racial/ethnic groups. These are further
discussed and used as recommendations for the future practice of institutional
researchers at Hispanic-serving community colleges to serve their Hispanic students
better.

1
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
Statement of the Problem
A report commissioned by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher
Education (WICHE) in 2008 showed a change in demographics in the western states
(Kelly, 2008). In the WICHE report, the western states were projected to have a
substantial increase in the high school graduation share of Hispanics
1
. Since the
1990’s the growth in Hispanics graduating from high school in the WICHE states has
more than doubled from about 100,000 in 1994 to a projected 250,000 by 2012
(Kelly, 2008). California’s demographics show that 36.1% of its population is
Hispanic/Latino (U.S. Census, 2010), yet for high school graduates who completed
the A-G
2
requirements, only 26% were Hispanic/Latino (Moore & Shulock, 2009).
Around the same time the WICHE report was published, Myers (2007)
published Immigrants and Boomers which highlighted the challenges in the future
workforce of California as the baby-boomer generation begins to slowly retire. The
retirement of baby-boomers will leave a void in the workforce to be filled by a new
Californian majority population. This new majority population would be the
Hispanic population. The retirement of baby-boomers is pressing not only because
of the sudden exit of the “boomers” in the workforce, but also because this new

1
Throughout this document, the terms “Hispanic” and “Latino/a” will be used
interchangeably.

2
According to the University of California’s website, A-G requirements are 15 year-
long high school subject courses that students must succeed in during high school to
be UC/CSU eligible. The last seven must be taken during the last two years of high
school.

2
generation of workers is not as educated (Myers, 2007). This shift in demographics
is pressuring California to educate a new group of people to support the economic
and workforce development of California. It is projected that between 2004 and
2014, there will be a 21.8% growth in occupations requiring at least some
postsecondary education in California (Kelly, 2008). Kelly (2008) also found that
California has one of the highest shares of adults enrolled in colleges, but falls well
below the U.S. average on the number of credentials or degrees (certificates,
associate’s, or bachelor’s) awarded. California ranks 23
rd
among states in bachelor’s
degree attainment in the 25-34 years old age group (29.9%) (Johnson & Sengupta,
2009). Johnson and Sengupta (2009) assert that increasing the number of credentials
and attainments in bachelor’s degrees will pose a new challenge for the Hispanic
population because they are the largest minority group and the most underserved
population in terms of educational attainment.
Researchers have offered a variety of factors that contribute to lower levels of
educational attainment among Hispanics (Dowd et al, 2008; Johnson & Sengupta,
2009; Kelly, 2008; Moore & Shulock, 2009; Shulock & Moore, 2005). One factor
offered by researchers is the high Hispanic concentration in community colleges and
community colleges’ limited effectiveness in helping students prepare for transfer
(Dowd et al, 2008; Kelly, 2008). Among the many reasons that contribute to low
transfer rates is the large number of Hispanic students placed in remedial education
courses and the very small number who are able to get through the remedial courses
and become eligible for transfer. Dowd et al. (2008) summarized through their

3
California Benchmarking project that for Hispanics, their chances of transferring to
the California State University (CSU) system are 4 in 100 or lower and for transfer to
the University of California (UC) system, the chances are 6 in 1000 or lower. Moore
and Shulock (2009) attribute low transfer rates to the lack of college preparation for
Hispanic students. Only 26% of the high school graduates who completed A-G
requirements in 2007-2008 were Hispanic and less than 20% of Hispanic students
enrolled in advanced math courses that same year (Moore & Shulock, 2009).
Through the use of achievement data, one can see that there is a problem in
educational attainment for Hispanics, and that perhaps data can be used for not just
highlighting problems but to also solve problems through data-driven decision
making (Ehrenberg, 2005; Hossler, Kuh, & Olsen, 2001(a) & 2001(b); Jenkins &
Kerrigan, 2009; McClenney, McClenney, & Peteson, 2007; McClintock & Snider,
2008; Miller & Garcia, 2004; Morest & Jenkins, 2007; Morest, 2009).
Data Use
In the last few years, there has been more emphasis on using institutional data
to drive student-based decisions in American higher education institutions
(Ehrenberg, 2005; Hossler et al., 2001(a) & 2001(b); Jenkins & Kerrigan, 2009;
McClenney et al. 2007; McClintock & Snider, 2008; Miller & Garcia, 2004; Morest
& Jenkins, 2007; Morest, 2009). In 2006, the California Community Colleges
Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO) introduced the Basic Skills Initiative (BSI) which was
a grant-funded program for community colleges to improve the access and success

4
rate of students in basic skills education. The BSI has made basic skills
3
a major
area of research because of the data that are asked for by the CCCCO. One of the
practices recommended by the BSI is regular program evaluation and the use of data
to make decisions to improve practice (Basic Skills as a Foundation for Student
Success in California Community Colleges, 2007). The BSI recommends three
levels of data collection: primary, secondary, and tertiary. As recommended by the
Basic Skills as a Foundation for Student Success in California Community Colleges
(2007), data at the primary level would include descriptive data such as enrollment
figures and tutoring hours. Secondary level data are short-term outcomes such as
success, retention, and persistence from term to term and course grades. The third
and final level includes long-term goals such as GPAs and graduation rates (Basic
Skills as a Foundation for Student Success in California Community Colleges, 2007).
The BSI does not address the use of data to document success rates by race
and ethnicity. However, researchers recommend that it is important to disaggregate
data by race and ethnicity as an essential practice in determining inequitable
outcomes (Bauman, 2002; Bensimon, 2004; Miller & Garcia, 2004). Other
researchers also suggest that the various Hispanic subgroups be disaggregated as
well (Hurtado, 2001; Miller & Garcia, 2004).
While there is general agreement about the desirability of having more
educated Hispanics and the positive effects on the economy (Johnson & Sengupta,

3
Basic skills courses are math, English, and ESL courses that students take in order
to reach college-level math and English to become CSU and UC transferable.

5
2009; Kelly, 2008; Myers, 2007), campuses do not routinely assess the educational
status and progress of Hispanics. One reason is that campuses often do not
disaggregate data by race and ethnicity (Bauman, 2002; Bensimon, 2004; Miller &
Garcia, 2008). The call for a change in practice is contributing to a change in the
role of the institutional researcher. In view of the demographic, economic, and
educational attainment of Hispanics and the growing attention of basic skills student
success, this study will examine the role of institutional researchers in raising the
awareness among institutional leaders of educational outcomes of Hispanics in
Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs).
Having addressed the problem of the low educational attainment of
Hispanics, the remainder of this chapter has eight sections that provide a general idea
of the educational performance of Hispanics, a brief introduction to the role of
institutional researchers, and a discussion of how institutional researchers use data.
These are followed by a discussion of the theoretical framework used for this study,
the research questions, and the significance of this study. The final two sections of
this chapter provide a statement of the objectivity of the researcher and a guide to the
remainder of this research study.
Educational Performance for Hispanics
For every three students enrolling in a California Community College, one of
them will be placed in basic skills education (RP Group, 2007). In an urban district

6
such as the San Gabriel Valley Community College District,
4
for the 2010 academic
year, for every two students enrolling in a basic skills course, it is likely that one will
be Hispanic (CCCCO, 2011). In the beginning of the 2010 academic year, 443 of
the 749 students in basic skills math and 558 of the 985 students in basic skills
English at San Gabriel Valley College were Hispanic (CCCCO, 2011). These two
data pieces combined suggest that Hispanic students enrolling in a California
Community College are likely to enroll in a basic skills class as their initial
experience in post-secondary education. The latest Basic Skills Accountability
Report (Scott, 2009) provided by the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s
Office shows that for an unduplicated head count of 339,278 students enrolled in
credit granting basic skills
5
courses for the 2007-08 school year, 41.3% of the
students enrolled were Hispanic (Scott, 2009).
Based on the low success rates of Hispanic students in basic skills classes,
community colleges have not proven very effective in preparing Hispanics for
transfer (CCCCO, 2011). Data gathered from the Chancellor’s Office on all 110
community colleges in the state for fall 2010 indicated that Hispanics were the
second lowest achieving population compared to African-American, Asian/Pacific
Islanders, Filipino, and White Non-Hispanic groups in basic skills math and English
courses.

4
Pseudonym given to protect the identity of the institution.

5
Basic Skills courses are those that are below college-level English, mathematics,
and English as a Second Language (ESL).

7
Table 1.1: Fall 2010 Success Rates of Students in all Basic Skills Courses by
Race/Ethnicity
Basic Skills Math Basic Skills English
Race/Ethnicity
Total
Enrollment
%
Success
Total
Enrollment
%
Success
African-American

12,944 41.49% 10,744 53.83%

Asian/Pacific Islander 5287 62.02% 9670 70.58%
Filipino

2,562 59.37% 2,791 70.66%
Hispanic

46,042 50.84% 40,954 61.90%
White Non-Hispanic

24,833 60.20% 15,975 66.25%
Source: California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office
Table 1.1 shows the enrollment and success rates in basic skills math and
English of the five highest enrolled groups of students in all the California
Community Colleges. The Hispanic group has the highest enrollment in both basic
skills courses, but is the second lowest achieving group outside of African-American
students. At the end of fall 2010, there were 46,042 Hispanic enrollments in basic
skills math and a 50.84% success rate (CCCCO, 2011). For the basic skills English
courses, there were 40,954 Hispanic enrollments with a 61.90% success rate
(CCCCO, 2010). Given the high enrollment rates and the low success rates of
Hispanics in California Community Colleges, there is reason to believe that the
outcomes of community college students are inequitable for the Hispanic population.
Basic skills courses in English and mathematics are necessary for basic skills
students to have a chance to successfully participate in college-level courses, which

8
will in turn affect their chances of transferring to the UC’s or CSU’s and eventually
obtain a bachelor’s degree.
Table 1.2: Population Ages 25+ with Bachelor’s or Higher in California by
Race/Ethnicity in 2007
Race/Ethnicity % with BA/BS or higher
Asian/Pacific Islander 46.90%
White 38.00%
Black 21.00%
Hispanic or Latino 9.90%
Source: Moore & Shulock, 2009

Table 1.2 shows that in California, only 9.9% of the Hispanic population 25
years or older have at least a bachelor’s degree (Moore & Shulock, 2009), making
them the lowest achieving racial group. In addition, Hispanics account for 33.8% of
the population in the California Community Colleges (CCCCO, 2011), but the
Chicano
6
/Latino transfer rates to UC’s for Hispanics from California community
colleges, as shown on Table 1.3, were at 17.2% in 2009. The 17.2% is lower than
that of Asian/Pacific Islander and white students. This piece of data is important to
acknowledge because while there are fewer Asian/Pacific Islander and white
students enrolled in California Community Colleges, a higher percentage of them are
transferring to UCs.

6
The term “Chicano” is used in the UC System. For the purpose of this study,
“Chicano” will be categorized as “Hispanic.”

9
Table 1.3: Percentage of California Community College Transfer to UC’s in 2009 by
Race/Ethnicity
Race/Ethnicity % transfer from CCC
Asian/Pacific Islander 26.0%
White 35.7%
Black/African-American 3.2%
Chicano/Latino 17.2%
American-Indian 0.9%
Other 17.0%
Source: University of California System
Statewide data show low rates of success for Hispanic students in community
colleges. For community colleges to meet their goals of preparing basic skills
students for college-level courses, institutions will need to make sure outcomes are
comparable to the representation of the population. This is important because
community colleges enroll almost half of the Hispanic college-going population, are
generally the first entry point in postsecondary education for Hispanics, and are
enrolling large numbers of Hispanic students in remedial education (Contreras,
Malcom, & Bensimon, 2008; Dowd, 2007; Miller & Garcia, 2004). Measures such
as success in basic skills courses, degree attainment, and transfer rates are indications
of how well the institutions are meeting their goals and are released to the public to
view (CCCCO, 2011). In post-secondary institutions, the institutional research
office is generally charged with collecting the data for the previously mentioned
indicators since they are charged with conducting research related to the outcomes of
an institution (Saupe, 1990).

10
Institutional Researchers
The use of data may contribute to the goals of community colleges.
Community colleges have institutional research offices that can help facilitate data
collection and interpretation, helping key administrators, faculty, and/or other
institutional actors learn about their institutions and make decisions that can help to
influence positive outcomes for the students. Upon reflecting on his career as a
Vice-President of Finance at Cornell University, Ehrenberg (2005) argues that
institutional data can be a powerful tool to influence decisions made at an institution.
Institutional data have been used to make decisions and changes to policies and as a
tool to frame inequitable outcomes in educational attainment (Bauman, 2002).
However, although institutional data can inform decision-making as suggested by
Bauman (2002) and Ehrenberg (2005), the traditional role of an institutional research
office is to conduct research and collect data pertaining to the institution. “The
relationship between the IR office and campus academic and student affairs
practitioners is often limited to traditional evaluation practices, typically when the IR
office is called in to conduct an evaluation of an existing program” (Musoba, 2006,
p. 77). In addition to only examining evaluative data, unless they are asked, Musoba
(2006) asserts that institutional researchers only produce the data to their requestors
but do not participate in helping them analyze and interpret the information that may
inform decision-making practices.
Institutional researchers can be capable of change. As the interest in data
driven decision-making has risen, there have been increasing calls for reforming the

11
role of institutional researchers. These calls have been framed mostly in relation to
having a lot of data unused and how institutional researchers could play a bigger role
in educating institutions on the uses of data (Asera, 2008; Dowd, Malcom,
Nakamoto, & Bensimon, 2007). Within the field of IR, none of these calls have
specifically addressed the role that institutional researchers can play in raising
awareness of racial inequality. The work done by the Center for Urban Education
(CUE) has called for the use of the disaggregation of data to raise such awareness.
Although raising awareness on issues of race are not common practices of
institutional researchers because of their role in remaining objective, institutional
researchers can help to raise awareness of the issues by the way they analyze,
interpret, and disseminate data to help with evidence-based decision-making
(Petrides, 2002). Petrides (2002) argued in a critique of institutional researchers that
institutional researchers are already trained to engage in producing evidence-based
research that can help frame data based on using multiple measures, therefore,
allowing them to be key leaders in using data to promote organizational learning.
However, because of the traditional nature of their role, being reactive as opposed to
being proactive, and their middle management status, the role of being an agent of
organizational learning has yet to be seen in the scope of the every day tasks of
institutional researchers (Petrides, 2002).
The positions of institutional researchers painted as being objective, data-
producers, and their lack of a role in decision-making, contribute to the notion of
their role as one of being low-status. Raising questions of race can be a violation of

12
objectivity. Making decisions will also keep institutional researchers from being
truly objective because they will then have a reason to not remain neutral in their
research if it is used for decision-making. Remaining neutral allows institutional
researchers to be removed from the research, thus allowing them to remain as an
objective scientist with nothing at stake. In order to become agents of organization
learning, there needs to be a shift from the traditional role of what it means to be an
institutional researcher.
Organizational Learning and Practices in Data Use
This study will be looked at through the framework of organizational learning
and will be guided by Bauman’s (2002) application of facilitating organizational
learning through the use of data. In the following chapter, there will be background
information provided for the framework followed by how institutional researchers
can use organizational learning, specifically Huber’s (1991) four constructs, to raise
awareness for Hispanic inequity in basic skills education outcomes.
Bauman (2002) discussed the use of data as a way to facilitate organizational
learning. She contended that through the use of data, three conditions of
organizational learning can happen in higher education institutions: (a) new ideas are
formed and presented, (b) doubt amongst institutional actors begin to arise about
current knowledge and current practices on why and how things are done, and (c) the
knowledge is disseminated among other institutional members within the
community.

13
Huber (1991) defined learning by saying that “an entity learns if, through its
processing of information, the range of its potential behaviors changed” (p. 89).
Having defined learning in this capacity, organizational learning will assume “an
organization learns if any of its units acquire knowledge that it recognizes as
potentially useful to the organization” (Huber, 1991, p. 89). Organizational learning
is linked to knowledge acquisition, information distribution, information
interpretation, and organizational memory (Huber, 1991). In relation to data on
Hispanic education achievement, the study will question how institutional
researchers’ data are acquired, distributed, interpreted, and stored for future retrieval.
Studying how institutional researchers acquire, distribute, interpret, and store data
may shed light on how their day-to-day activities can promote organizational
learning and, in the case of Hispanic students, help raise awareness of Hispanic
students’ educational outcomes. Organizational learning happens when institutional
actors ask questions and discuss what the current assumptions and values are, and
then challenge those assumptions and values to create/sustain change (Boyce, 2003).
To promote organizational learning to raise awareness in Hispanic students’
educational outcomes, more will need to be done. It can be argued that for
institutional researchers to promote organizational learning in the context of
Hispanic Serving Institutions, they will need to develop “equity-mindedness”
(Bensimon, Harris, & Rueda, 2007) when conducting research and not remain
neutral and objective.

14
Research Questions
This study examined the role that the institutional researcher can play in
promoting organizational learning about Hispanic inequality in educational outcomes
through the use of data. Specifically, the study sought to answer the following
overarching research question and three related sub-questions:
o In what ways do the data collection, analysis, interpretation, and
dissemination practices of institutional researchers assist institutional actors
to learn about the educational outcomes of Hispanic students and reflect on
how to improve them?
Within this overarching question, the sub-questions are:
(1) how do institutional researchers’ interpretation of their position support or
limit their capacity to take on the role of change agent?
(2) in what ways do institutional researchers produce knowledge to inform the
campus community about Hispanic students’ outcomes? and,
(3) how does institutional culture support or limit their capacity to take on the
role of agent of organizational learning?
The Study
This study will examine how institutional researchers at Hispanic Serving
Institutions use data to raise awareness about the outcomes of Hispanics in order to
promote institutional learning and change among decision makers. HSIs were
chosen because of the population they serve. The role of institutional researchers in
providing information about Hispanic students in such an institution may be

15
considered a responsibility of the position. In 2008, there were approximately 242
HSIs (Contreras et al., 2008) and in the 2006 and 2007 academic years, HSIs
enrolled 54% of Hispanic undergraduates (Excelencia, 2010). According to the U.S.
Department of Education website (USDOE, 2010), 60 of the 110 community
colleges in California are HSIs. The USDOE considers an institution to be Hispanic-
serving if it “(A) is an eligible institution; and (B) has an enrollment of
undergraduate full-time equivalent students that is at least 25% Hispanic students at
the end of the award year immediately preceding the date of application” (USDOE,
2010). Despite being labeled as HSIs, HSIs have been described as (1) having a
closeted identity that may lessen their sense of responsibility from serving their
designated population, thus making them non-conducive to the intentional focus on
Hispanic outcomes and (2) not necessarily being more successful in creating
equitable outcomes in the academic success of Hispanic students (Contreras et al,
2008). This study examined how three institutional research offices used data to
raise awareness of Hispanic educational outcomes and the role its researchers took in
helping institutional actors recognize the educational status of Hispanics in basic
skills courses.
Significance of the Study
This study is significant in three ways. First, it can inform the changing role
of institutional researchers and whether institutional researchers use the resources of
their positions to raise institutional awareness of inequities. Darder (1994) makes us
recognize race as a legitimate factor in the educational success of students by

16
indicating that race does play a role in student academic outcomes. Darder (1994)
proposed that institutional research be looked at differently to account for race and
ethnicity. Traditional research values research that is objective and quantifiable.
Such a view fails to take into account race/ethnicity. Darder (1994) suggests a
culturally democratic view of doing institutional research, “The culturally
democratic institution culture is viewed as an integral and fundamental component of
the collective, as well as crucial to the individual identity of all human beings”
(Darder, 1994, p. 30). To do this, the researcher can never truly be neutral or
objective because of the interests of participants as individuals.
The second significance of this study is the need to raise awareness of
Hispanic inequitable outcomes as a problem that impacts the economic future of
California. The Demonstration Project, supported by the Fund for the Improvement
of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) and conducted by Santiago, Andrade, and
Brown (2004), found that Hispanic students are enrolling in colleges and universities
at increasing rates. They are also one of the fastest growing populations in
California and the United States (Myers, 2007; Kelly, 2008). Although they are
growing in enrollment numbers, their numbers are not growing at the same degree
with regards to completion rates when it comes to successfully finishing associate or
bachelor’s degrees; 8.1% in California (Myers, 2007; Miller & Garcia, 2004). With
Hispanic students’ success rate in basic skills courses being one of the lowest, they
are in danger of never reaching college-level courses to eventually move on to the
four-year colleges. As one of the largest minority populations, they will be vital to

17
the economic and social success of America (Myers 2007; Miller & Garcia, 2004).
To help with successful academic outcomes, administrators, like institutional
researchers, must have a responsibility to address the issue of inequitable outcomes
in order to establish ways to help with the success of this group of students.
The final significance of this study is the pivotal role of institutional
researchers as facilitators of organizational learning. Many institutions collect data,
but often, data just sits on shelves and are rarely used to inform practice. Sometimes
the data is just not practical or faculty and/or administrators just do not know what to
do with it. In a study by Morest and Jenkins (2007), they found that “in general,
there was a consensus that the information generated in response to most compliance
reporting requests, while sometimes indirectly used in college decision making, did
not really contribute significantly in learning about students” (pp. 8-9). Finding a
way to connect institutional data to the institutional actors who want to use it can be
an important step to increasing Hispanic student success in the basic skills level.
Researcher’s Subjectivity
Although I did not study the institution in which I was employed as an
institutional researcher, my own biases may still come into play. As a former
institutional researcher at a Hispanic-serving institution, I will try to be aware of my
own biases from my prior experiences in the field. My intent in choosing this topic
was to gain a broader understanding of how other institutional researchers define
their role within a specific type of institution (in this case Hispanic-serving
community colleges) and if there is a difference with the practices as cited by prior

18
research on institutional researchers (Saupe, 1990; Terenzini, 1993; and Walleri,
2003). By reviewing the literature and gathering empirical data on this topic, I not
only hope to broaden my knowledge of the roles that institutional researchers play in
HSIs but also hope that the lessons learned will be useful to researchers, educators
and policy makers who are interested in improving Hispanic student performance
through the promotion of organizational learning.
The Report
This research study is divided into a total of five chapters. Immediately
following this chapter is a review of the literature on Hispanic-Serving Institutions,
the traditional role and new role of institutional researchers, organizational learning
in relation to Huber’s (1991) four constructs, Bauman’s (2002) example of
organizational learning through data-use, and how institutional researchers can
become agents of organizational learning at HSIs. The third chapter examines the
research design and the methodology for this study. Chapter four presents the
findings of this study, and chapter five provides a discussion and recommendations
for future practice and research.

19
CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
This chapter begins with an introduction of Hispanic Serving Institutions,
their role, and their cultural identity within higher education. This is followed by
defining what institutional research is and what it means to be an institutional
researcher and the role they play in higher education, their values, the knowledge
needed for the roles, and their beliefs about data and data use. Each section on
institutional researchers is connected to the role that they may play differently at
HSIs and at predominately White institutions. As previously mentioned in chapter 1,
the conceptual framework used throughout this research is organizational learning
based on a combination of Huber’s (1991) four constructs and Bauman’s (2002)
example of applying organizational learning to data practices. The end of this chapter
will discuss how institutional researchers can promote organizational learning to help
raise awareness in Hispanic inequity to support the academic achievement of
Hispanic students.
Hispanic Serving Institutions
Of the approximately 242 Hispanic-Serving Institutions, 128 of these are
community colleges located across 14 states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
(Benitez & DeAro, 2004). According to Malcom, Bensimon, & Davila (2010), HSIs
only account for 8 percent of all U.S. postsecondary institutions, but the 8 percent
account for more than half of the Latinos currently enrolled in postsecondary
institutions. In the state of California, 60 of the 110 community colleges are
designated HSIs (USDOE, 2010).

20
HSIs are one of the few types of institutions that are considered to be
Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) (Baez, Gasman, & Turner, 2008). Along with
Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and
Universities (TCUs), Asian American and Pacific Islander Serving Institutions
(AAPIs), and women’s colleges, these groups of institutions serve populations with a
history of exclusion from higher education (Baez et al, 2008). Their importance,
according to Baez et al. (2008), is derived primarily from their missions to educate
and graduate students from underrepresented groups, to provide them with culturally
sensitive programs, and to provide a public service to the selected groups. However,
HSIs do not have a declared, specific mission to serve Hispanics as other more
focused population-specific institutions do. Therefore, the Title V status is different
than that of HBCUs and Tribal Colleges (Laden, 2001). Whereas HBCUs and Tribal
Colleges have specific missions to serve their designated populations, the identity of
a HSI depends on the population of Hispanic students enrolled.
The designation of institutions as Hispanic-serving is a fairly recent
phenomenon which came about with the reauthorization of the Higher Education
Act, as amended in 1992 (Laden, 2001). According to the USDOE (2010), an
institution of higher education is considered Hispanic-serving if two conditions are
met: (1) the institution must be eligible; and (2) has at least 25% of full-time
equivalent students who are enrolled as undergraduates that are identified as
Hispanic. The institution must be public or not-for-profit as well (Benitez, 1998;
Contreras et al., 2008; Santiago et al., 2004). Institutions that are considered HSIs

21
are eligible to apply for Title V funding. Title V funding is not given to the students.
It is given to the institutions to be used for activities ranging from improving student
services and curriculum development to upgrading information technology and
infrastructure development (Benitez, 1998). It can also be used to upgrade facilities
and to develop programs and curriculum that help support student retention or
transfer to four-year colleges (USDOE, 2010).
Since the designation as Hispanic-Serving is based exclusively on the
percentage of students who are Hispanic, this Hispanic-Serving identity is fluid,
meaning it can change from one year to the next (Contreras et al., 2008). An
institution enrolling over 25% of full-time Hispanic enrollment one year can become
a HSI; however, if their enrollment of Hispanics declines, they lose their HSI
identity. Baez et al. (2008) described this concept as a “percentage scheme.” A
percentage scheme is the total number of FTE minority students over the rest of the
student body. HSIs are defined by the “percentage scheme” because that is how their
existence is defined (Baez et al., 2008). Using a percentage scheme to designate
institutions as Hispanic-serving makes it difficult for the institutions to serve their
population because “the majority of HSIs were not created to serve this specific
(Hispanic) population; rather, they evolved over the last 30 years due primarily to
their geographic proximity to Hispanic populations” (Laden, 2001, p. 74).
Role of HSIs
Perhaps the most important role of HSIs is to provide educational access for
Hispanics in higher education (Contreras et al., 2004; Laden, 2001; Santiago et al.,

22
2004). Hispanics are enrolling in post-secondary institutions at growing rates and
HSIs serve over 50% of those students (Malcom et al., 2010). Contreras et al. (2008)
argued that the high enrollment of Hispanics in HSIs allows for educational access to
higher education for this group of students. They also argued that for educational
attainment, community colleges that are Hispanic-serving have the largest number of
Hispanic students transferring to four-year colleges. This would make sense since
community colleges are the most frequent type of institution among HSIs (Benitez,
1998). Additionally, the role of HSIs is more than just providing access for a large
number of Hispanic students. HSIs provide other services within the institution that
cater to the Hispanic population.
These students are generally enrolled part-time in an associate or non-degree
program while living at or close to home, typically receive money from federal
grants, and must continue to work at least part-time in order to continue with their
education (Benitez, 1998). Through the “Latino Student Success at Hispanic-
Serving Institutions (HSIs) demonstration project
7
”, Santiago et al. (2004) asked six
HSIs (all four-year public institutions) what it meant to be Hispanic-serving. They
found that HSIs are understanding and open to the needs of a diverse population,
have a commitment and interest in serving and promoting the academic needs and
success of Hispanic students, and have a mission that hold themselves accountable
for the learning and academic success of all students.

7
According to the project description, the purpose of the demonstration project was
to develop greater understanding about institutional leadership and practices that
promote Latino student success at six participating HSIs.

23
HSIs also provide a benefit to their community (Laden, 2001). Laden (2001)
argues that some may say that HSIs are not beneficial to the community because of
“dismally low high school and college completion rates of Hispanics and their high
employment rates in low-skilled, low-paying service jobs” (p. 87). Although there is
some public recognition of HSIs, how they are regarded appears to be mixed, even
within higher education. Research by Laden (2004) found that in the past, HSIs
were referred to as “so-called Hispanic serving institutions.” According to Laden
(2004), such a reference can
underscore HSIs' still tenuous acceptance by some in the media and, very
likely, among many in other spheres of influence. Although there may still be
doubt as to the status of HSIs with the public at large, this also may be true
among Hispanic-serving colleges and universities themselves (p. 186).

However, because the HSIs are in heavily Hispanic populated communities,
the members of the communities can benefit, both intellectually and culturally
(Laden, 2001).
What it means to be Hispanic-serving also seems to puzzle those who are a
part of this type of institution. Leaders of HSIs generally cannot fully explain what it
means to “serve” Hispanic students (Santiago, 2009). Santiago (2009) supports the
idea that to serve Hispanic students, it must be intentional. One must have
knowledge of the population and the community in which they are located. The
Hispanic-serving aspect focuses so much on enrollment that the educational
outcomes of Hispanic students get lost in the mix. Santiago (2009) insists that
serving Hispanics “means considering adaptations to curricular design, academic,

24
and support services to increase retention or promote persistence for your Latino
students. Serving Latino students means graduating your Latino students” (p. 20).
Cultural Identity of HSIs
Research has shown that institutions designated as Hispanic-Serving tend to
not acknowledge their identity (Contreras et al., 2008; Dowd, Lord, Bensimon, &
Kutz, 2009). Both studies by Contreras et al. (2008) and Dowd et al. (2009) found
that the Hispanic-serving identity and other key terms indicating the Hispanic-
serving aspect were left out of the mission statements for the institutions that were
examined. In addition to the Hispanic-serving identity not being acknowledged
within the mission statement, other key terms such as Hispanic, Chicano, and Latino
were infrequently used on their websites. If they were used, they were not used in
the context to represent the community in which they serve. This finding is
significant because some scholars of organizational culture, as cited by Contreras et
al. (2008), believe that the mission statement is “the embodiment of an institution’s
values, commitment, and purpose” (p. 74). However, in both research cases, keys
words emerged from their analysis: “diversity/diverse,” “culture/multicultural,”
“access,” and “race/ethnicity” signified that there was an aspect of serving
underrepresented populations (Contreras et al., 2008; Dowd et al., 2009).
Contreras et al. (2008) offered two reasons for the invisible identity of HSIs.
The first reason being that the identity of the institution is acquired as a result of
demographics. This identity evolved organically and was not sought out by the
institution. These authors also speculate that the use of the word “Hispanic” may

25
conjure up negative stereotypes or even discourage other students (non-Hispanics)
from applying to the institution. The institutions may fear loss in enrollment or
prestige and so avoid highlighting their Hispanic-serving identity (Contreras et al..,
2008).
Outcomes of Hispanic Educational Achievement in HSIs
The outcomes of Hispanics attending HSIs were surprisingly inequitable
according to research by Contreras et al. (2008). They examined the educational
outcomes of 5 four-year HSIs and 5 two-year HSIs by applying Hao’s (2006) equity
index. With the application of the equity index for Latinos/as receiving bachelor’s
degrees, it was revealed that all 5 of the HSIs studied fell below equity (Contreras et
al., 2008). White students in this case exceeded equity in all but one institution and,
White students were found to be below equity in terms of access at four of
the five institutions, they are earning a disproportionately higher share of BA
degrees earned. These results suggest that Latinos/as may be experiencing
unequal outcomes compared to Whites even at HSIs (Contreras et al., 2008,
p. 84).

Additional findings by Contreras et al. (2008) also showed that Latinos/as
were found to be below equity compared to whites in earning degrees with majors in
math and engineering, and biological and life sciences.
Explanations for such results may be contributed to the lack of funding and
endowment support that HSIs have for the students they serve (Benitez, 1998).
Information gathered from Benitez (1998) found that the total revenue for HSIs was
42% less per full-time enrolled (FTE) student than other institutions and 91% less in
endowments. In terms of spending, HSIs spent 43% less on instruction per FTE

26
student; 51% less on academic functions per FTE student; and 27% less on student
services per FTE student than other institutions. Overall, the financial situation of
HSIs may constrain their capacity to serve the students in which they were meant to
serve (Benitez, 1998). Institutional researchers at HSIs may already be aware of
these inequities in revenues and spending as they are the ones who would provide
such data for their institutions.
Institutional Researchers
Institutional research (IR) has only existed for roughly half a century,
surfacing in higher education around the 1960’s and 1970’s (Saupe, 1990; Terenzini,
1993; Walleri, 2003). Throughout the course of its existence, both scholars and
practitioners have tried to find a true definition of IR and the role it plays in
institutions of higher education.
Traditional Definitions and Roles
Terenzini (1993) found multiple explanations used for what IR is and what
role IR plays in higher education. In a literature review that spanned from 1962 to
1981, he found definitions of institutional research such as: “a series of long-term,
theoretically based studies of institutional functioning and educational outcomes,”
“having specific responsibility for carrying on studies needed for the making of
important decisions about policy and procedure; and…work[ing] toward the primary
goal of finding out how to save money and can be used to better advantage,” “to
probe deeply into the workings of an institution for evidence of weaknesses or flaws

27
which interfere with the attainment of its purposes or which utilize an undue amount
or resources in doing so,” and
what decision makers need to know about an institution, its educational
objectives, goals and purposes, environmental factors, processes, and
structures to more wisely use its resources, more successfully attain its
objectives and goals, and to demonstrate integrity and accountability in so
doing (Terenzini, 1993, 49-50).

Saupe (1990) defined IR as “research conducted within an institution of
higher education to provide information that supports institutional planning, policy
formation and decision-making” (p. 1). He made sure to distinguish the difference
between IR and research on higher education. IR refers to an individual college,
university, or system, whereas research in higher education or postsecondary
education is meant to advance the knowledge on the practices of higher education
(Saupe, 1990). Saupe (1990) found that the activities involved in IR are specifically
for planning, policy, or decision-making. The desirable outcome of IR, as Saupe
(1990) asserts, is an answer to a specific question about the institution.
The traditional role of institutional researchers suggests that institutional
researchers understand the identity of the institution they work for when carrying out
studies to make important decisions that span from student success to the financial
health of the institution. Saupe’s (1990) definition of looking to answer specific
questions about a certain institution is a focus point for this study on institutional
researchers at HSIs.

28
Institutional Research in Community Colleges
In a survey study of 100 community college institutional research offices,
supplemented with a total of five individual interviews, Morest and Jenkins (2007)
found that the role of the IR office was broken down to meeting the demands of
external and internal audiences. For the external audience, Morest and Jenkins
(2007) found that IR offices in community colleges devoted most of their time to
compiling accountability data for compliance reporting to the state or federal level.
Saupe (1990) and Walleri (2003), both of whom are institutional research
practitioners, provided a similar account of daily IR activities. One such example
would be responding to the national statistical survey, the Integrated Postsecondary
Education Data System (IPEDS) (Saupe, 1990). For internal audiences, the authors
found that enrollment reporting was one of the major activities (Walleri, 2003).
Walleri (2003) also asserted that in addition to enrollment data (enrollment analysis
and forecasting and enrollment management), IR is also responsible for the college
fact book, strategic/master plan and operational planning, institutional effectiveness
and assessment of educational programs and service units, accreditation, and special
and ad hoc studies.
Since institutional research offices in community colleges are a fairly new
type of institution, staffing is an issue. Results from the Culture of Evidence survey
and interviews conducted by Morest and Jenkins (2007) showed four types of IR
staffing patterns within community college settings. There was (1) no IR function,
(2) the IR function exists, but there is less than one full-time staff member devoted to

29
it, (3) the IR function has one full-time researcher, and (4) the IR function has 1.5
full-time researchers (Morest & Jenkins, 2007).
The IR staffing issue in California community colleges may be a concern
because 60 of the 110 California community colleges are designated Hispanic-
serving (USDOE, 2010). If there is indeed a staff, there is on average anywhere
between zero to 1.5 researchers (Morest & Jenkins, 2007). Such a small size in
staffing may be difficult to take into consideration the Hispanic-serving aspect on top
of all the pre-existing duties. As institutional researchers, they are in positions of
power in regards to collecting and reporting data; however, such power is limited if
there are not enough personnel to report data that reflect a significant identity for the
institutions, such as Hispanic educational achievement data at HSIs (Morest &
Jenkins, 2007).
New Roles of Institutional Research
More recent research by institutional researchers/practitioners has described
the IR role as responding to ad hoc requests that are not “traditionally” asked for by
the external or internal audiences (Brittingham, O’Brien, & Alig, 2008; Ehrenberg,
2005; Knight & Leimer, 2010; and Swing, 2009). For example, Brittingham et al.
(2008) described the institutional researcher’s role as a supporting role during the
accreditation process where they are involved in the steering of the self-study team
and responsible for getting data reports completed. Reflecting on his career as the
Vice President of Finance at Cornell University, Ehrenberg (2005) observed that IR
can be a powerful tool to influence decisions made at an institution not just limited to

30
accreditation or accountability measures. For example, institutional data has been
used to make decisions on the packaging of financial aid, the graduate admissions
process, allocation of institutional resources, increase in selectivity rankings, and
changes to policies, to name a few (Ehrenberg, 2005). Knight and Leimer (2010)
assert that “IR is essential to accreditation, the search for best practices, governance,
quality improvement initiatives, accountability standards, program review,
assessment and evidence-based decision making; understanding faculty workload
and student populations; and strategic planning” (p. 109-110).
Others such as Swing (2009) predict that in the future, institutional
researchers will not only report data but also will be active in the decision making
process and facilitating institutional change. Swing (2009) predicts “they
[institutional researchers] will also actively engage in the process of managing and
leading institutional change…institutional research is evolving toward a unique
blend of data skills, strategic planning, outcomes assessment, and advocacy for
improvement” (p. 5).
The literature on the new role of institutional researchers has an underlying
agreement that the role of the institutional researcher is evolving (Brittingham et al.,
2008; Ehrenberg, 2005; Knight & Leimer, 2010; Swing, 2009). Institutional
researchers are evolving past the traditional role of completing external and internal
reports and conducting research that is important to improving the effectiveness of
the institution. The RP Group (2009), which is short for “The Research and
Planning Group of California Community Colleges,” has a mission, according to

31
their website where: “Through professional development and research, the RP Group
strengthens the ability of California community colleges to undertake high quality
research, planning, and assessments that improve evidence-based decision making,
institutional effectiveness, and success for all students.” They recently changed their
vision statement to reflect a new movement to “build a community college culture
that views planning, evidence-based decision making, and institutional effectiveness
as integral strategies for student success” (The RP Group, 2009, p. 2). There is an
emerging trend to use institutional researchers’ skills for institutional effectiveness.
With the exception of Darder (1994) and Dowd et al. (2007), the previously
mentioned authors have not discussed institutional researchers’ roles in relation to
improving racial equity. This role would be specific to HSIs because of the large
minority population these institutions are serving. Darder (1994) argues that current
practices of institutional research do not take into account or acknowledge the
differences of non-White students. Similarly, Darder (1994) challenges institutional
researchers to produce culturally democratic research that takes race/ethnicity into
consideration when looking at the educational outcomes of their students. Darder
(1994) contends that there needs to be a push to recognize color when doing such
research. This recognition of color can also be thought of as being “color-conscious”
(Bensimon et al., 2007).
Dowd et al. (2007) looked at how institutional researchers can become
teachers and equity advocates. They found five ways in how it happens: (1) So I’m
Bringing It Up Again – they bring up the topic again when it was left unaddressed;

32
(2) An “A-ha” Moment – helping others recognize concepts like inequity by
presented the data differently until they understand; (3) Multivariate Thinking—
which is “the tendency to look for explanations of disparities in student outcomes
rather than to recognize the problematic nature of those disparities” (Dowd et al.,
2007, p. 25); (4) Keeping Equity Issues on the Table – such as making equity a
common goal; and (5) Co-constructed Understanding of Equity – having everyone
involved in the process of making meaning on what equity means to them. With
these findings by Dowd et al. (2007), one may conceptualize and reframe the role of
institutional researcher as an agent of organizational learning as well as a teacher of
data.
Organizational Role
Where the IR office is situated in an organization can limit the role they play
within the organization (Leimer, 2009). Morest and Jenkins (2007) estimated that
due to limited staffing, one-fifth of the institutional researcher offices surveyed have
only very basic reporting functions. Directors of institutional research are in
positions of middle-management within community colleges and may report directly
to the president (Morest and Jenkins, 2007). However, even though they may report
to the president, their status as “director” (as opposed to a senior administrator with
institutional responsibilities like a vice-president) does not give them the same level
of authority and responsibility. Leimer (2009) and Swing (2009) agree with this
sentiment as they indicated as well that institutional researchers are not in a position
to make decisions because they are of low status or housed in different units.

33
Institutional researchers can also play an important role in the effectiveness
of the institution and the decision making of senior administrators. Research by
Delaney (2001) found that institutional researchers felt they were the most effective
when they met four characteristics: (1) employed in IR for several years; (2) held a
doctorate; (3) served as associate directors; and (4) reported directly to the
institution’s president. A survey sent to 304 institutional researchers in the northeast
by Delaney (2001) came back with a 73% response rate. The careers of the
institutional researchers varied in regards to the types of institutions they worked at
(university, four-year college, two-year college, and other). The results indicated
that 47% of institutional researchers “often” or “very frequently” served on planning
and policy committees (Delaney, 2001). The survey was able to show as well that a
strong indicator of effectiveness was when institutional researchers had the ability to
present their work in executive meetings. However, only one-third of the
respondents indicated that they “often” or “very frequently” had their work presented
at executive meetings. A lack of organizational support limits their ability to present
at executive meetings (Delaney, 2001). This, in turn, limits their participation in
decision-making and recognition as an important resource when making decisions
(Knight & Leimer, 2010). In addition to their roles, institutional researchers may be
guided by professional values (such as those from the RP Group or the Association
for Institutional Research (AIR)) that would enhance or limit their participation in
decision-making practices or data reporting methods.

34
Values
Like other professions, institutional researchers are guided by their own
values and guiding principles. The study of a profession is guided by theory, facts,
and politics (Brante, 1988). Researchers (Brante, 1988; Bucher & Strauss, 1961) in
the field of sociology of professions illustrate two types of theoretical constructions
within this field: functionalism or naivism and the neoweberian or “cynical”
alternative. For the purpose of this study, this following will only focus on the
functionalist or naivist approach.
In the functionalist approach, people within the same fields share a common
identity, values, definitions of roles, and interests (Brante, 1988; Bucher & Strauss,
1961). Brante (1988) describes the “professional man” in his article as one who is
engaged in affective neutrality, universalism, collectivity, functional specificity, and
achieved competence. The literature on institutional researchers shared the same
descriptions (Saupe, 1990; Terenzini, 1993; Walleri, 2003). This “professional man”
has a neutral role where he is not emotionally engaged in his research and has a
universal role where everyone is treated the same regardless of status or race and is
collectivity working for the common good and has a specific function in producing
data for effective decision making. The role is based on having the knowledge to
produce the data and not because of an ascribed status (Saupe, 1990; Terenzini,
1993; Walleri, 2003).
It is thought that the institutional research office is “at the center of some of
the most contentious and politically charged issues within the organization” (Walleri,

35
2003, p. 50), and to be credible, they must remain neutrality. Walleri (2003)
proposes that the expectation of neutrality constrains them from becoming a true
“part” of the administrative team. Because IR officers are on the outside looking in,
they are better equipped to “assess the relationships between the organization’s
strategic vision, operational plans, resource allocation decisions, and unit and overall
performance” (Walleri, 2003, p. 50). Delaney’s (2001) study on the perceptions of
effectiveness of IR staff found that effective IR leaders possessed certain qualities of
character. These characteristics included being trustworthy and honest, having
integrity, and having the ability to communicate and see a vision/grand plan.
Seeing data go unused is one of the most frustrating things for an institutional
researcher (McClintock & Snider, 2008). Data are an obvious value to institutional
researchers, but another value that institutional researchers hold is purpose (Saupe,
1990). “Each activity or project of institutional research should be guided by a
purpose or set of purposes stated as specifically as possible” (Saupe, 1990, p. 9).
Purpose is important because most often, as suggested by IR literature, IR offices
lack adequate resources to take requests because of “just wanting to know” or just
because someone is curious (Saupe, 1990; Walleri, 2003; RP Group, 2009). Having
inadequate resources is unfortunate because according to Saupe (1990), sometimes
that curious thought could lead to something important for the institution to know.
Characteristics such as objectivity, credibility, and having purpose are all
advantages to institutional researchers because they can lead to the researchers being
seen as trustworthy and objective in their research (Leimer, 2009). Based on the

36
research, one could conclude that the role of an institutional researcher is to remain
objective throughout their research (Leimer, 2009). However, the objective view
challenges the notion that they are indeed in a political environment where race is
value-laden, such as the case of HSIs where the population in which they are
supposed to serve is underachieving in most educational indicators (i.e. success in
basic skills, transfer rates, bachelor’s attainment) (CCCCO, 2011; Moore & Shulock,
2009; University of California, 2010). The role that institutional researchers play
within an institution is also a political one (Darder, 1994). Traditional research
claims to be neutral and objective. Yet, without addressing inequities, it implicitly
negates the relevance of the cultural reality of minorities or worse, situates women
and people of color as victims or deficient (Darder, 1994). According to Darder
(1994), valuing objectivity and neutrality denies the possibility that institutional
research is political and allows institutional researchers to claim they are upholding
moral standards while defining what should be legitimate knowledge and ignoring all
other cultural and diverse aspects of the institution. Although values are important to
institutional researchers, there are certain types of knowledge they much possess in
order to be successful at their roles.
Institutional Researcher Knowledge
In an effort to define institutional research, Terenzini (1993) also defined
three tiers of intelligence an institutional researcher would need on the job: (1)
technical/analytical intelligence, (2) issues intelligence, and (3) contextual
intelligence.

37
Technical/analytical intelligence
The first tier on technical/analytical intelligence involves two kinds of
competencies: “factual knowledge or information, and analytical and methodological
skills and competencies” (Terenzini, 1993, p. 3). He describes factual knowledge as
consisting of the “counting units for the basic building blocks of institutional
research” (Terenzini, 1993, p. 3). Examples of this would include students, faculty,
finances, facilities, etc. For HSIs, examples of factual knowledge would include a
count on Hispanic students, Hispanic faculty, dollars spent per Hispanic student, and
other demographic measures for Hispanic students. The methodological skills and
competencies aspect of technical/analytical intelligence refers to knowing different
methodologies for conducting research (Taranzini, 1993). Saupge (1990) and
Terenzini (1993) found that this includes both quantitative and qualitative research
methods.
In HSIs, the methodological reasoning behind the research may matter
because of the population which they serve. Institutional research and its current
research methodology, according to Darder (1994), reinforce the view of a “dualistic,
objective, value-free, hierarchical, and instrumental perspective regarding
knowledge” (p. 23), making it seem impossible for institutional researchers to take a
value-laden topic like race into account.

38
Issues intelligence
The second tier involves issues intelligence (Terenzini, 1993).
Issues intelligence involves most of the substantive problems on which
technical and analytical issues is brought to bear…Substantive Tier 2
intelligence comprises knowledge of the major issues or decision areas that
face institutions and the people who manage them” (Terenzini, 1993, p. 4).

Having this type of intelligence involves knowing about enrollment goal
setting, pricing (if you are in a private college), resource allocation and reallocation,
human resources concerns, and institutional self-study, to name a few. A researcher
with this type of intelligence can understand the issues that concern the people
involved in middle and upper management. An example is that IR professions will
not only know about the procedures of the hiring process but will also understand the
process and issues that go into hiring someone to fill a certain role. There is an
understanding of the process and how decisions are made.
Contextual intelligence
The last of Terenzini’s (1993) three organizational intelligences needed by
institutional researchers is contextual intelligence. “Contextual intelligence involves
understanding the culture both of higher education in general and the particular
campus where the institutional researcher works” (Terenzini, 1993, p. 5).
Understanding their particular institution involves understanding the mission and
history of the particular campus, how decisions are made (both procedurally and
politically), the faculty and organizational culture, formal and informal structures of
the college, and all the key players involved. Knowledge is also needed for

39
understanding the role the institution plays at the local, state, national and
international level.
In relation to issues and organizational intelligences and the Hispanic-serving
aspect, institutional researchers at HSIs in California should: (1) have knowledge of
the history of Hispanics in California (how they came to be in California, their
educational attainment, their cultural values); (2) be race conscious, recognize that it
is important to see race, and talk about inequality; and (3) not blame students for
their outcomes but view the outcomes as an institutional responsibility. Hispanic-
serving institutional researchers in their capacity would understand multicultural
education (Bennett, 2001), culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2000), and equity-
mindedness (Bensimon et al, 2007) and use tools such as the equity scorecard
(Bensimon, 2004) in order to shed new light on understanding the situation of
Hispanics in education.
Bennett (2001), Gay (2000), and Bensimon et al. (2007) assert that culture
must be taken into account in order to make learning more appropriate for minorities.
Individuals must also be aware of the common assumptions held on certain groups in
order to avoid already negative feelings toward minority students. Bennett (2000)
coins this as “developing multicultural competence” in order to become culturally
aware of others. In the case of institutional researchers in HSIs, the institutional
researchers should become culturally aware of Hispanics. In the case of working in
HSIs, becoming culturally aware may require understanding the history of Hispanics
as well as understanding their education attainments as a group.

40
Summary on Institutional Researchers
Throughout the literature on institutional researchers and the knowledge they
are required to have, institutional researchers are portrayed as people who are
technical and analytical by nature (Terenzini, 1993), structural (Walleri, 2003), and
reactive (Leimer, 2009). These types of attributes would suggest that it is not
possible for institutional researchers to raise awareness of Hispanic inequities and
take on the role of advocacy. Darder (1994) asserts that institutional researchers in
community colleges fall into the traditional role more than institutional researchers
from other institutional types. Institutional researchers have been socialized
according to the norms of the scientific research model. Accordingly, they view
research as value-free and define their own role as objective scientists responsible for
reporting the facts (Darder, 1994).
The expressed purpose of research at traditional institutions is to produce
‘objective’ knowledge that is focused upon prediction of conditions and
subsequent interventions, with the goal of better managing or controlling the
institutional environment through more effective control of its constituents
(Darder, 1994, p. 27).

Where institutional researchers construe their role as objective and value-free
scientists, the notion of using institutional research to raise awareness about
controversial topics such as the educational underachievement of a particular racial
group may seem inappropriate.
One possibility of what institutional researchers can look like at HSIs is that
they become more culturally democratic within their research roles (Darder, 1994).
In her work on the four different institutional paradigms, Darder (1994) described a

41
culturally democratic institution as one where “culture is viewed as an integral and
fundamental component of the collective, as well as crucial to the individual identity
of all human beings” (p. 31). A culturally democratic institution is “expected to
produce knowledge that supports the emancipatory intent of the institution” (Darder,
1994, p. 32). In order to facilitate such research, institutional researchers would need
to support a view where the historical, political, and cultural contexts of their
institutional make-up are utilized and taken into consideration. Taking on such a
role does not allow institutional researchers to remove themselves from the research
and stay neutral because in culturally democratic research, the values and the
interests of the researcher are taken into consideration.
In a literature review by Stage (2007), she examined the context of critical
social sciences as cited by Schwandt (1997) and characterized it in five different
themes.
First, it aims to integrate theory and practice so that individuals are aware
of inconsistencies and contradictions between their belief systems and social
practices. Second, critical social science rejects the idea of a detached social
scientist and ‘is oriented toward social and individual transformation’. Third,
critical social science rejects traditional empirical research schemes, which
aim to eliminate crisis, conflict, and critique. Critical social science
embraces practical, moral, and ethically and politically informed research.
Fourth, critical social inquires enlightened self-knowledge and effective
social political action. Finally, critical social research examines possibility
and transformation as outcomes of the research (p. 6).

Darder (1994) and Stage (2007) eluded to the fact that when one takes
race/ethnicity into consideration in doing institutional research, institutional
researchers are breaking out of their traditional role as objective researchers.

42
Becoming an agent of organizational learning is one of the ways in which
institutional researchers can make a change in their traditional roles.
Conceptual Framework
This study will be looked at through the framework of organizational
learning. The conceptual design of the study is informed by Huber’s (1991) four
constructs of organizational learning, specifically: (1) knowledge acquisition, (2)
information distribution, (3) information interpretation, and (4) memory storage.
The fourth construct; memory storage, will be defined, but will not contribute a great
deal to this study. Huber’s (1991) constructs will be coupled with Bauman’s (2002)
analysis of data practices that support or inhibit the capacity of institutional actors to
engage in the kind of organizational learning that is needed to tackle issues that are
value-laden. There is background provided for each of the frameworks followed by
how institutional researchers can use organizational learning based on Huber’s
(1991) four constructs to raise awareness for Hispanic inequity in basic skills
education outcomes.
Organizational Learning
Organizational learning can be a powerful tool for accomplishing long-term
school improvement projects (Ingram, Seashore, & Schroeder, 2004). As stated
previously in chapter one, organizational learning happens when institutional actors
ask questions and discuss what the current assumptions and values are, and then
challenge those assumptions and values to create/sustain change (Boyce, 2003).
Huber (1991) asserts that learning occurs when any organizational unit finds

43
something useful and, in the processes of doing so, changes the behavior of the
organization. Huber (1991) organized organizational learning into four constructs –
(1) knowledge acquisition, (2) information distribution, (3) information
interpretation, and (4) organizational memory. Knowledge acquisition is the process
in which knowledge or information is obtained. Information distribution represents
how the information is shared among others and what is made of the information.
Information interpretation is how the information is looked at and what new ideas
can come from it. Organizational memory is simply how this new information is
stored and retrieved at a future time (Huber, 1991).
Bauman (2002) discussed the use of data as a way to facilitate organizational
learning. According to Bauman (2002), data are facts about a specific event. Data
are used to convey information and knowledge. Data alone is not knowledge
because people must be the ones using data in order to create knowledge (Bauman,
2002). Generating such knowledge can help institutional actors learn about
themselves to determine the improvements that colleges need in order to be more
effective. Bauman (2002) contended that through the use of data, three conditions of
organizational learning can happen in higher education institutions: (a) new ideas are
formed and presented (b) doubt begins to arise about current knowledge and current
practices on why and how things are done and (c) the knowledge is disseminated
among other institutional members within the community (Bauman, 2002).
Universities have been commonly characterized as decentralized, “loosely-
coupled” organizations that can make small adjustments to their systems easily, but

44
have a difficult time adjusting to major change (Birnbaum, 1988; Boyce, 2003; Dill,
1999). Dill (1999) also found in his review that the many characteristics that come
along with being a loosely coupled system make it so universities can never be
learning organizations. Learning organizations differ from organizational learning in
that with the former, learning is maximized because it studies the generation of
change and its consequences while organizational learning “studies the phenomena
of learning within organizational contexts” (Dill, 1999, p. 129). Learning
organizations are applied and action oriented, whereas organizational learning is
much more theoretical. However, Dill (1999) proposed that institutions can learn if
an architectural base is established. Dill (1999) found organizational characteristics
considered to be the “architecture” of a learning organization: (1) culture of evidence
must be instilled into academic problem solving; (2) improved coordination of
teaching units; (3) learning from others, meaning the “seeking out [of] knowledge
from others is fundamental to academic research, but has not been systematically
applied to the improvement of the basic processes of teaching and learning” (p. 150);
(4) university-wide coordination of “learning,” meaning that “an additional
architectural change is the development at the pan-university level of structures for
providing more effective coordination, support, and accountability for the systematic
improvement of teaching and learning” (p. 150) and (5) transferring knowledge.
Knowledge Acquisition
Knowledge acquisition is how information is obtained. There are five
processes involved with knowledge acquisition: (1) congenital learning; (2)

45
experimental learning; (3) vicarious learning; (4) grafting; and (5) searching and
noticing (Huber, 1991). These processes are all activities used to acquire
information. They range from knowledge that is learned through prior experience,
experiments, second-hand experience, looking for new sources of knowledge (i.e.
other people), and from searching for new information and finding information that
was meant to be unintentional (Huber, 1999). Other authors have described
knowledge acquisition as a culture of evidence (Dill, 1999), learning from prior
experience and acquiring knowledge (Ingram et al., 2004). In relation to using data
to promote organizational learning, knowledge acquisition in regards to Bauman’s
(2002) conditions of organizational learning would be the formation of new ideas
and the cultivation of doubt in existing ideas and practices.
Information Distribution
Huber’s (1991) second construct requires the transferring of knowledge,
learning from others (i.e. new ideas), university-wide coordination of learning (Dill,
1999), locating and fixing problems, processing knowledge as an organization
(Ingram et al., 2004), and the dissemination of knowledge among other institutional
members within the community (Bauman, 2002). Huber (1991) considers
information distribution as the main factor that contributes to the outcome of
organizational learning because learning occurs when organizations piece together
new information to locate a problem that exists. Huber (1991) provided the example
of a warehouse:

46
Consider that organizational components commonly develop ‘new’
information by piecing together items of information that they obtain from
other organizational units, as when a shipping department learns that a
shortage problem exists by comparing information from the warehouse with
the information from the sales department (p. 100).

Information Interpretation
Information interpretation involves giving meaning to the information that is
presented (Huber, 1991). According to Huber (1991), the interpretation of new
information is dependent on five circumstances: (1) how the information was
processed previously, (2) how the new information is framed by the organization, (3)
how and by what means the information is distributed, (4) the amount of information
the organization is able to process at one time, and (5) the amount of unlearning
about prior processes/information that the organization must go through to process
this new information. These conditions align with one of Bauman’s (2002)
conditions for organizational learning in that doubt begins to arise about current
knowledge and current practices on why and how things are done. There is a process
in which members of an organizational unit begin to question what they are doing,
but must make meaning of the questions being asked. The questioning of existing
knowledge is when the opportunity for learning occurs, and a new interpretation is
derived from it.
Organizational Memory
The fourth and final construct from Huber (1991) is organizational memory.
Although the focus is on the first three constructs, this last construct is defined as
how the information is stored and how the information is retrieved in the future for

47
making decisions. Institutional research offices are considered areas of data storage
because those offices are where data are stored for the generation of knowledge
(Petrides, 2002). The relationship between organizational memory and Bauman’s
(2002) use of organizational learning is not demonstrated in this case.
Institutional Researchers as Agents of Organizational Learning
In this section, a connection is made to the literature to show how
institutional researchers can use organizational learning to raise awareness of
Hispanic inequities in HSIs. Bensimon (2004), Bensimon et al. (2004), and Dowd et
al. (2008) have all described ways, through their work with the Center for Urban
Education (CUE), to acquire knowledge about inequity and how it can be framed as
a real problem in education. Stanton-Salazar (1997) and Darder (1994, 2005)
addressed the importance of having race/ethnicity taken into consideration when
looking at minority children in education settings as well as the importance of having
information distributed to certain groups so they too can excel in their academics.
Current literature has also shown that institutional researchers can use organizational
learning to make institutional actors aware of problems that exist but were not
thought to be problems (Petrides, 2002). One such example is the problem presented
by Bauman (2002) in which she described Leland College as thinking it was doing a
good job on the GPA of its graduating class, but when the data were disaggregated,
the college realized that the Black students were not achieving as highly in equitable
rates.

48
In the study of institutional researchers, Petrides (2002) describes
institutional research personnel to be the first and usually only line of defense when
there is a response to necessary accountability mandates. This is true because they
are responsible for the analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of such data
(Petrides, 2002). Due to institutional researchers’ process of disseminating
information and building a broad organizational view, IR staff can help foster
organizational learning by relating evidence to the institutional mission and values of
the community in which they serve (Leimer, 2009).
Institutional research can help facilitate such organizational learning by
participating in or forming horizontally and vertically mixed work groups,
serving on campus committees, hosting open forums, or facilitating retreats at
which participants present and discuss relevant data, research, and context
(Leimer, 2009, p. 89).

The nature of the work of institutional researchers makes them the catalyst
for helping to create and support research created for decision-making (Petrides,
2002). Leimer (2009) also found that IR offices have the ability to foster
organizational learning as well because of their ability to relate evidence to the
institutional mission and values through the process of information dissemination
and building a broad organizational view. Interpretation of information, according to
Brittingham et al. (2008), suggests that IR staff can: (1) offer support to the team by
making sure that the data are understood and used in the process; (2) help define
success and develop meaningful ways to measure and present the results; and (3)
help learn the value of “negative findings.” Learning the value of negative findings

49
is of great importance since acceptance of negative results will help to drive the
development of realistic plans to address the identified weaknesses.
Questioning Data to Raise Awareness of Hispanic Inequities

As mentioned previously, Bauman (2002) discussed the use of data as a way
to facilitate organizational learning. Bauman (2002) contended that through the use
of data, three conditions of organizational learning can happen in higher education
institutions: (a) new ideas are formed and presented; (b) doubt begins to arise about
current knowledge and current practices on why and how things are done; and (c) the
knowledge is disseminated among other institutional members within the
community.
A different way to frame data to cultivate new information or ideas is to
disaggregate the data by race/ethnicity and income (Jenkins & Kerrigan, 2009;
Bauman, 2002). Bauman (2002) asserted that by doing so, new questions can be
generated. She elaborated the three conditions of organizational learning by
applying them to Leland College, a fictitious institutions that served as a case study
(Bauman, 2002). Her example began by telling a story that executive members of
the college thought that their student outcomes were good because of the overall
GPA of their graduating class (Bauman, 2002). However, to illustrate that there may
be a problem, Bauman (2002) said that instead of only asking about for the GPA of
the graduating class, the question should be, “What is the GPA of our graduating
African Americans?” Based on her research, Bauman (2002) concluded that
questions about data that could be used for institutional improvement was seldom

50
asked by institutional actors. Disaggregating data was also one of the four
conditions that Jenkins and Kerrigan (2009) described for the use of data. The
example provided by Bauman (2002) makes a strong case that institutional
researchers at HSIs can also ask questions about Hispanic student achievement in
relation to graduation rates, transfer rates, success and retention rates in basic skills,
and other indicators of success.
Santiago and her colleagues (2004), through the Demonstration Project,
suggested looking at different measures and trends of Latino college enrollment.
One example of using different measures was mentioned earlier when Contreras et
al. (2008) looked at Hispanic outcomes at HSIs through an equity index. The equity
index is “a measure of proportionality to establish how far or how close a particular
group is from reaching representation on a particular indication of attainment that is
equal to their representation in a specified population pool” (Contreras et al., 2008, p.
80). A different way of handling Hispanic research was suggested by Miller and
Garcia (2004) in looking at data to better increase Hispanic student success in higher
education in terms of using institutional research. Their recommendations included
asking an institutional researcher to specifically monitor and assess the educational
progress of Latino students as well as other underrepresented students (Miller &
Garcia, 2004).
When working on institutional research, questions can be framed differently
for institutional researchers at HSIs to incorporate their roles in serving their
Hispanic students. Stage (2007) referred to this as being a “quantitative criticalist” in

51
which quantitative critical inquiry is based on the questions that are asked as opposed
to what methods are used to answer the questions. For example, institutional
researchers may ask about the outcomes of Hispanics in a particular intervention of
basic skills math. In relation to student success, they can ask for data on how
successful Hispanic students are in basic skills English or how many Hispanic
students are earning associate’s degrees and transferring to four-year institutions in
relation to the rest of their student body. Stage (2007) argued that critical
quantitative researchers (which institutional researchers can be in an organizational
learning context), have two tasks to fulfill. First, they use data to represent inequities
in educational processes and outcomes in a larger scale, and second, they should
question current practices and offer new practices to describe the experiences of
those who have not been adequately represented (Stage, 2007).
Research has also suggested that data on Latino students be disaggregated to
Latino subpopulations (Hurtado, 2002; Miller & Garcia, 2004) since among the
different Latino/a groups,
Cuban Americans are four times more likely than Mexican American adults
to have attended college…Mexican Americans or Chicanos constitute 60% of
the overall Hispanic population; therefore, college access issues are much
more salient for the majority of Latino/as located in the Southwest and
Midwest (Hurtado, 2002, p. 123).

In addition to ethnicity, there is also an educational attainment gap between
recent immigrants or first-generation Latino/as and those who have lived in the
United States for longer periods of time (Hurtado, 2002). Museus and Truong
(2009) discussed how not taking into account the diversity that exists within ethnic

52
groups (in their case, Asian-Americans) can be damaging to the perception of the
ethnic group. Such a practice may perpetuate common misconceptions of Asian-
Americans and not take into account subgroups within the Asian-American
population (Museus & Truong, 2009). Disaggregating data in such a manner
strengthens Terenzini’s (1993) issues and the idea of contextual intelligence where
the institutional researcher understands the populations on campus and that there are
different Hispanic subgroups that achieve higher than others (Hurtado, 2002).
Current Practices in Disaggregating Data
Institutions tend to disaggregate enrollment data by race and ethnicity, but
when it comes to disaggregating data on student outcomes by race/ethnicity, it is
rarely done or thought of (Bensimon, 2004). Morest and Jenkins (2007) found that
only 26% of the institutional researchers surveyed considered studies disaggregated
by race/ethnicity to be a high priority, and 41% of the respondents considered such a
practice to be a low priority or disaggregating data were not done at all. According
to McClenney et al. (2007), when institutions can see the differences in performance
amongst different groups of students, they can easily focus more on the students with
the greatest need. By disaggregating data by race and ethnicity, an institution can
see the problem of inequities and begin to use interventions that can lead to positive
student outcomes (McClenney et al., 2007).
Often, institutions fail to disaggregate student outcome data by race and
ethnicity because they have (HSIs in particular) reached “Stage One Diversity”
(Bensimon, 2004). “Stage One Diversity” is “a student body that is racially and

53
ethnically diverse on a statistical basis – they failed to see the need for
disaggregating their data further by race and ethnicity” (p. 48). Bensimon’s (2004)
article cautions that disaggregating data by race and ethnicity can yield unfavorable
reactions. Such responses can include being suspicious of the data, admitting fewer
students of a particular group to their institution, contributing to preconceived
notions about particular groups, and not pursuing the matter further because it was
“highly political” (Bensimon, 2004, p. 49). It is not just institutions that fail to
disaggregate student outcomes data by race/ethnicity, outside groups that are
institutional research organizations, such as The RP Group (2009), fail to mention
the disaggregation of student outcomes data by race/ethnicity as well.
The RP Group (2009) Narrative Report on the Basic Skills Capacity
Outcomes Project (BSOC) made no mention of disaggregating data. The project was
developed to establish a consistent set of benchmarks to help California Community
Colleges gather information for intervention practices as well as to develop a culture
of evidence. The RP Group (2009) recommended what they called “The Gold
Standard,” where they track students by using a cohort model through their time in
basic skills courses. The BSOC recommended looking at data such as discipline and
certificate/degree/transfer rates for basic skills students over a period of time, and
collecting information on short and long-term milestones. However, their report did
not discuss looking at disaggregating data by race/ethnicity as a standard when
tracking basic skills students who, for the most part, as mentioned earlier, are
Hispanic (CCCCO, 2010). The report also did not mention disaggregating data by

54
race/ethnicity to see who exactly reached their intended milestones. Such a practice
would be fitting to find out if interventions are working and who are succeeding in
basic skills courses. Institutional researchers and other institutional actors at HSIs
can ask that these data be further disaggregated by race/ethnicity to see if all
racial/ethnic groups are succeeding with the intervention or in general.
As mentioned earlier, Bauman’s (2002) case study on Leland College
illustrated the importance of disaggregating data by race and ethnicity. In Bauman’s
(2002) example, she described Leland College to be a private, four-year institution
with a diverse student body (25% African-American, 35% Latino students, 20%
Asian American students, and 20% white students). The college community thought
they were doing a good job in serving their diverse population because of a high
graduation rate and high acceptance rates to top graduate programs among students
who had high GPAs. It turns out, as they further investigated by disaggregating data
by race and ethnicity, that African-American and Latino students were graduating at
lower rates and had lower GPAs than their white peers (Bauman, 2002). This is
something that the institution would have probably never found out if disaggregating
student outcomes data by race/ethnicity was not performed. Bensimon (2002) found
that this type of data is often available, but is generally not asked for. By looking at
data in this way, institutional actors are able to see inequitable outcomes in
educational achievement, thus leading to a possible change in policies and practices
that may help to reduce dropout rates and improve the academic success of
underserved students (Pathways to College Network, 2007).

55
Potential Data Indicators to Track Hispanic Performance
In order to commit to doing institutional research in HSIs, specific data
should be readily available. Miller and Garcia (2004) recommended that data be
available on grade point averages (GPAs), gateway (basic skills) courses, program
evaluation data, and financial/working hours of Latino students. Bensimon (2004)
called these statistical sets “vital signs” because they are fundamental data that
institutions collect to report on a regular basis, however, she argues that outcomes in
equity rarely show up as an indicator for academic success. Bensimon (2004)
argues that institutions will obsess over SAT scores for their entering freshmen class
but will not know what the proportion is of their underrepresented students who do
not obtain GPAs that will make them qualify for highly selective Ph.D. programs.
The distribution of GPAs for students in every racial/ethnic group will allow
senior officials/institutional researchers to know where students fall and what GPAs
they graduate with (Miller & Garcia, 2004). Miller & Garcia (2004) do not only
suggest looking at graduating GPA but also looking at the success in basic skills or
gateway courses. These courses are important because senior officials can use them
to determine which courses Hispanics students are not succeeding at and at what
point of their degree progress within a certain major do academic problems begin to
arise. Miller and Garcia (2004) suggest using multiple dimensions when looking at
academic success, such as GPAs, graduating rates, four-six year graduation rate, and
quality of courses taken. Such information allows for data to be collected on the

56
value of these programs for students who participate and for those who do not
participate.
Academic indicators are important, but other indicators need to be taken into
account as well. The majority of Hispanic students are non-traditional students
because they are working more than 20 hours a week, if not full-time (Santiago et al.,
2004). Therefore, to understand how the number of hours spent at work in a week
can affect academic outcomes, one of the last indicators Miller and Garcia (2004)
suggested to examine Hispanic student outcomes is the amount of work hours that
Latino/a students partake in. Miller and Garcia (2004) assert by doing so, senior
officials would be able to determine if a significant number of students are not doing
well because of the amount of hours they are working.
Developing a Culture of Evidence
The development of a culture of evidence may be useful for institutional
researchers to bring about awareness to problems like the inequity with Hispanics
and education. “Culture of evidence” can be defined in multiple ways. Bauman
(2002), McClenney et al. (2007), Dowd et al. (2009), and Jenkins and Kerrigan
(2009) defined the culture of evidence differently. Bauman (2002) used culture of
evidence to describe new ways of looking at data to ask new questions of data.
Jenkins and Kerrigan’s (2009) definition of culture of evidence was more about the
frequency of data use. McClenney et al. (2007) described culture of evidence as
“institutional and individual reflection and action are typically prompted and
supported by data about student learning and institutional performance” (p. 27).

57
Dowd et al. (2009) described culture of evidence as using data to drive decision-
making but found that the change in practice has not happened because data has not
been used for learning, but instead used as a management tool. Bauman (2002)
believed that data in itself cannot be the change. Data is a tool that is used to create
change. This method of change is through organizational learning in which Bauman
(2002) describes a process of single loop and double loop learning within a culture of
evidence. Institutional researchers can be a part of the process in developing double-
loop learning environments within their institutional settings.
The RP Group (2009) has also discussed new demands of institutional
researchers and, in addition to the production, dissemination, and interpretation of
data, IR offices will be charged with translating evidence into action and closing and
widening the loop. Translating evidence into action is meant for institutional
researchers to assist institutional actors in using data to make decisions on
improvement and planning. Closing and widening the loop involves institutional
researchers’ assistance in turning the decision-making process into action and then
evaluating the action made based on data. Institutional researchers are usually
brought in towards the end to evaluate a program, but instead, the RP Group (2009)
argues they should be used throughout the entire process on the development,
implementation, and evaluation of a program. Using data to make decisions is at the
heart of creating a culture of evidence.
Although the authors may be talking about the term “culture of evidence,”
what the “culture of evidence” is supposed to look like varies. Jenkins and Kerrigan

58
(2009) implied that if data are used, then a culture of evidence is embraced and
change may happen. Their definition was based on how frequently data were used
and if data were used at all. Morest (2009) based her definition on the collection and
examination of data to make decisions on student learning outcomes and success.
There was not a learning piece attached to it. Bauman (2002) and McClenney et al.
(2007) thought of “culture of evidence” as a learning tool to changes in practice
through double-looped learning. Jenkins and Kerrigan’s (2009) research had some
positive findings for future practice. They found that schools that took part of the
Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count
8
initiative were more likely to use
data than schools that did not. In addition, this was also an on-going process of
moving towards a data usage culture (Jenkins & Kerrigan, 2009). Jenkins and
Kerrigan (2009) also found what types of data faculty and administrators typically
used and why they used or did not use data. How data are used will determine how
learning may occur in one of two ways, the first being single-looped learning and the
second being double-looped learning (Boyce, 2003).
Single- vs. Double- Looped Learning.
Single-loop learning occurs when an underlying assumption goes
unquestioned or unchallenged (Boyce, 2003). Institutional actors in this case locate
a problem, but do not ask “why” or “how” it came to being. Single-loop learning
refers to a temporary change. Double-loop learning can happen in two ways. The

8
Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count is non-profit that focuses on
helping students succeed, particularly those student groups that are considered to be
students of color and/or low-income.

59
first way refers to generating change that is irreversible and transformational (Boyce,
2003; and Bauman, 2002). Boyce (2003) asserts that in the second type of double-
loop learning, “the fundamental values that drive organizational inquiry are changed;
and, hence, the theory-in-use and the inquiry itself are changed” (p. 127).
Institutional researchers as change agents can promote double-looped learning
through the information dissemination and information interpretation process of
Huber’s (1991) organizational learning constructs.
According to Bensimon et al. (2007), double-looped learning can happen by
using various methods. The first step can be as simple as disaggregating data on
student outcomes by race/ethnicity. Another step to consider would be the use of
equity as an indicator of institutional performance. Bensimon et al. (2007) argue that
in doing so, equity-mindedness is developed and four things are evident when this
happens: (1) racial disparities in educational outcomes are interpreted differently; (2)
inequities are made transparent; (3) racial and cultural assumptions should be taken
into consideration; and (4) race should be discussed. In being equity-minded, such a
development could be seen as taking on the role of agent of organizational learning
to promote equal outcomes.
Organization Learning, Data-Use, and Double-Looped Learning
Data can also be used to change the values of an institution (Bauman, 2002).
This is done through double-loop learning. One of the processes of double-loop
learning involves raising doubt on the current performance of the college and
welcoming new possibilities by asking new questions, like the graduation rate of

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African Americans. By doing so at the fictitious Leland College, Bauman (2002)
revealed a new problem in institutional performance which challenged a prior
assumption that Leland College was graduating all students at a high rate. Dowd
(2005) found data could also be used as a strong tool for the benchmarking process.
She explained the processes involved with three different types of benchmarking
techniques that can be used to seek out best practices amongst peer institutions. The
first technique is performance benchmarking, “also called metric benchmarking.”
She went on to note that performance benchmarking “is simplest and takes place
through the straightforward though often superficial comparison of performance
data” (Dowd, 2005, p. 2). The next type is diagnostic benchmarking which “is a
‘health check’ that seeks to characterize an organization’s performance status and to
identify areas that need improvement” (Dowd, 2005, p. 2). Finally, the last type
being process benchmarking which “is the most expensive and time-consuming type
of benchmarking. It involves an in-depth comparative examination of a specific core
practice at two or more institutions” (Dowd, 2005, p. 3).
Through double-looped learning, institutional researchers may be the perfect
candidates to promote organizational learning within their institutions (Petrides,
2002). They are the collectors of student data, thus enabling them to present student
outcomes data that will fit their institutional needs and characteristics (Benitez &
DeAro, 2004). Institutional researchers can also seek out different types of measures
for student success within their institutions (Miller & Garcia, 2008). According to
Benitez and DeAro (2004), current federal guidelines state that when a student takes

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more than three years to graduate from a community college, that student cannot be
counted as a success. Benitez and DeAro (2004) argue that institutional researchers
should help others to recognize that students enrolled in Hispanic-serving
community colleges are generally non-traditional, part-time students and that
measures like a three-year graduation rate may not be practical.
Institutional researchers may use their role as an agent of organizational
learning in order to enhance the academic success and provide greater support of
Hispanic students. Students enrolled in community colleges are often the first in
their families to attend college and are often confronted with obstacles to overcome,
such as remediation courses (Dowd, 2007; Benitez & DeAro, 2004). Making other
institutional actors aware of these students by showing and explaining data on the
academic outcomes of Hispanics may lead to the development of programs and
practices that can promote Hispanic student success. Such a task will require a new
way to conceptualize the college experience from recruitment through graduation
and thereafter (Benitez & DeAro, 2004).
Summary
This chapter introduced the Hispanic Serving Institutions and institutional
researchers. These are two components that are central to this research study. The
conceptual framework of organizational learning was also explained. As previously
mentioned in chapter 1, the conceptual framework used in this study is
organizational learning based on a combination of Huber’s (1991) four constructs
and Bauman’s (2002) example of applying organizational learning to data practices.

62
This chapter concluded by discussing how institutional researchers can promote
organizational learning to help raise awareness in Hispanic inequity to support the
academic achievement of Hispanic students. In the upcoming chapter, the research
methodology for this study will be explained.

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CHAPTER 3: METHODS

Prior to moving to Los Angeles, I lived in New York where I was born and
raised. From across the country, I always heard two things about California besides
it being Hollywood and glamour. The first being that the higher education system in
California is the envy of many states and the second being that there is a rapidly
increasing population of Hispanics in California that are making them the minority
majority of the state. It was not until I began working at a community college here
in the Los Angeles area that I realized the significance of an increasing Hispanic
population, and where Hispanics stood within the three-tiered University of
California system.
I started working at a community college in the San Gabriel Valley as a
research assistant for the Institutional Planning and Research Office. When I began
with this new role, I was charged with looking at success, retention, and persistence
rates of basic skills students in their courses and other intervention programs. In
doing so, I realized that when deans or faculty members would ask for data, they
would rarely ask for data to be disaggregated by race/ethnicity or even gender.
However, when data were disaggregated by race/ethnicity, I was able to see a big
disparity of academic outcomes from Hispanic students and their counterparts.
There were inequities everywhere within the institution from success rates to
graduation and transfer rates for Hispanics, Asians and Whites. With Hispanics
being the majority of the population at my college, they were second only to Blacks
in being the lowest achieving group.

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Finding out such information had me questioning why, as a Hispanic-Serving
institution, we were not doing more in voicing the fact that our Hispanic students
were not doing as well. I have been told that we are one of the better community
colleges in California, but better for whom? We are not serving the majority
(Hispanic students) of our population well. It left me wondering why institutional
researchers do not raise more awareness of the issue since they are the closest to the
data. I also found this to be important because recent research has shown that the
baby boomers will retire and that California will need an educated work force to
replace them, but how do we replace the baby boomers if California is now more
than a third Hispanics and they are one of the least educated groups (Myers, 2007)?
The combination of my role as an institutional researcher at a Hispanic-Serving
institution and living in the current state of California peaked my interested in
wanting to do this study.
Chapter Overview
Included in this chapter is an outline of the research approach and the
methods used to collect the data. The chapter begins by discussing why the
qualitative methodology was the method of choice. That is followed by a description
of the document analysis and interview procedures. Then, the sampling process for
how the interviewees were chosen for the study is discussed. A brief description of
the institutions, their surrounding areas, and the institutional researchers are included
after the description of the sampling process. The chapter ends with a discussion of
ethical concerns and how the data were analyzed.

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Research Approach

To review, the study and methods of data collection and analysis are guided
by the following research question:
o In what ways do the data collection, analysis, interpretation, and
dissemination practices of institutional researchers assist institutional actors
to learn about the educational outcomes of Hispanic students and reflect on
how to improve them?
Within the overarching question, the sub-questions are:
(1) how do institutional researchers’ interpretation of their position support or
limit their capacity to take on the role of change agent?
(2) in what ways do institutional researchers produce knowledge to inform the
campus community about Hispanic students’ outcomes? and,
(3) how does institutional culture support or limit their capacity to take on the
role of agent of organizational learning?
This study is one of applied research. According to Patton (2002), applied
research is often guided by basic theory and disciplinary knowledge to test
applications to real world problems. As mentioned previously in both chapters 1 and
2, the theoretical framework used for this research is organizational learning theory,
specifically Huber’s (1991) four constructs and the facilitation of organizational
learning through data-use by Bauman (2002). The study looked at how three
institutional researchers acquired knowledge, distributed information, and interpreted
information to help institutional actors use data to learn about the inequities in

66
academic achievement of Hispanic students at their institutions. “Applied
researchers are trying to understand how to deal with a significant societal problem”
(Patton, 2002, p. 217). With that in mind, this study examined the process by which
institutional researchers used organizational learning and data to raise awareness of
inequitable outcomes of Hispanics at HSIs in basic skills education that is preventing
Hispanic students from eventually transferring to four year colleges to complete their
bachelors.
Design Rationale
A qualitative approach was used to complete this study. As mentioned
earlier, the study seeks to understand how institutional researchers make meaning of
their roles in relation to being in a Hispanic-serving institution and if that role differs
from a traditional (non HSIs) institution. This inquiry is consistent with the
assumptions of qualitative study because qualitative study is an inquiry process
designed to understand a social or human problem through words in a natural setting
to tell a complex and detailed story (Creswell, 2002). According to Creswell (2002),
in qualitative inquiry, there are five assumptions to be made. The first is that the
participants in the study are the ones that view their reality, thus making reality
subjective. The second assumption is that the researcher and the subjects who are
being researched are not independent of each other because there is constant
interaction with one another. Third, there will be bias in the research based on the
values of the researcher. Fourth, the language used is informal and personal in
interviews. The last of Creswell’s (2002) assumptions is that the research done is

67
inductive, meaning that you start from something small and have it evolve during the
course of the research.
I came about choosing the qualitative paradigm because of various factors.
The first factor being that I am most comfortable in looking at a reality that is
subjective and believe that meaning is contingent on the person who is going through
the experience (Creswell, 2002). The second reason is that qualitative research
involves writing that is more illustrative as opposed to scientific, which is more of a
comfort as well for me (Creswell, 2002). The final reason is because of the nature of
the problem. The problem was meant to be explored with unknown variables and is
context specific (Creswell, 2002).
There are four methods associated within qualitative inquiry: ethnographies,
grounded theory, case studies, and phenomenological studies (Creswell, 2002). This
particular study used the case study method. For this type of method, the research is
focused on investigating three institutional researchers from three different
institutions for a period of a little less than a year. The case study method was used
because the nature of the study is to understand the roles and responsibilities of three
individuals (Creswell, 2002). In addition, the limited size of the study in terms of
participants led to a qualitative approach because qualitative research has the ability
to gain an abundant amount of information with a small number of people (Patton,
2002). The next section will describe the researcher’s role in relation to this study.

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Researcher’s Role
Unlike quantitative research, in qualitative research, the researcher is the
instrument used to interpret the data (Patton, 2002). Knowing this, I have an
understanding of my own biases. When I first embarked on this research project, I
was working as an entry-level institutional researcher at a Hispanic-serving
community college. I was working in this capacity from February 2009 until July
2010. I began as a research assistant that was only involved in conducting basic
skills research because of California’s Basic Skills Initiative (BSI). However, by
July 2009, my role had evolved to conducting general research for the entire
institution. Sharing the identity of the people I am going to study can shape my
opinion of them. However, I am looking to research the leaders of the institutional
research department, and I only have experience from the point of view of an entry-
level employee. My biases will only be what I think I would do as an upper-level
researcher and what I have seen from my previous supervisors at the specific
institution that I work at.
Throughout the research, I understood that my biases may come into play,
but I lessened the affect of these biases by remaining objective in my study by
looking at the data from an outsider’s point of view. I did not judge them on their
experiences and remembered that their reality and experiences are subjective and in
the context of their institution just like my experience was. I have also left the
community college in which I was employed as well as the field of institutional
research, which takes me away from seeing the day-to-day experiences of

69
institutional researchers that I was used to seeing when I was an institutional
researcher.
Sampling
The sampling method used was criterion sampling. In criterion sampling, the
researcher looks for cases that will meet some criterion of importance. This strategy
was used for quality assurance efforts (Patton, 2002). The criteria that I used were
community colleges in California situated in Los Angeles County and its
surrounding areas with institutions having at least a 25% Hispanic population. The
institutions needed to have their own free standing institutional research office.
Institutions that did not have their own specific office within the institution, but that
had research offices within their district, were not included in the sampling process.
A combined 23 institutions were looked at for this study (Table 3.1). The names of
the three institutions chosen for the study are highlighted below, and the other 20
institutions were given alphabets for their names. The Hispanic student population
of the institution is directly to the right of the institution’s name. Twenty of the
institutions were in Los Angeles County and the others were right outside Los
Angeles County. I selected three participants from this group of 23 institutions
through a two-stage sampling method. The first stage involved examining the
websites of the 23 institutions that have a 25% or higher Hispanic population. This
content analysis was an examination of their mission statements as well as their
websites. I also looked to see if there was an explicit mention of the HSI status in
the mission statements, looked for keywords associated with an inclusive identity

70
(e.g. diversity, culture, access), and did a keyword search with words such as
“Hispanic-serving institutions,” “HSI,” “Latino/a,” “Hispanic,” and “Chicano/a.”
From those 23 institutions, I chose three deans/directors to interview based
on four distinct criteria during the initial website analysis. These four criteria were:
(1) a salient HSI identity; (2) the Hispanic student population within the institution
and the area/community where the institution is situated; (3) the race/ethnicity of the
institutional researcher and college president; and (4) whether the institution had a
Title V grant or not.
Table 3.1: Los Angeles County Community Colleges & Hispanic Enrollment (%)
Sample Hispanic-Serving CCs & Hispanic Enrollment
Name Hispanic % Name Hispanic %
College A 26.76% College J 32.24%
Central CC 53.20% College K 35.67%
Mtn View CC 47.98% College L 51.79%
College B 34.56% College M 41.61%
College C 34.91% College N 37.09%
Sunrise CC 63.03% College O 36.60%
College D 34.39% College P 52.35%
College E 34.80% College Q 43.65%
College F 36.62% College R 55.46%
College G 42.80% College S 26.14%
College H 45.06% College T 28.49%
College I 69.42%

The next step required me to reach out to each of the offices selected for an
in-depth interview to see if they would like to be a part of the research. All three of
the institutions contacted agreed to face-to-face interviews.
I chose to only interview deans and directors of the institutional research
department because they have the most influence on what type of project requests

71
they want their staff to work on and how their staff should go about completing
projects. Since they are leaders of their departments as well, they also have the best
ability to influence or bring about change. I am also operating on the assumption
that because deans or directors generally have longer careers to reflect upon, it can
provide me with richer data when looking at a process of how institutional
researchers view themselves and their roles as someone who works at a Hispanic-
serving institution in southern California.
Methods
I used qualitative inquiry to guide this study. As suggested by Patton (2002),
qualitative methods can involve interviews and document analysis. Document
analysis came up twice in the methodological process of the study. The first phases
of document analysis occurred in a website analysis of 20 institutions over a period
of two weeks. The second part of the document analysis came from analyzing the
specific documents that were posted on the sites of the institutional research offices.
The document analysis process lasted for about one month. The three interviews
were conducted between late January and the end of February, 2011.
Document Analysis

The first data collection method used was document analysis. “Document
analysis includes studying excerpts, quotations, or entire passages from
organizational, clinical, or program records; memoranda and correspondences;
official publications and reports; personal diaries; and open-ended written response
to questionnaires and surveys” (Patton, 2002, p. 4). I used document analysis first

72
because it was the first step of my two stage sampling process, and the information
was easily accessible within the institutions’ websites. Websites now have
documents such as Course Catalogs, Institution Self-Studies, Mission Statements,
and Research Findings that are available to the public.
Website Analysis Protocol
A website analysis protocol (see Appendix A) was developed to help guide
the analysis. The website protocol was developed to be an expansion of the mission
statement analysis from the work of Conteras et al. (2008). In their work, the
researchers looked at the institutional mission statements for the 10 colleges and
universities they were studying. Conteras et al. (2008) used a multi-step analysis.
The first step included a keyword search related to HSI status and the second step
involved an examination of the mission statements in greater detail noting how the
key words were used and in what type of context. The final step involved
categorizing each institution’s mission statement by the salience of the HSI status
and the manner in which the status was discussed.
Using the framework provided by Malcom et al. (2008), my first step of the
analysis was an examination of the mission statement. I expanded from their work
by looking at the entire website after looking at the mission statement. My initial
step was to look at the mission statement to see if there was an explicit mention of
the HSI status and if not, I looked for keywords that are associated with an inclusive
identity (e.g. diversity, culture, access). After the review on the mission statement, I
conducted a keyword search with words such as “Hispanic-serving institutions,”

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“HIS,” “Latino/a,” “Hispanic,” and “Chicano/a” to see where they were on the entire
website and the context in which they were used.
The last part of the website analysis included an examination of the
institutional research office website. I examined the IR websites to see what types of
documents were published online to the public, how the data were presented, and if
there were studies specifically related to Hispanics.
The website protocol was an important part of my methods section because
the data gathered from the website protocol helped to determine the sample I used
for the interview portion of this study. Other factors taken into account from the
website analysis included the gender and race of the institutional researcher and
presidents and whether or not the institution received a Title V grant in recent years.
Interviews

The second data collection method included three face-to-face interviews
with deans/directors of institutional research. “Interviews yield direct quotations
from people about their experiences, opinions, feelings, and knowledge” (Patton,
2002, p. 4). I chose to conduct the interviews last because I wanted to be able to do a
well-versed document analysis before I sat down to ask questions. I chose to
interview deans/directors because having come from the field myself, I knew the
leader of the department is the one who has access to determine what projects to take
on and is also the one closest to meeting with executive leadership on a daily basis.
Researchers in the lower level will do research deemed less important or not for any

74
major decision makers. The higher up you are in the department, the more extensive
your research.
The three interviews were conducted between late January and the end of
February. Interviews were conducted in the offices of the three institutional
researchers during their normal working hours. Prior to the interviews, I arrived to
the respective campuses 30 minutes early to observe the campus environment and
took field notes on what I observed.
The interviews were anywhere between one to one and a half hours. Upon
meeting the interviewees, we exchanged conversation about the dissertation and
what the interview would entail. They were all told that the interview would be
recorded and notes would be taken as well. They were also given permission to go
off the record if they felt uncomfortable at any point during the interview. Only one
of the three interviewees elected to go off the record for approximately twenty
minutes. During that period of not recording the interview, notes were taken on what
she said. After the interviews ended, farewells were exchanged, and I thanked the
participants for their time.
Immediately after the interviews, I went to the closest area where I could find
a place to sit and write about my thoughts on the interview. I recorded my thoughts
on the individual, how I thought the interview went, and what I thought were good
and bad points about the interview. In addition to thoughts about the interview itself,
I wrote down ideas that I thought would make the next interview better than the last.

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Development of the Interview Protocol
The interview protocol (Appendix B) was carefully developed over a one-
month period of time. I chose to use Luker (2008) as a source for the development
of my interview questions. I took a stack of 3x5 index cards and wrote down a
single question on each of the cards. After writing down all the questions, I started
the process of “clumping” (Luker, 2008) in which I laid down all the cards on a flat
surface and started rearranging them. After moving the cards around for a period of
time, topics for the questions began to develop. I arranged all of the questions so
that they all fell into the appropriate topics. After that, I typed up all the questions in
topic order and decided which questions to include in the protocol and which to
leave out.
The first version of the interview protocol was critiqued by my classmates.
Soon after, the final version of the interview protocol was developed after a pilot
mock interview. The protocol was tested in a mock interview with an institutional
researcher from one of the 20 institutions that I conducted a website analysis on, but
was not used for the actual study. After that, I reviewed notes on which questions to
improve on and which to take out for the actual interview protocol.
The Participants
The three participants and sites selected were: Christine Le, Director of
Institution Research at Central Community College (CCC); Scott Taylor, Dean of
Institutional Effectiveness at Sunrise City College (SCC); and Kurt Jacobs, Director
of Institutional Research at Mountain View College (MVC). Following the IRB

76
protocol, the names of the participants and the institutions in which they were
employed were given pseudonyms.
Central Community College (CCC)
Founded in the 1950’s, CCC is a two-year college located in Centerville and
currently offers degrees and certificates in 87 areas of study in nine divisions. Over
1,200 students successfully complete their course of studies each year. The make-up
of the area is fairly diverse, however, approximately 63% of the population identifies
as Hispanic. Much like the city that the institution is located in, roughly 15,000
(43%) of the 35,000+ students are Hispanic (US Census Bureau, 2010). The CCC
student body is a majority of minorities: Hispanics, Asians, African-Americans,
Pacific Islanders and Native Americans together account for more than 60% of
students.
Hispanic-Serving Identity of CCC
CCC is a Hispanic-Serving Institution and was awarded a Title V grant in
2009. In a content analysis of the CCC website, key words were typed into the
“search” box to look at the saliency of the HSI identity. The first search term was
“Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI)” for which the search came up empty. The
second search term “Hispanic” yielded more results. There were links to programs
devoted to Hispanic history month, links to an array of Hispanic scholarships, a link
to a press release announcing CCC as an institution that awards the most associate
degrees to Hispanics, and a link to a press release where there was an announcement
about the college receiving the Title V grant. Terms such as Latino and Chicano

77
were used but used to described demographics and coursework more than to describe
the identity of the institution. The term “Title V” was also used in the search and a
couple of links came up to describe the grant that was awarded to them. Finally,
words that identified inclusion were looked for in the mission, and the words
“access” and “diversity” were used when describing their mission.
Basic Skills Achievement of Hispanics at CCC
In the beginning of the 2010-2011 academic year, of the five highest race
categories, Hispanic students were the largest ethnic category by far. With 1,835
Hispanic students enrolled in basic skills mathematics and a 51.67% success rate,
Hispanic students only ranked higher than African-American students who were
ranked the lowest with a 33.47% success rate in basic skills mathematics. Filipino
students had the highest success rate at 62%, followed by Asians at 56.94%, and
White Non-Hispanic students were third with 53.73% success in basic skills
mathematics (CCCCO, 2011).
Of the five racial groups in basic skills English, Hispanic students once again
had the highest enrollment with 1,597 students in the beginning of the 2010-2011
academic year. For basic skills English, Hispanic students had a 73.83% success rate
which was third amongst the five highest racial groups that make up the institution.
Asian students had the highest success rate at 81.99%, with Filipino students ranking
second at 75.34%. African-American students had the lowest success rate in basic
skills English at 64.65%, and White Non-Hispanic students had the second lowest
success rate at 72.18% (CCCCO, 2011).

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CCC Institutional Research Office
The Office of Planning and Research, according to CCC’s mission, is “to
support institutional decision-making that furthers the college’s attainment of
institutional priorities and goals.” The office is currently a three-person office. The
Director of Research and Planning is Christine Le, an Asian female in her 30’s.
Christine has been at CCC as the Director of Institutional Research for almost a full
year. Prior to CCC, she spent almost three years at another Hispanic-serving
community college in the Greater Los Angeles area. The majority of her research
experience comes from education, but prior to education, she also spent some time
doing research in the private sector, mainly dealing with projections. Christine was a
Ph.D. student, but decided to take her terminal masters where she was provided with
some training in statistics.
Sunrise City College
Sunrise City College (SCC) is a community college in one of the largest
Community College Districts in the greater Los Angeles area. Fourteen communities
comprise its primary service area. With an enrollment of over 37,000 students, SCC
is one of the largest campuses in the district. It is located in northeastern Los Angeles
and its main campus is in the southern area of Sunrise, CA, which is primarily
populated by second-generation Mexicans and other Hispanics.
SCC is a two-year college, offering associate degree programs in over 25
fields as well as both occupational programs and academic transfer courses to

79
prepare students for admission to the University of California and California State
University system.
Hispanic-Serving Identity of SCC
Sunrise City College is a Hispanic-Serving Institution and was awarded a
Title V grant in 2007. In a content analysis of the SCC website, key words were
typed into the “search” box to look at the saliency of the HSI identity. The first
search term was “Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI)” of which there was mention in
the 2010-11 Strategic Plan. The Plan stated that they are one of the largest Hispanic-
serving institutions in the nation and are nationally ranked for the number of degrees
conferred to Hispanic students. The second search term (Hispanic) did not yield as
many results as expected. The term was mostly used to reference Hispanic
scholarships. Terms like “Latino/a” and “Chicano/a” were used to reference their
Chicano Studies program as well as programs for Hispanic students, such as the
Puente Program and Latino History Month. The search with the term “Title V”
yielded results to a Title V homepage, meeting minutes and descriptions of a Title V
grant. Keys words used to promote access in their mission statement included
“culturally diverse community” and “urban.”
Basic Skills Achievement of Hispanics at SCC
In the beginning of the 2010-2011 academic year, of the five highest race
categories, Hispanic students were the highest enrolled ethic group of students in
basic skills mathematics with 1,501 students enrolled. They had a 42.64% success
rate, only ranking higher than African-American students (27 students total) who

80
were ranked the lowest with a 40.74% success rate in basic skills mathematics.
Asian students had the highest success rate at 71.99%, followed by White Non-
Hispanic students with a 66.67% success rate in basic skills mathematics (CCCCO,
2011).
Of the five racial groups in basic skills English, Hispanic students once again
had the largest enrollment with 1,283 students in the beginning of the 2010-2011
academic year. For basic skills English, Hispanic students had a 60.41% success rate
(CCCCO, 2011). The remaining ethnic groups had relatively small numbers of
enrollments in basic skills. Asians were the second largest enrolled group in basic
skills English with 228 students.
SCC Office of Institutional Effectiveness
According to their website, the goal of the Office of Institutional
Effectiveness (OIE) at Sunrise City College is to assist the college in its efforts to
improve the effectiveness of institutional processes, student learning and student
services. Through the facilitation of institutional planning, collegiate research, and
evaluation of programming, OIE works to provide the evidence needed to guide
decision-making and to promote student success.
OIE is comprised of a staff of five. There are two office assistants, an
assistant research analyst, a research analyst, and Scott Taylor, the Dean of
Institutional Effectiveness. Scott Taylor is a white male in his 30’s. SCC is the only
institution in which he has done educational research. He started out as a research
analyst and was in that position for four months before being promoted to the

81
Associate Dean of Research, a position he held for two and a half years. He has now
been in his current position as Dean of Institutional Effectiveness for almost a year.
Prior to working in educational research he was working in the clinical research field
and taught psychology courses at another Hispanic-serving community college in the
same district as SCC. His academic background includes a doctorate in Education
and a Masters in Social Work from a four-year research university. His
undergraduate focus was in psychology. All three of his degrees and his clinical
work provided him with the training necessary to do institutional research.
Mountain View College
Mountain View College (MVC) is a community college in southern
California right outside the greater Los Angeles area. MVC has three campuses with
its main campus being in Mountain View, CA. MVC serves almost 20,000 students,
and approximately 9,500 students are of Hispanic background. The make-up of the
institution mirrors the make-up of the communities in which it serves. The city in
which the main campus is located has a Hispanic population of 27.78% (US Census
Bureau, 2010). MVC also has satellite campuses in East Mountain View and West
Mountain View. The city of East Mountain View has a Hispanic population of
57.7% and the city of West Mountain View has a Hispanic population of 47.4% (US
Census Bureau, 2010). According to their website, MVC provides students with
different classes and programs, including (but not limited to) business, science, the
arts, history, philosophy, psychology, and RN and LVN nursing programs.

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Hispanic-Serving Identity of MVC
Mountain View College is a Hispanic-Serving Institution and was awarded a
Title V grant in 2010. In a content analysis of the MVC website, key words were
typed into the “search” box to look at the saliency of the HSI identity. The first
search term was “Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI)” which yielded three results:
two news release stating that MVC was awarded a Title V grant for 2010 and a
Hispanic STEM grant for 2008 and a student equity plan that mentioned they are a
Hispanic-serving institution. The second search term (Hispanic) yielded results that
were similar to the search for “Hispanic-serving institution” and was also used in
reference to demographics. Terms like “Latino/a” and “Chicano/a” were used to
reference their Chicano Studies program as well as programs for Hispanic students
such as the Puente Program and the Spanish Club. The search with the term “Title
V” led to a page which had a discussion on prior Title V grants. Keys words used to
promote access in their mission statement included “diverse” and “equal access.”
Basic Skills Achievement of Hispanics at MVC
In the 2010-2011 academic year, of the five largest race categories, Hispanic
students were 722 of the students enrolled in basic skills mathematics and had a
60.8% success rate, placing them in the middle of success rankings percentage
amongst the five largest racial categories (CCCCO, 2011). They ranked higher than
African-American students (177 students total) who were ranked the lowest with a
53.11% success rate in basic skills mathematics. White Non-Hispanic students had
the highest success rate at 62.64% (CCCCO, 2011).

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Of the five racial groups in basic skills English, Hispanic students once again
had the highest enrollment with 482 students in the beginning of the 2010-2011
academic year. For basic skills English, Hispanic students had a 71.16% success
rate. This success rate puts them highest amongst students in the categories of
Hispanics, White Non-Hispanic (142 students, 66.2% success rate), and African-
American (126 students, 58.73% success rate) (CCCCO, 2011).
MVC Office of Institutional Research
According to their website, the Office of Institutional Research provides
useful and "user-friendly" data, reports and presentations to MVC administration,
staff, faculty and students.
The office provides data and information relevant to:
o short and long range planning and decision making.
o institutional effectiveness and accountability.
o student learning outcomes and student success.
o program and services review.
o federal and state-mandated reporting.
The office is comprised of a staff of six. There are two office assistants, a
researcher in Career Technical Education, a program assistant, a research analyst,
and Kurt Jacobs, the Director of Institutional Research. Kurt Jacobs is a white male
in his 40’s. Kurt is in his 24
th
year as an institutional researcher. He spent the first
12 years of his career as a research analyst at Central Community College (Christine
Le’s institution) and is now in his 12
th
year as the director of institutional research at

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MVC. Unlike the other two researchers, this was Kurt’s only path in research right
after finishing his post secondary education. He holds a master’s degree in
organizational psychology and a BA in psychology. While working on his master’s
at a California State University, he was interning at the research office where he
continued with his SPSS and statistics training that would lead him to where he is
today.
Data Analysis
Interviews were transcribed entirely during the months of February and
March, 2011. After the first transcriptions were completed, I went back to the
recordings again to fix any errors that may have occurred, followed by a spelling and
grammar check to clean up all the interviews.
The first stage of the analysis process began with reading through the
interviews and extracting quotes or key words that pertained to each of the research
sub-questions. Various methods were tried when organizing the data. There is no
right way to analyze data (Creswell, 2002). However, it is suggested to do the data
analysis simultaneously with the data collection, data interpretation, and narrative
reporting writing. This can help the researcher be more engaged with the research
during the field work by putting information into categories and making the
information so that it is a story and the actual writing of the qualitative text.
Luker (2008) calls for us to “reduce” (p. 198) our data into something that we
can manage in order to analyze data in a meaningful way. Luker (2008) described
the steps to get to the data analysis, which were followed here. The first step was to

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think about how I would gather the data. After gathering the data, I reduced the data,
and finally, after the reduction phase, I analyzed the data. The data were then sorted
and stored into separate categories through a coding mechanism through pattern
recognition (Luker, 2008). This allowed me to take an abundant amount of data and
make it meaningful and easy to understand.
First Analysis Method
In order to see which quotes pertained to which sub-question, each sub-
question was assigned a highlighted color. Sub-question number 1 was green,
number 2 was yellow, and number 3 was blue. I went through the interviews one at
a time and highlighted portions that pertained to each sub-question.
After stage one, each sub-question was given its own sheet of paper. The
quotes from each of the appropriate colors from each interview were extracted and
pasted onto the appropriate sheet. All the quotes were separated by institutional
researchers with the answers that pertained to each sub-question. This was followed
by two separate write-ups. The first write-up was based on each sub-question. The
second write-up was based on each of the institutional researchers. However, this
method did not work because the write-ups provided me with summaries and made it
difficult to analyze based on Huber’s constructs of organizational learning. This led
to a second analysis method.
Second Analysis Method
With the prior analysis not working, it was decided that I would analyze the
data by looking at the answers given for each question of the interview protocol. I

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began by looking at the questions pertaining to their personal definition of Hispanic-
serving institution and what it meant to work in one. The answers were grouped
together and analyzed together to look for similarities and differences. Then, I
looked at each of the answers again and coded them based on Huber’s (1991) four
constructs of organizational learning as well as how each institutional researcher
described the Hispanic-serving role and meaning. There were a total of six codes:
(1) knowledge acquisition, (2) information distribution, (3) information
interpretation, (4) memory storage, (5) Hispanic-serving meaning, and (6) Hispanic-
serving role. When the coding process was completed, the information was
presented in the manner of each institutional researcher, their practices within the
organizational learning constructs and their views on their roles and what it means to
work for a Hispanic-serving institution, which will be shown in the following
chapter.
Verification Procedures
To ensure that my research was authentic and trustworthy, I used internal and
external validity checks. Internal validity checks look at whether or not the
information gathered matches with reality, and external validity checks to see if the
findings can be generalized from the study (Creswell, 2002).
One way in which I checked for internal validity was to triangulate the data.
Patton (2002) asserts that one way of strengthening a study is by the use of
triangulation. Triangulation can include data triangulation, which involves using
multiple sources. I have done so by conducting document analysis and in-depth

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interviews. I used both sets of inquiry when looking to develop categories, themes,
and patterns in the data.
The second way I checked for internal validity was that I already established
a researcher’s bias in the study. I talked about my experiences and my point of view
at the introduction of this research as well as under the heading of “The Researcher’s
Role”.
When looking at external validity, the findings in the study can only be
limited to the unique group of individuals that I am looking at. According to
Creswell (2002), qualitative research is not meant to generalize findings, but meant
to form a unique interpretation of events (as cited in Merriam, 1988).
Limitations
The first limitation of this study is that I am only using deans or directors of
institutional research. The limitations from only using deans/directors are that I am
getting reflections from only one type of personnel within the institutional research
office. I may not have the point-of-view on the entry- and mid-level institutional
researchers. This limitation may affect my results because I may not get a true
representation of how a variety of staff members feel about what it means to be an
institutional researcher in a Hispanic-serving institution.
The second limitation is a lack of observations. For this study, I only used
document analysis and interviews. Without using observations, I am not able to see
if what the institutional researchers are saying is practiced in their day-to-day

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operations. I can only judge this from analyzing what is being said and what I see in
document analysis as well as the literature review on institutional researchers.
The final limitation is the lack of resources necessary for a comprehensive
study. This study examines three of the community colleges in Los Angeles County
and the surrounding areas. There was not enough time to examine all 20 institutions
in which I provided a website analysis for. However, the examination of all 20
institutions through a website analysis allowed me to choose what I thought would
be the three best institutions to study at the beginning of this research.
Ethical Concerns
Necessary steps were taken in order to protect the rights and privacy of the
individuals involved in this research project. Participants read a consent form and
gave a verbal consent, which was recorded on a voice-recording device. I used a
standard of research practice as suggested by Patton (2002), which includes: for what
and how the information is used, the types of questions that will be asked during the
interviews, that their identity and answers will remain confidential, and that all the
possible risks and/or benefits with participating in this interview are presented. All
participants in the interview and the institutions examined were given pseudonyms to
ensure the privacy of their identities. The study was approved by the institutional
review board prior to conducting the interviews, and I followed the guidelines for
working with human subjects. The ID number for the study is UP-10-00465.

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Conclusion
As mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, I narrowed down the three
institutions that were used for the interviews: (1) Central Community College
(CCC), (2) Sunrise City College (SCC), and (3) Mountain View College (MVC). In
the upcoming chapter, the findings are presented and discussed from the content
analysis conducted as well as from the interviews with the institutional researchers.

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CHAPTER 4: RESULTS
This chapter presents the findings of the study and describes the experiences
and views of each of the three institutional researchers: (1) Christine Lee from
Central Community College (CCC), (2) Scott Taylor from Sunrise City College
(SCC), and (3) Kurt Jacobs from Mountain View College (MVC). As a reminder,
the names of the institutional researchers and their institutions of employment were
given pseudonyms per the IRB protocol. Given that this study is about how
institutional researchers in HSIs operate and view their roles, all three participants
were asked specific questions on their role as institutional researchers generally and,
more specifically, about their role and data practices in the context of being at
Hispanic-serving institutions.
As illustrated in chapter one and in each of the cases in chapter three, there
are inequities in Hispanic academic achievement in relation to basic skills math and
English. As explained in chapter two, the current data practices of traditional
institutional researchers do not portray the inequities in educational attainment across
different ethnic populations. Data are generally presented in a holistic manner and
often not disaggregated by race/ethnicity. The overarching research question in this
study is: In what ways do the data collection, analysis, interpretation, and
dissemination practices of institutional researchers assist institutional actors to learn
about the educational outcomes of Hispanic students and reflect on how to improve
them? The sub-questions are: (1) how do institutional researchers’ interpretation of
their position support or limit their capacity to take on the role of agent of

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organizational learning? (2) in what ways do institutional researchers produce
knowledge to inform the campus community about Hispanic students’ outcomes?
and (3) how does institutional culture support or limit their capacity to take on the
role of agent of organizational learning? This study examines how institutional
researchers, as agents of organizational learning in these three specific Hispanic-
serving institutions, can influence how data are examined, disseminated, and
interpreted to institutional actors to highlight inequitable outcomes in Hispanic
academic achievement.
Christine Le – Central Community College
During the time of our interview, Christine had been with Central
Community College (CCC) for seven months as the Director of Institutional
Research. Prior to CCC, she was a research analyst at the research office of a similar
Hispanic-serving institution for a little over three years. Outside of working in
institutional research, she did research for the private sector. Her educational
credentials include a terminal master’s degree in political science from the
University of California.
Christine is slowly learning how to integrate herself into the institution. She
is learning to deal with management issues since this is her first position as a
manager. When she started at CCC, she took the initiative at first to meet with
individuals and offered advice on what they should do, but she soon realized that at
CCC it was best to take on a reactive role. She mentioned being a “gadfly” when she
was first hired, but learned that going to individuals and telling them what needs to

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happen does not work. Individuals at CCC would prefer to reach out to her office if
they needed data. She was also trying to make others feel comfortable with using
data in making decisions.
Instead of using the word ‘data,’ and I still use it, I try to call it knowledge
and information. I think when you use it in those terms, people feel more
comfortable in using it. They don’t think of it as something that is punitive.

By making individuals feel comfortable to not equate “data” with something
that would lead to punishment, she is beginning to shape their reality on data and
data usage.
Her office produces a variety of data for decision-making in the managerial
level.
There are some prerequisites on validation, or a demand need, like enrollment
management. One example would be to know what’s the number of students
assessed into basic skills and compare with the number of basic skills
sections that we offer.

Other projects that come up are projects regarding the progression of students
in courses that progress from one level to the next, ARCC data as well as data
regarding student success, student placement, and data regarding feeder high schools.
Christine spends a lot of her time in meetings. These meetings can be at a
minimum of two or three in a day and sometimes more. “I have meetings that run
back to back and I have time for lunch. I check up on my staff a little bit to see what
they are doing and that’s it. That’s my day.” In addition to meetings, her active
involvement in research plays a role in her busy schedule. She described herself as a
“hands-on researcher” because she is “a researcher by training” and still tries to take

93
on requests herself. Christine explained that she still takes on research requests even
though she has a staff to distribute them to “just because I don’t want to lose that
skill and then at the same time, it helps me to keep that perspective and understand
what my staff are doing.” Continuing to take on research requests is necessary for
her in order to understand what her staff is doing so she can give advice to resolve
issues that arise.
Christine Le as Agent of Organizational Learning
In regards to working on research projects, just about all projects are handled
via a research request form. Research requests range in what is needed and how they
are prioritized. For Christine and her staff, they really need to know the person
requesting the research and “what is it they need and how they can help serve their
college.” She explained that the way in which research requests are prioritized can
be “convoluted,” but it works for them and allows them to have face to face
interaction on determining the needs of the individuals.
Knowledge Acquisition
Christine believes that as a researcher, she needs to help others acquire
knowledge as well as acquire knowledge herself in order to better serve students.
One way in which she can gain knowledge about the students CCC serves is by
learning about the surrounding communities in the CCC district. She mentioned her
desire to learn about feeder high schools, their API scores, and the preparation of the
students from those high schools so she knows what types of students are coming
into CCC and their readiness for college level work. She also wanted to assess the

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industry needs of her community so she can better understand the needs of the
community for curriculum purposes. By acquiring this knowledge, she can help
curriculum planning committees stay abreast on what vocational skills should be
offered to better serve the community.
In terms of general knowledge acquisition, that may not deal with helping to
make others aware about Hispanic student needs, she also feels it is in her place to
help others understand what can and cannot be done in terms of research. She
provided an example from her former institution. The institution wanted to have a
shared database between students at her institution and another four-year college.
Well you cannot do that with FERPA. They wanted to make that promise
with that grant and that raises a red flag and that violated students’ privacy
rights. So then things like that we are aware of we can let them know.

Christine also collects information on student engagement. “A lot of people
think student success only happens inside the classroom, but that is not true. The
pathway for students is not just from placement to class and then to graduation. It’s
their interaction on campus.” The IR office gathers information on items such as
students’ satisfaction with financial aid, what type of study skills they have gained,
their focus during class, employment outside of school, the support of their family,
and anything else that could affect the academic performance of the students. “I
guess it just focuses on different things like student engagement and student
interaction with student support services and also their learning outcomes.”
The office also helps to connect others with colleagues and highlights
examples of research that can be considered “best practices.” Christine’s eventual

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goal is to show others what has been done on campus that worked and how it can be
further implemented so there is a sense of empowerment in order to promote the
positives that come from research.
Information Distribution
At CCC, Christine hopes to develop a data-driven culture. To do so, she
wants to help others learn how to use data first. She provided examples of different
ways to teach others through workshops on campus, teaching them simple things like
different types of dictionary terms such as FTEs, and ways they can assess and
evaluate their students and also their teaching. She hopes to eventually connect
people to her office and have them begin to use data more when making decisions.
Christine mentioned that data are beginning to be disaggregated by race and
ethnicity, but there are other characteristics that Christine examines when
disaggregating data by looking at academic outcomes of students. “We look at who
we are serving and for each population: Are we serving them well? Are we serving
them equally? That’s the reason why we take a look at more than ethnicity.” She
provided an example with Disabled Student Programs and Services (DSP&S)
students. That population is now the basic skills students, and because of attrition,
they needed to have more fast-track courses or accelerated courses so they could help
a lot of students in basic skills and have them achieve at a higher rate. She learned
that fast track students achieve at a higher rate, but this in turn affected learning
disabled students.

96
There isn’t a huge disparity between the 16 or 18 weeks regular classes and
fast-track classes, but then there’s a disproportional impact on LD students
because they can’t handle an 18 week class already, how can they handle a
nine week class?

For Christine, when it comes to policies such as implementing course lengths
for students, she has to think beyond race and ethnicity.
Having data presented in a disaggregated manner helps to make others aware
of situations that they did not know about or think about. In response to the question
on what types of reactions she gets when presenting information that is
disaggregated by race and ethnicity, she responded with, “Their feelings are ‘wow, I
cannot believe this is the case.’ When you break down Hispanic population, they are
not doing too bad. When you break it down between male and female students it
becomes even more alarming.” This type of information enables others to think
about the need for more information about the students, the committees that are
meant to serve the students, and the factors that may affect the academic outcomes of
students. “Any time I present data, it’s not ‘that’s it.’ It’s a way to ask more
questions, what are the next steps that we need to do now and what other information
do we need to acquire because of it.” Therefore, information is distributed in hopes
of generating more knowledge.
Christine’s position as an institutional researcher allows her to present
information on behalf of others. She presents the information for the individuals
who request data that they want to show to a committee because questions may arise
and “the best thing will be to have me or my research analyst answer those

97
questions.” Outside of presenting data to committees and other individuals on
campus, research reports are also published on their website for the public to
retrieve. However, reports that can only be shown to members of the CCC
community are password protected.
In Christine’s short time at CCC, she has made plans to start a new biannual
newsletter which is a new initiative she is bringing the institution. This biannual
newsletter will let the campus know “what is going on in the world of research and
just the ARCC data and just snippets on did you know this was about your campus.”
Having a biannual newsletter can help provide knowledge to others on campus.
Information Interpretation
Christine explained that her role is to teach people how to use data as well as
interpret the data themselves. For her, this is an important skill to know, and she
found it to be alarming when she first started at CCC and faculty members would say
things such as, “I’m so afraid of numbers, I don’t want to think, can you tell me what
my numbers mean?” She typically responded by saying:
I can tell you how I got the numbers, and I can tell you what they mean from
one department to another, but I can’t tell you what it means to your
department. We can together come up with a reason why this phenomenon is
occurring in terms of the data looking the way it is and I can offer you
different internal and external factor that may affect your data, but outside of
that, I cannot interpret the data for you. And that’s how it should be.

Christine also takes the time to meet with individuals after she sends them the
report to have them look at it first.

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Everything is a revolving process, once they read it, they may not understand
it right away. There are a lot of caveats to any type of research that you do so
you need to make it very clear to them, so the best way to it is to talk to them.

As mentioned earlier, Christine finds it important to “empower” people to
feel comfortable with data so they know where the sources of data or information are
coming from. She teaches others terms that relate to data usage but wants them to
take that knowledge and make sense of the data on their own.
Hispanic-Serving Culture at Central Community College
Christine viewed the Hispanic-serving identity at CCC as something that was
symbolic. She felt that HSIs are “necessary to have” since California is a state where
the majority of the population is now Hispanic. For her, it is necessary to “serve a
population that historically has been underserved.” However, she thinks of HSIs as a
“symbolic title that really means about equity. You know, how can we serve any
population that has been historically underserved?” With community colleges being
open access institutions, the inability to turn away students is something she finds to
be a positive to help all those in need of access to postsecondary education.
Hispanic-Serving Meaning for Institutional Research Role
In response to the question about what it means to be an institutional
researcher at a Hispanic-serving institution, Christine spoke a lot about using the HSI
label as a symbolism for open access institutions. “When I came here, the culture
was a little different because as a Title V recipient, you are supposed to serve
Hispanic students, but as an open access institution, you are supposed to serve
everyone.” Christine believes that it is the responsibility of HSIs to serve all

99
students. Having such a view shows that her view of the Hispanic-serving identity
only comes from receiving a Title V grant or based on the federal definition of 25%
Hispanic students (USDOE, 2010). Other than that, she does not state anything in
particular about what it means to work at an HSI. She validates her belief of HSIs
being symbolic to open access institutions are also from other community colleges as
well. With CCC being about 50% Hispanic, Christine believes that any initiative
that benefits the students at CCC will benefit the Hispanic students.
Role at a Hispanic-Serving Institution
Christine has practices that can be seen as fulfilling her role as an institutional
researcher at a Hispanic-serving institution like CCC. She did not specify doing
anything unique, but while she was describing the types of data her office collects,
she was able to show that she wanted a better understanding of the community CCC
serves. Christine showed that she wanted to have a better understanding of the
community by wanting to know about feeder high schools and the preparation of the
students from those high schools. She wanted to have information on API scores. In
addition to academic indicators, she also wanted to assess the industry needs of her
community so she could better understand the needs of the community for
curriculum purposes.
Christine also has an understanding that data need to be further disaggregated
and mentioned a push to further disaggregate the ethnicity code into additional sub-
population categories. She provided an example of this by talking about Asian
students, “If you are Asian, then what type of Asian you are. Like Vietnamese or

100
Cambodian students don’t perform as well as Chinese or Korean students.” The
further disaggregation of data would help enhance her research office. For her,
having access to clearer information of the students they are serving would allow the
institution to understand their students in terms of academic outcomes and progress.
Understanding Equity
The word “equity” is used a couple times during the interview with Christine.
She uses the word to suggest that there should be a focus on all students and not just
Hispanic students. As she mentioned earlier, “HSIs are purposeful because we are in
the state of California, but overall it should be about equity for all students and not
just Hispanics.” According to Christine, from a researcher’s standpoint, in addition
to race and ethnicity, there should also be a “focus on SES and students who are
coming from different pockets of communities where they are poor and we want to
focus on that as well, so there is a lot of outreach for more than just Hispanic
students.” At CCC, it is equally important to compare success rates in terms of
ethnic groups and gender because that would help the institution understand which
demographic groups are doing better than others.
Hispanic-Serving Assessment
During our interview, Christine was given a hypothetical scenario where I
was the president and I wanted her to design a research study on how well CCC was
serving its Hispanic students. She kept up with her insistence of “equity for all.” She
wanted to look at all services that are provided for their students because there are
different circumstances for different students and that is something that should be

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taken into account when designing a study such as the one I proposed to her. She
began by proposing that she would have to conduct a survey on all students in
regards to student satisfaction. The student ID number and, from that, other data can
be gathered “like ethnicity, academic preparation, prior academic performance is
really important because you don’t know if what we are doing is really helping them
or if they’re just good students in general.” She says this because there are factors,
like financial aid, where students with financial aid perform much better because
there’s a GPA requirement that forces them to do well. In addition to putting
everything into context, understanding the background of students would be
important to her if she was to do a study like the one proposed.
Background information on students is always helpful, I think family support,
parental’ highest level of education, if we can find a proxy, we can definitely
know if someone is a poor student. Different factors that will effect on how
they are doing, we need to consider those factors before we evaluate the
services that we provide. It may be a lot more that what the president needs,
you can’t just simply compare the success rates of the students without
knowing why.

Much like the answers to previous questions on her definition of “Hispanic-
serving institution,” and her attitudes and beliefs in working for a HSI, this
hypothetical study aligns with her “equity for all aspect.” Even in a study that would
involve looking at how they are serving their Hispanic students, she still wants to see
how well they are serving all their students.
Scott Taylor - Sunrise City College
Scott has been with Sunrise City College (SCC) for approximately four years.
He started as a research analyst then was promoted to acting associate dean of

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research before his latest promotion to dean of institutional effectiveness for the past
year. SCC is the only place he has done institutional research. He has a background
as a faculty member at a different Hispanic-serving institution as well as a
background in clinical research working within a hospital setting, so he was never
socialized as an institutional researcher. His background was critical to this position
as he was hired by faculty who wanted someone with a strong background in
statistics and research methods. His educational credentials include both a doctorate
and a master’s degree from a private four-year tier one research university and a
bachelor’s degree from a public four-year tier one research university.
Scott’s role as an institutional researcher at Sunrise City College (SCC) can
be described as providing data for managerial decision-making and as a teacher of
data/research methods. He answers directly to the president. When he was asked
about his priorities, he said “whatever the president needs comes first.” The
president comes first “because that is the structure of the college and realistically his
needs are based on responding to the district chancellor or any request coming from
the district office and he needs those data to make a decision.” Following the
president as the top priority, accreditation and federal and state mandated projects
followed immediately after. The lowest on the priority list for his office would be
research requests that come from staff and faculty members who want to know, for
example, “how their classes were doing.” He thought this was the last thing on his
agenda because the faculty does not ask him for such data.

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On the planning and management side of his role as an institutional
researcher, his days are generally filled with reports and meetings. He discussed his
role in planning as running data needed to make budgetary decisions. He provided
an example on how he uses annual reports to determine what departments think they
need and then linking what they think they need to both their program goals and the
institutional goals. The example he provided was if he was in charge of the
psychology department and needed new computers, “I need to show how it relates to
the college’s overall goals and mission and then that has to filter into the budget and
sometimes data is needed.”
Within the enrollment management aspect, he discussed the process of
determining how sections are to be offered at SCC. “On our campus, that is more
than just a demand issue, we actually look at other issues related to the educational
goals of the college, what relates to transfer versus basic skills and try to prioritize
things that would meet the students’ needs from a broad spectrum.” Although his
goal is to provide data for decision making, his desire to meet the needs of the
students as well shows that planning and enrollment management are more than just
about being straight demand. There is an aspect of efficiency versus student
centeredness.
Scott also spends a lot of times at meetings. The meetings can take up an
entire day. The meetings provide him with the expertise in knowing what projects
need to be done at Sunrise. He keeps a running log of what needs to be done so he
can divvy it up to his staff of two when he gets back to his office. These meetings

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are important because it is the only time in which research requests are taken. His
office does not have a formal research request process, so research requests are
typically developed through various meetings.
Scott Taylor as Agent of Organizational Learning
The studies conducted by Scott come primarily from the requests of others as
opposed to being initiated from his office. Although he does take requests, he has
the ability to question why certain people want what they are asking for. This is
perhaps attributed to his experience in knowing what is considered to be important
and not important. His research projects are taken based on what is discussed during
shared governance meetings that are behind closed doors. This makes it so there is
limited access on who can ask for data and what research reports get done.
Although his office primarily responds to the request of others, he uses his
position as an opportunity to facilitate organization learning amongst institutional
actors. He uses his position to help others acquire the knowledge necessary and
think differently to make decisions. His office also serves as a storage facility for all
the institutional data necessary for others to retrieve.
Knowledge Acquisition
When Scott takes requests, he sees it as a way to help others gain knowledge
on how to ask for data and what types of data to ask for. In response to my question
about whether research requests primarily come from the request of others or
initiated by his office, he mentioned that they are mainly requests by others, but he
believes that nobody has ever focused on why people want requests. He said,

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If people want information, it’s one thing, but if people want data through
which to make decision-making, I find that a lot of my job is finding out what
they really need to make sure they are asking the right questions to get the
data that will inform their decision making.

Scott’s role allows him to help others realize why they are making requests
and how it can help with informed decision making amongst a group of leaders who
need answers from him.
Scott thought that the term “teacher of data” was fitting. “Yes, I think that is
probably one of the biggest roles that we have.” In his view, many people can
produce data since the majority of what is looked at is simple descriptive statistics.
He does add on to the teacher of data and coins the term “teacher of research
methods,” which he uses to reference “things that people understand, but they might
not understand the context surrounding it or the impact of it.” He finds that it is
equally important to make others aware of how research should be conducted to
answer specific questions. He provides an example from his job on how this is
implemented with the “New Faculty Institute.”
[The NFI was] developed by our college to help new faculty understand the
culture and the community surrounding us and become more effective
teachers, because most people become community college teachers with no
teaching experience. The first meeting that they have is me. That meeting is
a welcome to what our campus looks like using data.

By taking on this “New Faculty Institute,” Scott is establishing a culture of
using data, and more importantly, looking at data to understand the campus. In this
institute, he shows new faculty samples of student work so they can understand the

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types of students they will be teaching. Showing samples of students’ work to
faculty helps to show the strengths and weaknesses of their student population.
Scott wants the faculty to be able to use the data to understand the students in
which they serve and help students succeed by serving as institutional agents
(Stanton-Salazar, 1997). Scott’s rationale for this is he believes they
have access to institutional assets that students don’t. Whether that be
information, whether that be knowing – ‘I know John right here,’ ‘I know the
dean right here’ and how do you use those assets in order to benefit or better
the students in the long run.
According to Scott, such a tactic has helped faculty come to realizations such
as, “I never knew this about our students,” “This is amazing; I’m going to work on
this,” and “My department never mentioned anything about this; we really need to
start working on this.” By instilling such knowledge to the faculty and helping
faculty realize that they can play a vital role in the success of their students,
especially Hispanic students, is Scott’s contribution to promoting organizational
learning to the people at SCC.
Information Distribution
Scott has made it a priority to use data to educate faculty at SCC by building
the capacity for a research academy that would “train faculty members how to do a
little more action based research because the research that’s missing is ‘in the
classroom’ research.” His research findings can tell faculty which classes are more
successful than others, but he is not in the classroom to do an evaluation of which
components make it more successful. This New Faculty Institute will hopefully

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allow faculty members to learn to figure out best practices in what makes a
classroom successful.
While Scott was creating the proposal for “Achieving the Dream,” he helped
others understand what the data were showing in regards to the disparities to
Hispanic students’ underachievement at SCC. When I asked what others felt when
he presented the findings, he said,
The data cannot be disregarded. People knew it was happening, but to see
it…and to see it with course success rates, retention rates, persistence rates,
graduation rates, transfer rates, certificate rates, see the entire progression that
those equity gaps remained really brought it home.

By highlight the disparities to Hispanic students’ underachievement at SCC,
this led to more discussions about Hispanic students in particular.
Scott’s biggest initiative at the moment is to create a way in which
information is distribution among members of the campus.
One of the things I’ve been trying to develop is a system where this type of
disaggregated material is pre-created and anytime someone asks for it, we
just run the numbers, it just depends what they are looking for.

He is making this initiative actionable by including it in the strategic plan.
By “this type of disaggregated material,” what Scott means is that it would include
ethnicity, gender, age, and enrollment status (full-time or part-time) in all reports that
are requested by individuals, making it a standard operating procedure.
As mentioned by Bauman (2002), having data presented in a disaggregated
manner can be beneficial to the members of the institution because new information
can be seen through the practice. Earlier in the interview, Scott mentioned that the

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faculty at Sunrise already knew that Hispanics were not performing as well as other
groups academically. However, he provided me an example of when he actually
presented data beyond achievement in the classroom, such as transfer data in a
disaggregated manner, it left feelings of shock.
CSU transfers match our demographics. It’s about 63% Hispanics of our
transfer, going with the equity scorecard [the equity scorecard is a shared
concept developed by the Center for Urban Education that believes in
proportionality across resources] here. You look at UC’s, it’s like 25%. That
to them is startling.
By presenting data in such a manner, Scott was able to present new
knowledge to others within the institution. Scott believes that the members of his
institution are ready to have data presented to them in such a fashion,
They didn’t vocalize that they wanted it, but it was understood that we are
moving towards an environment where (we’ll use the ACCJC terms here)
‘we want to be a data driven decision making college bent on continuous
quality improvement’ right?

With this new drive, there has been an urge from faculty who has not seen
data in a while to see data.
Information Interpretation
Scott sees himself as not only a teacher of data, but a teacher of research
methods as well. In response to a question on his impressions of the term “teacher of
data,” he said that it is probably one of the biggest roles of an institutional researcher.
He said that, “many people can produce data…but they might not understand the
context surrounding it or the impact of it.” The context surrounding the data or the
impact of it is what makes him feel like a teacher of research methods because

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“understanding data is one of the biggest parts of this job and it’s one of the things I
try to teach to the researchers below me.”
The way in which Scott interprets his role has helped him developed a unique
approach to helping his “clients” when a research request is asked of his office.
“Anytime there’s a data request, they don’t fill out the request, we do.” This is a
standard procedure for his office because he doesn’t want to field any request unless
he fully understands what is asked of him because he does not want to do work that
does not meet somebody’s needs.
So there’s a sit down meeting in order to flush out research design prior to
initiating anything…If it’s something that is asked specifically, we never just
send it to them. We sit down and make sure there are no questions.

He does fear that at times the research can be data overload for some
individuals. To help individuals cope with this, he sits down with them to explain
each part and ask them questions to make sure that they’re able to answer the
questions they wanted with the data produced.
In taking research requests, Scott does not believe in running data just
because there is the ability to do so. He wants to run data only if it is going to
address an important issue that can affect change. An example that Scott gave on
what would be a question that would not inform a true institutional change was when
a faculty member wanted to know if students from Sunrise’s service area were doing
better at Sunrise or at San Gabriel College (SGC). Scott explained that this was a
bad question because he does not have access to SGC’s database. Scott’s first
question to the faculty member was why he wanted to know that. The faculty

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member responded by saying that he was “curious.” He responded to the “curious”
faculty member by explaining that,
Curiosity does not drive research, [curiosity] starts a discussion on it, but
why do you want to know that? Let’s say we find out that the English
students are doing far better at SGC. Are you as an English faculty member
willing to go to SGC and ask them what they’re doing and then change the
way you do things so that you match SGC? No. Okay, that’s a bad question;
let’s find out what we really need.

For Scott, that’s been the focus on teaching others how to ask for data as well
as make data meaningful.
Scott does not just help with interpreting data but helps to facilitate or initiate
meaningful conversation with fellow institutional actors. “My policy with data has
always been ‘the data are what the data are.’ If you have a different interpretation of
the data, then that’s where the dialogue needs to occur.” He thinks that most
researchers get into trouble because they simply write a report with their
interpretations and hand it to someone, which is not how Scott views his role.
I view our business as very much integrated and into shared governance and
the meaning of the data needs to be developed by a shared process. Just
because I say this is what the data means, doesn’t mean that’s what the data
means.

Discussions need to be had until there is a common understanding college
wide of what the data mean. For Scott, to begin having a conversation on what the
data means is a simple process. All that someone has to say is “I’m unhappy with
this data.” When individuals let Scott know that they disagree with the data provide,
it is a chance for Scott to have conversations with them and discuss what the data
mean.

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Hispanic-Serving Culture at Sunrise City College
Scott viewed the Hispanic-serving identity at SCC as something that was
historical and rooted into the identity of the institution. He felt that SCC accepted
that role as a “unique feature” of the institution even before the federal definition of
25% or more Hispanics was put in place. “We have always been a community
college that serves primarily Hispanic, Latino, Chicano students…so to me, it’s more
of a cultural definition because since the college really started in 1945, we always
have been serving that particular community.” It is a responsibility and a role that he
believes is necessary for Hispanic success.
The campus has a Hispanic-serving presence to it. Although we interviewed
at Sunrise’s satellite campus, Scott was able to paint a picture of what the campus
looked like. According to Scott, one can really sense the Hispanic student
population just by walking around the campus with it being 63% Hispanic. There is
an “amazing” mural in one of the buildings painted by a famous Hispanic muralist.
On the faculty side, the majority of them are Hispanic. There is even a very large
Chicano studies program. Having a complete understanding of what the campus
feels like is something that he practices and trains his staff in. When I asked him
how he would train me if I was a new researcher at SCC he said, “I have them walk
the campus because I really want them to get a feel of what it feels like to be on
campus, not just sitting in your office, but what it feels like.”
Scott is aware that even though SCC comes across as embracing the
Hispanic-serving culture, there is nothing specific in writing that embraces the HSI

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identity. He pointed to the college’s mission and stated that it “just reiterates what a
community college does.” The identity of SCC as a HSI is not evident based on the
mission. SCC is currently re-writing its mission, but he still feels that there is
something troubling. “We serve a culturally diverse community, but it doesn’t
mention an identity as a HSI, and then we just go on and list we provide degrees,
certificates, things like that.” He is hoping that SCC moves toward becoming more
intentional in presenting itself as a Hispanic-serving institution. As shown in the
literature by Contreras et al. (2008), HSIs are not intentional when communicating
their Hispanic-serving identity, and Scott shows frustration in knowing that they are
Hispanic-serving, and have been for many years, but it is not explicitly stated for
anyone to see.
Hispanic-Serving Meaning for Institutional Research Role
In response to the question about what it means to be an institutional
researcher at a Hispanic-serving institution, Scott spoke admiringly about the
students who attend Sunrise. He said, “I don’t think it would be easy for me to work
somewhere else.” He described SCC’s students as having a “special drive” and, for
him, seeing that the students care about “education” for its own sake made him feel
that that there was a purpose for his drive to work.
Role at a Hispanic-Serving Institution
Scott has practices that allow him to fulfill his role as an institutional
researcher at a Hispanic-serving institution like SCC. While he was describing the
students he admired, he was able to provide me with facts about the community SCC

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serves. “The last time I looked, 50% of our feeder schools are on the bottom decile
of the state, we have over 50,000 families that are below poverty. We have 50% of
our student body who have a family income less than $28,000.” These facts may not
be unique to Hispanic serving institutions, but according to Scott, “this is unique to
the community that we serve.” It would not be uncommon for individuals to view
this data as a sign of a disadvantage where failure is inevitable, but Scott sees this as
just another challenge to overcome. “Even though some people will focus on the
challenges that underserved population sometimes come with, that makes it all the
more meaningful when you can help a student succeed.” He attributes this belief
from a moral standpoint because he is contributing to the facilitation of the success
of students who “in the past have been ignored or struggled.”
Scott also has an understanding that data need to be further disaggregated to
more than the standard race/ethnic terms (i.e. Hispanic, Asian). SCC along with the
rest of the district recently switched to the federal definition, which further brakes
down ethnicities. Scott described how he put the federal definition to practice when
he discussed the process in applying for an AANAPISI grant. “For instance with
AANAPISI, we did separate it by what type of Asian/Pacific Islander students we
were talking about just to make sure there wasn’t any model-minority myth in it.”
Understanding Equity
The word “equity” is used a couple times during the interview with Scott.
His use of the word and his suggestions on how he can make others aware of equity
issues show that he is conscious of the problems at SCC. Since SCC is so heavily

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populated with Hispanic students, members of the institution identify themselves as
“we are the college that provides access to this Hispanic population.” Having such
an identity has contributed to them losing
the urge to look to see if Hispanic students are doing better than any other
students because for our general [education] credit classes, we are 75%
Hispanic so why do we need to break it down, those are our students.

There is an assumption that if the students are doing well, then our Hispanic
students are doing well “because there are 75% of them. So until recently, there has
not been a huge focus on equity issues.” According to Scott, there has always been a
push for student success, but not a push for “Hispanic student success.” The
difference with the latter is that even though SCC is an HSI, there was never a push
to see how well the Hispanic students were succeeding.
Scott helps members of the institution understand equity by utilizing the idea
behind the “Equity Scorecard” (Bensimon, 2004). In response to asking him how he
would present such information, he said,
I’ll point out that if our population is 75% Hispanic, then how come we only
have 40% Hispanics in business? There are 60% of Asians majoring in
business, so he begins to question, why is that that we don’t have Hispanics
being served in business? Is it that they don’t want to be in business? We
need to talk about it.

Hispanic-Serving Assessment
During our interview, Scott was given a hypothetical scenario where I was
the president and I wanted him to design a research study on how well SCC was
serving their Hispanic students. He thought that his research office needed more
specific metrics for Hispanic students and Hispanic student programs. For the

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metrics on academic outcomes, he feels that they have enough, but that it is not
enough to focus on the “serving” aspect. To him, the “serving” aspect would include
some unknown variables. “We don’t know whether Hispanics are receiving
counseling more often than anybody else or less often. We don’t have that
information. That is something I would like to have as a metric.” For Scott, these
additional aspects are what make the “serving” aspect of Hispanic-serving because
the academic outcomes are “side stuff.”
Scott initiated the disaggregation of outcomes by special programs. By
disaggregating programs such as MESA, Adelante, counseling, and other programs
targeted to helping students with additional resources, he believes he can really see
how their Hispanic and other underrepresented students are doing. He will use as
metrics some of the special programs that have been developed for all under-
represented students such as the MESA and Adelante programs. By using these
programs, it is an example of seeing how well they are serving Hispanic students
based on academic outcomes. However, as a caveat, other than academic outcomes,
there are limited metrics on seeing how well they are serving their Hispanic students.
There are student surveys, but he really would not consider them to be the type of
data that says, “Hey, look at how good we serve Hispanics.”
Kurt Thomas – Mountain View College
Kurt has been with Mountain View College (MVC) for 12 years as the
Director of Institutional Research. Prior to MVC, he was a research analyst for 12
years at a similar HSI. Outside of working at the institutional research office as a

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graduate assistant while working on his master’s degree, MVC and Central
Community College were the only institutions he has done institutional research.
His entire professional experience has been in institutional research. His educational
credentials include a masters and bachelors in psychology from California State
Universities.
Kurt’s role as an institutional researcher at Mountain View College (MVC)
can be described as providing data for managerial decision-making as well as
managing the office of institutional research at MVC. He answers directly to the
president. When he was asked about his priorities, he was quick to answer “the
president” as the number one priority. “We actually have that on our website…if the
president calls, his request takes priority and trumps everything else. I don’t know if
they’re [others within the institution] fine with that, but they understand it.”
Following the president as the top priority, it was federal or state mandated reports.
Any other research request would need to take on an institutional scope that would
have an institutional wide impact. The lowest on the priority list for his office would
be research requests that come from staff and faculty members. “I can’t always help
faculty who have individual requests. If it’s a learning outcome for their course, then
certainly it takes higher precedent than say because they are curious or they just want
to find out.”
The institutional research office at MVC is vital to the institution when
decisions are being made by senior administration. Kurt spoke of the mantra “data
for informed decision making,” which is the mantra of the institutional research

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office that is embraced by the institution. He mentioned that the vice-presidents
make that well known and that “there’s never anything that starts new that the
research office is not involved in.” The reasoning behind this according to Kurt is
that they want to use data to look at an initiative or the project to break it down in
order to lead to informed conversations.
Within the managerial aspect of Kurt’s position, he runs a “robust” office.
He has a staff of three researchers, each with a different research focus (Title V
issues, student services, instructional programs, etc.) and two support staff. The size
of Kurt’s office is worth mentioning because this is not typical of institutional
research offices, especially in community college settings. The staff of five is able to
cover 90% of the 400 – 500 research requests that come into his office annually.
“We’ve standardized the request process so part of what I look at is as request comes
in, I prioritize those and divvy those out to my staff.” The size of his office coupled
with a formalized process in handling research requests allows for his office to be
important to the institution because they are so efficient with handling requests.
Kurt also spends a lot of times at meetings. On an average day, he can attend
up to three meeting that run anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half. Even
though these meetings take up a lot of his time, he sees this as a chance to “give
input on a researcher’s perspective and infuse the discussion about not just leaving it
to anecdote conversations, but having more informed conversations.”

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Kurt Thomas as Agent of Organizational Learning
For Kurt, the difference between taking external requests and initiating
studies could go in either direction depending on the time of the year. “At times it’s
probably been no more than 70% and 30% in either direction, but it can certainly
swing in both directions between what’s initiated by the office and what’s responded
to by request.” There are times when most of the projects his office takes on are via
research requests and there is not a lot of time devoted to initiating projects,
however, there may be periods depending on how busy the office is that it can be the
other way around. Kurt has been at MVC long enough to know that requests come
in cycles. His office is also well respected within the institution and is important to
the institution when it comes to guiding the decision making process. According to
Kurt, no new initiatives can begin without going through the research office. The
institutional research office at MVC is central to the institution.
Knowledge Acquisition
As mentioned earlier, Kurt’s office is important to the institution because of
their culture of using data to help initiate informed conversations for decision
making. Kurt spoke of a positive aspect in attending all the meetings that he attends
regularly. When attending meetings, he is there to give input from an institutional
researcher’s perspective to help infuse data into the discussion. He dedicates a lot of
effort into obtaining information for the institution. One of the examples he
provided was when he discussed the developmental process of a survey that he

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distributes in order to help others get the information necessary to develop strategies
for helping the Hispanic student population.
We’re also developing a faculty instrument, so when we ask for example
“perception of the institution,” we can look at student perception of the
institution, faculty perception of the institution, and start to look at where
the disconnects exist. So going back to the HSI aspect of that, what that
committee will do is the semester after we generate that survey, we’ll
analyze the results and then that following semester, they’ll spend time
discussing that and developing strategies to address disconnect in perception
of the institution.

A comprehensive survey such as the one described above helps to cover areas
such as student interaction, student to faculty interaction, progress on performance
metrics, and perceptions of the institution. All of this allows for others to gain new
knowledge to help with developing strategies in helping the students at MVC.
Surveying is an overly utilized way of learning about the institutional at
MVC. Kurt stated,
We probably send out between 50-75 surveys a semester. I think again going
back to the size of the office, the institution supports information collection
and data…We never base anything or try to base anything on anecdote
judgment or opinion.
Past surveys have included satisfaction surveys on the Child Development
Center, the Success Center, Student Services, Distance Education, campus climate,
and graduation just to name a few. Kurt has a large office and the support for
establishing processes to obtain data makes it easy for his office to administer
surveys.

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At MVC, data are value. Data are meant to be used in a “proactive manner.”
Data are not sources of knowledge that are given out to others to make others feel
ashamed or develop negative emotions.
They’re not used in a punitive sort of way like shame on you, your program
has lower success rates among Hispanic students. It’s okay, let’s look at that
and let’s develop strategies and work at it in a proactive manner.

Information Distribution
Data are always distributed in a disaggregated manner. “We will never look
at data without disaggregating them, it’s just what we do out of the research office.
If I have enrollment data, by all means, I have demographic information connected to
them.” Kurt has built the disaggregation of data into a standard operating procedure
for the office and made it a part of the culture of the institution. Kurt mentioned that
since he arrived at MVC, he made a point to “disaggregate data as much as possible
so there was more informed conversation.” The reasoning behind this is that
disaggregation of data can be more insightful and can provide discussion points for
why certain populations are performing at different rates. “It wasn’t just about
success rate in math, but success rate in math among gender, age, and ethnicity.”
Regardless of whether the request asked for disaggregated data or not, Kurt
explained that even if the person may never have the opportunity to look at it, his
office is still making its best effort to inform the powers that be at MVC. So far, no
one has told him “enough, too much!” This desire for disaggregated data begins
with the top. “Our vice-president, she was on the Commission for the Future:
Achievement Gap. She knows we disaggregate data by demographics and that is

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probably the portion of the report she would look at.” The disaggregation of data
helps to inform her about where different gaps are, the different achievement gap
issues, and to develop strategies to address the problems.
Kurt’s position as an institutional researcher within an office that is central to
the institution allows him to present information when he feels a need to do so. He is
a member in numerous committees, and if he’s not the chair of one, he can turn to
the chair and say, “I’ve got some things I’ll like to share in the next meeting.” That
alone is enough for time to be allotted to Kurt in the next meeting. Kurt also gets
approached for information.
We have an Enrollment and Success Management Committee meeting
tomorrow, and they just ask me before any meeting if there is anything I
would like to present. If there are things they would need to know from the
research I’ve generated.

Data presented in a disaggregated manner is not only used for looking at
academic achievement across demographics. The disaggregation of data is also used
to see how well MVC is reaching its goal of serving Hispanic students as well. Kurt
provided an example of how this was applied to their Mountain View East and West
satellite campuses. “Our East and West center are to address the board in March and
they’ll be – we have embedded within their reports about the students they serve, the
demographic characteristics, whether it has increased or declined in service rates.”
For the East and West centers, this is a big issue for them because they were
specifically developed to serve those communities in those regions. There is a need

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to know if who they are serving is representative to the demographic characteristics
to those regions.
For Kurt, this was done for a “checks and balances” standpoint. Given that
these two satellite campuses were developed to serve a specific population in a
specific area, he would need to highlight that specific goals were met. This “checks
and balances” is not only at the satellite campuses but also at specific centers on their
main campus. He also looked at whether students by demographic characteristics
who access the Success Centers are representative of the student body and whether
their performance outcomes in the courses for which they access the Success Centers
are different.
Kurt provides general information to members of the institution every other
week by putting out something known as “What’s New at MVC?” He described this
as something that runs the gamut when it comes to what information is given out.
Something may pop out that’s not really research or something that’s been
requested, but it’s something that we think may be of interest to the general
campus community. Last week, the one that went out was on trends of
financial aid awards.

This “What’s New at MVC?” proved valuable as Kurt received a lot of calls
and feedback on that. “Seven years ago, a quarter of our students were receiving
financial aid, last year, 45% were.” This helped lead to questions of looking into
different trends such as the different types of aid awarded and the breakdown of
different demographics of award recipients. Kurt is using his access of information
to bring the attention of students concerns to members of the institution.

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Kurt believes that pushing the data out is important. “All this information
that I’m talking about, success rates, retention rates, persistence rates, FTS
generation, course enrollment, fill rates, student demographic characteristics, we’ve
put that together into an online program that’s accessible to our website.” The
reports date back to the past five years and are assessable to the members of the
institution to view.
Information Interpretation
Kurt wants to funnel every request into the research request form and have
the individual(s) put it into their words. “What is it you want to find out?” And
“How will you use this information?” According to him, whether the research
request is clear or not, whoever is in charge with that project will call the individual
and verify. Communicating with the individual(s) provides a helpful approach to
these requests.
It may be no more than a two-minute conversation that goes the line of
looking at a cohort of first time students who started in fall 2007, took
this course, and you want to track their subsequent course taking behavior.
I’m going to look at students and define first time students as this. I’m
going to look at this course and this is how I’m defining that course, how
I’m defining success in that course. Subsequent course taking behavior
means this. We use our operational definitions to start with and we define
the project and that helps tighten the methodology as well.

Kurt meets with individuals because he has concerns about the language that
people use to define one thing when his researchers can be defining it in other ways.
The conversations that his staff has with the people who request research allow
requestors to define their intentions for the research and how they will use it. His

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staff and he will make suggestions, but most of the time, his staff will take on the
direction of the requestors.
Kurt finds it important for his office to be able to help others understand data.
In response to a question on his impressions of the term “teacher of data,” he said
“the worse thing we could do would be to generate a report that either because of the
sophistication level that it’s written at or the technical jargon we used was
incomprehensible to the requestor.” Kurt is conscious of his audience and this is one
of the biggest training pieces for his staff in terms of professional development
because he has a relatively new staff and they are all in doctoral programs. “Many
having published various articles, they come with that mindset of APA format and
writing as if they are writing to a journal. And a lot of times, that’s sort of the first
things we need to debunk.” Debunking the field language is important because,
There are very few faculty here that have a firm understanding of research
methodology and statistics. So in very lay terms a lot of times it’s the good
and the bad…we’ll write to a lay audience. We’ll describe what that means
as opposed to describing the outcomes.

Not only are the research reports in lay language, the presentations are
tailored to a lay audience as well. Kurt wants to make sure that the research findings
are useful to those requesting the data and that they are interpreted correctly. For
him, the worse thing that can happen is for someone to misinterpret the data and
ethically, he cannot allow someone to run around misinterpreting data that comes out
of his office.

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Hispanic-Serving Culture at Mountain View College
Kurt viewed the Hispanic-serving identity at MVC as a legal identity given to
HSIs by the federal government. When I asked him what his definition of a
Hispanic-serving institution was, he responded with “I think I drop back to the
traditional term that is employed by the federal government of serving at least 25%
Hispanic.” This is mainly attributed to his framework of HSIs alongside Title V
grants, and since he has been with MVC, they have always had Title V grants.
In response to the question of whether or not the rest of the campus
community embraces the Hispanic-serving identity, he provided me with a “wedged”
answer. “I would say no, and intentionally so.” According to Kurt, the leaders of
the institution put a lot of effort into not talking about MVC as a Hispanic-serving
institution because “the concern is that it would be perceived as marginalizing what
should be institutional efforts.” With 48% of MVC’s student being Hispanic, Kurt
believes that they don’t want to be perceived as an institution that only promotes
strategies to Hispanic students because “it’s part of a grant.” MVC wants to give out
the perception that helping Hispanic students is an institutional-wide effort. “So
we’ve taken pains actually to not talk about the grant, to not talk about Mountain
View necessarily as an HSI institution. We’ve talked about ‘these are our students’
and ‘these are good strategies that will benefit our students.’” In Kurt’s eyes, when
initiative are treated as a grant and not built into campus culture, the initiative dies
when the grant dies. The institution wants to “sew and inculcate” serving Hispanic
students as part of the “climate and nature” of the institution and “not perceived as

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something separate from the institution for this new piece of funding that we got, that
it’s funding to do these things institution-wide.” In explaining this to me, Kurt feels
like it comes across as “semantics,” but it’s important that the effects be perceived as
“institutional-wide.”
Hispanic-Serving Meaning for Institutional Research Role
In response to my question about what it means to be an institutional
researcher at a Hispanic-serving institution, Kurt saw that his role in working at an
HSI was to recognize that he does have a 48% Hispanic population at his institution
and that fact needs to be acknowledged. Some of the ways he has done that in the
past was by obtaining Title V grants and disaggregating data to show differences in
Hispanic attainment.
What we have focused on is we’re 48% Hispanic, so one of the things we
commonly look at both under the aegis of the grant, but just in general as an
institution is the performance of Hispanic in anything I’ll have to say.

In describing how they focused on the outcomes of Hispanic students and
strategies to help improve their success rates, Kurt used data to support his causes.
We look at success rates, retention rates, persistence rates, degrees and
certificates over a three year period. We look at breakdowns disaggregated
by gender and ethnicity for the last year and that’s one of the expectations
in program review that every program discusses performance outcomes of
student populations that when they think about how they can improve their
programs, they think about how they can affect performance outcomes for
students that are adversely impacted. If there’s lower performance outcomes
for Hispanics, part of what they have to write in to their program review are
strategies to improve success rates among Hispanic students.

Kurt viewed his role as being a guide in using data for informed decision
making. He has also made disaggregating by race/ethnicity a common practice at his

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institution to show disparities in academic outcomes and continues to provide the
data necessary for others to have insightful conversation on how to improve upon
those outcomes.
Role at a Hispanic-Serving Institution
Kurt participates in various roles within the university that are vital to him
being an institutional researcher at a Hispanic-serving institution. He is the co-chair
of the President’s Equity Council where his role in institutional research allows him
to take part in examining how the institution supports looking at equity. “There’s
rarely a research project we generate where we don’t look at disproportionate
impact.” Every research project has data disaggregated by gender, age and ethnicity.
Disaggregated data can be used in a variety of ways, such as the example Kurt
provided with program review.
Every single program discusses performance outcomes of student populations
that when they think about how they can improve their programs, they think
about how they can affect performance outcomes for students who depending
upon the population that is adversely impacted.

There is a desire at MVC to provide “successful initiative and strategies to
areas and populations that have known deficiencies.”
Focusing on the positives as opposed to the negatives in Hispanic academic
outcomes was started at MVC about two years ago with the Women’s Equity
Council (WEC). There was a feeling that the same conversations of students doing
poorly only reinforced poor outcomes. He assisted with the WEC to see “what can
we do to focus on some of the positive outcomes?” There was a desire to “paint a

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positive picture so that it’s not always a perception of this is the population that is
performing at a lower rate, but here are the good things that are occurring.” To help
with this and to engage in “fruitful conversation,” they started looking at “What’s
New at MVCs.” These reports focused on the positives and that is something that
has since been worked into the culture and the climate of the institution.
While Kurt was describing how information can be disseminated, he was able
to provide a general understanding of the communities that MVC serves and the vital
role MVC plays in the community in regards to access in higher education. The East
and West campus had to address the board in March to see if they were serving the
communities properly since they were specifically developed to serve the Mountain
View East and Mountain View West communities.
Understanding Equity
The word “equity” was used a couple times during the interview with Kurt.
His use of the word was to describe the different committees that he is involved in as
well as the names of other committees that MVC has (i.e. President’s Equity
Council, Women’s Equity Council). Since MVC has a population consisting of 48%
Hispanic students, Kurt mentioned earlier that there is rarely a research project
generated where they do not look at disproportionate impact. Kurt provided an
example of how this is achieved while looking at 22 courses with high enrollments
and low success rates. The 22 courses represented 25% of the college enrollment.
Within these courses, the Hispanic success rates were lower than that of the general
population. That fact has contributed to MVC beginning to focus on various

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alternative learning strategies like supplemental instruction, accelerated learning, and
the “learning to learn model” out of Boston College. These strategies will be infused
into the curriculum and then the data will be disaggregated to see what impact they
had for the Hispanic students.
Hispanic-Serving Assessment
During our interview, Kurt was given a hypothetical scenario where I was the
president and I wanted him to design a research study on how well MVC was serving
its Hispanic students. Interestingly enough, of the three institutional researchers,
Kurt was the only one where this was not a hypothetical scenario. He provided me
with an account of when the president asked him to look at the completion rate of
their students, specifically their Hispanic students.
We disaggregate the data, but it begs the question of how you would define
completion. We’ve broken that [completion] down in momentum points.
So we’ll look at things like student and their point of contact with the
institution, at their first semester as first time students, as they continue
through their academic careers, and then as they reach those completion
points. So we’re looking at their progression through the hierarchy. From
the initial point of contact with the institution to…I wouldn’t say terminal
goal, but as they start to hit degree, certificate, transfer, becoming employed,
those kind of things.

He mentioned talking to the president and proposing some measures to him
that he liked and took those to the vice-presidents, and then took those to the deans.
There were conversations within other committees. Over time they started
developing performance outcome measures to be part of their completion agenda.
“So then what we’ll do is we’ll disaggregate – well look at that three years worth of
data and that will be a moving picture.” The data gathered will help to develop an

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“institutional scorecard” on these measures which will be disaggregated by student
demographic characteristics.
Cross Case Analysis

The three institutional researchers all varied in background and experiences
within the field (Table 4.1). Christine had a background in the private sector; Scott
came with backgrounds in the private sector as well as having been a faculty
member; and Kurt had the most experience amongst the three of them with 24 years
of experience in institutional research, having never worked in any other sector.
Their educational credentials are fairly equivalent. All three have master’s degrees
and Scott holds a doctorate as well.
Table 4.1: Background of Institutional Researchers
Christine Scott Kurt
Years of IR Experience 4 4 24
Years as an IR Director 1 1 12
Institutions Worked 2 2 1
Educational Credentials Masters Doctorate Masters

Institutional Researcher Role

Based on the three interviews, one can assume that the fundamental role of an
institutional researcher is to provide data for senior administrators for decision-
making purposes. Another task is to manage the work flow of the office and how
research requests are filtered out. The way the work flow is managed is by
understanding the priorities of the institution. To find out what the top five priorities
are when concerning research requests, all three of the participants were asked the
question “Can you tell me the priorities in which requests are taken and worked on at

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your office?” All three participants listed their request priorities from the most
important to the least important. All three participants provided similar answers
(Table 4.2).
Table 4.2: Priorities of Institutional Researchers
Priorities in Research Requests
Rank
Central Community
College Sunrise City College Mountain View College
1st
Board of
Trustees/President President President
2nd Accreditation Accreditation Federal/State mandates
3rd Research for the school Federal/State mandates Institutional-wide projects
4th
Research from bigger
departments
Decision making for
planning Research for committees
5th
Research from smaller
department
Ad Hoc requests from
faculty and staff
Ad Hoc requests from
faculty/staff

Results show that the entity overseeing the institution, whether it is a person
(the president) or a group of people (board of trustees) takes priority over everything
else. Christine mentions that anyone from the executive board has priority because
she thinks that they use this information to make decisions in regards to the
leadership of the school. Scott wanted to say that it depended on the timing of the
year, but in the end said, “I’m just going to be completely honest, whatever the
president needs comes first, that’s just because that is the structure of the college and
he needs those data to make a decision.” Kurt explained that the president being the
first priority is explicit in the research request form. “We have a ‘research request
form.’ It’s (the priorities of requests) numerically listed in terms of projects and
priorities, so being an institutional research office, the president’s request trumps
everything.”

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Following the president as the top priority, the answers were similar as well
in accreditation and federal and state mandated projects following immediately after.
All three also would agree that research requests from staff and faculty members
who wanted to know for example “how their classes were doing” would be last on
the priority list. The reasons all varied as to why. Christine did not think it was the
least important of all her load but thought that the bigger departments should have
priority over the smaller departments (i.e. math, English). Scott thought this was the
last thing on his agenda because the faculty does not ask him for such data. For
Kurt, it was attributed to timing and resources. His office receives roughly 400-500
research requests a year, and although they are a “robust office,” they are only able
to cover 90% of them, so in terms of prioritization, he felt that he could not always
help faculty who have individual requests.
Capacity of Institutional Researchers as Agents of Organizational Learning

As mentioned in the literature review, Huber’s (1991) four constructs of
organizational learning consist of knowledge acquisition, information distribution,
information interpretation, and memory storage. All three researchers had
similarities and differences in how they promoted organizational learning within
each construct.
Knowledge Acquisition
The three institutional researchers have roles that would involve knowledge
acquisition. However, not a lot of what they provide can be considered promoting
Hispanic awareness. There is some sense of general “knowledge acquisition,”

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though, if we were to be strictly looking at organizational learning and not
organizational learning to promote inequitable outcomes in Hispanic academic
achievement.
Christine and Scott have similarities in knowledge acquisition in that they
both sought out information about their students. Christine and Scott discussed
seeking out knowledge on the students they are serving by looking at census and
educational data. Such information acquired included API scores, graduation rates,
income, etc. Knowing such information gives them a better understanding of their
students as well as what services they need to provide to their students.
The three institutional researchers also spend a lot of time in meetings. Of
the three, Scott and Kurt discussed taking an active role in these meetings as an
outside member that can offer advice. They are there to help their institutions
increase their knowledge on aspects that were never thought of or to provide
suggestions for research that can help with obtaining new information for
institutional actors. They infuse data into the conversation to help with decision-
making processes.
Equally important to pushing out data to help others acquire knowledge is the
methodology in research practices. Christine and Scott both found it important to
help others learn more about research methods. They educate other institutional
actors on what good research consists of and how to conduct good research.
Christine provided an example of how research cannot be used and informed
members within her institution about FERPA violations. Scott helped make others

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aware of how to ask questions and conduct research that would help with their
specific institution and not worry about what other institutions are doing. They both
want to promote meaningful research.
Information Distribution
The institutional researchers all gather and produce information to help others
acquire knowledge about their institutions. However, they each have their own ways
in doing so. Christine and Kurt push knowledge out to the institution with
information that is typically not asked for to make others more aware of the issues
surrounding the institution. They are gathering data about their institutions, learning
about it, and then pushing it out in the form of reports. Christine is currently
working on a biannual newsletter to make the campus aware of what is going on in
the world of research as well as on the campus. Kurt provides a bimonthly report
titled “What’s New at MVC?” which provides the campus with general knowledge
about the happenings around campus.
Unlike Christine and Kurt, Scott is not pushing out data that are not asked of
him. He is promoting knowledge acquisition by helping faculty and other
administrators learn how to use data for action research within their own classrooms
to learn about their students. Scott thought it was just as important to provide data to
others and to be a teacher of research methods in the process. He initiated a “New
Faculty Institute” to help others in the institution learn to use data to establish a
culture of using data. This institute was developed to help others use data to learn

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about the institution they work for and to help faculty understand the types of
students they are teaching.
The three researchers all had experience distributing data to senior
administrators at their respective institutions. Although data on Hispanics are not
frequently asked for, I wanted to understand from their experiences what happens
when data on Hispanics are discussed. The following section addresses answers to
two questions: (1) what are the reactions like when academic achievement data
regarding Hispanics are presented?, and (2) how often are data disaggregated?
Of the three institutional researchers, Christine has yet to be called on to
present data on Hispanics at CCC. Christine mentioned during our interview that
questions have not been raised yet during her short time with CCC on academic
outcomes of specific students in regards to race/ethnicity. However, she has
presented such data for her previous college where she was able to describe their
feelings of “shock.” She took the disaggregation of data beyond race/ethnicity and
broke down gender as well. “Their feelings were ‘wow, I cannot believe this is the
case.’ When you break down Hispanic population, they are not doing too bad. But
when you break it down between gender, it becomes even more alarming.” Showing
this type of information to senior administrators, according to Christine, makes them
realize that more information about their students is needed. “Any time I present
data, it’s not ‘that’s it.’ It’s a way to ask more questions, what are the next steps that
we need to do now and what other information do we need to acquire because of it.”

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On the other hand, Scott and Kurt have both reported on Hispanic academic
outcomes at their respective institutions. Although the data has been asked for from
individuals who wanted to see it, Scott does not have the disaggregation of data as a
standard operating procedure quite yet. He is working on it, whereas Kurt
disaggregates and presents information on outcomes of all ethnic groups whether it is
asked for or not. Both researchers found that when they did present information
about Hispanic outcomes, the reaction was not one of shock, but more of a validation
of what is already known.
For Scott’s senior administrators and faculty, their reactions were more of
“well, we know that was happening.” He attributes this to the sophistication as well
as to the ethnic identity of the faculty themselves.
We have a very sophisticated faculty and a large percentage of our faculty are
Hispanic, so they know the literature and they also know it from their
classrooms. It’s a situation where they knew it was coming but haven’t really
looked at it.

However, other academic outcomes data do lead to feelings of surprise. The
shock value does come when the data become more specific like transfer rates to
UCs and CSUs. Like many of the peer institutions, they are trying to find ways to
address the situation but have not found a solution yet.
Like Scott, the reactions of the people that Kurt presents the data to also show
an understanding of already being aware of the situation because they have been
exposed to that data and information for such a long time. Kurt does not want the
discussions on data to always be about poor outcomes of Hispanic achievement at

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MVC as that alone will not lead to anything that would be actionable. He presents
the data so there can be focus on positive outcomes and, instead of looking at the
negatives of the Hispanic population, what they are improving or achieving. This is
important to him in order to be sensitive to institutional climate.
Disaggregating Data
This next section addresses the disaggregation of data--how often it was
done, if it was done at all. Of the three institutional researchers, only Kurt from
Mountain View College (MVC) said that disaggregation of data was done all the
time and was, in a sense, a standard operating procedure. Scott wants the practice to
become something of a standard operating procedure. He is currently working on a
program that can allow that to happen. Christine at CCC mentioned that it is done,
but for the most part, disaggregated data is not asked for.
Table 4.3: Practice on Disaggregation of Data
Researcher Is it Done? Standard Operating Procedure
Christine Yes, when asked No
Scott Yes, when asked Working on it
Kurt Yes Yes

Christine did not explicitly say that data were disaggregated to discuss
specific Hispanic outcomes but mostly referenced that it is done to make sure that all
students are served equally. Scott does disaggregate data when it is asked for. He
mentioned that if it is not asked for, it is not done because his office is the only one
that can do it. At MVC, everything is disaggregated whether it is asked for or not.

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Kurt has over time developed disaggregating data as a standard operating procedure
within his office in order to promote meaningful conversation as well as look at
proactive ways to help struggling groups on campus. Although all three institutional
researchers have disaggregated data based on race/ethnicity, no one mentioned that it
was done because they are working at HSIs. Kurt mentioned, though, that with
MVC being 48% Hispanic, he felt that it was necessary to disaggregate data because
of their federal status and meeting the federal definition of what it means to be an
HSI.
Information Interpretation
How is information explained to the people who request it? One of the
questions asked of the three institutional researchers was for them to describe how
they would handle a situation where someone is unsure of how to go about asking for
specific information and what happens after such information is received. All of the
researchers showed that they take time to figure out what it is the person requesting
the research wants. When serving their clients, there is a human communications
aspect to what the researchers do.
Central Community College
Christine mentioned that she asks a lot of “why?” questions because doing so
allows her to know if the research is possible or not. According to Christine,
researchers who are so used to working with data can foresee when the answers are
going to be similar from case to case, and having that type of knowledge is important

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because she can ask the requestors if they are okay with a similar result from a
different research project.
So asking them questions and letting them process it is very important. Once
you start asking questions, I try to write it down and have them write it down
themselves. When they see it, they begin to think, this is not what they really
want.

By having this process, Christine believes it: (1) deters them from asking for
research requests, and (2) really helps them to focus on what they really need to
come out of the research. Helping requestors understand research methodology and
data allows them to focus on what they really want to achieve when making requests.
Sunrise City College
Whereas Christine focuses on the questions being asked, Scott takes the
approach of helping his requestors with research methodology. The first step in this
approach is that when individuals have requests, Scott or someone from his team fills
out the research request. This is a standard procedure for his office because he does
not want to field any request unless he fully understands what is asked of him. He
does not want to do work that does not meet somebody’s needs. “So there’s a
meeting in order to flush out research design prior to initiating anything. If it’s
something that is asked specifically, we never just send it to them. We sit down and
make sure there are no questions.” The meetings are necessary because he fears that
at times the research can be data overload for some individuals. After the research is
completed, he will meet with the individual and explain each part of the results and
ask them questions to make sure that they are able to answer with their data.

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Mountain View College
Kurt provides a customer service aspect to individuals requesting research.
Kurt funnels all requests to their office’s “research request form.” “What is it you
want to find out?” And, “How will you use this information?” According to him,
whether the research request is clear or not, whoever is in charge with that project
will call the individual and verify. However, for Kurt, his concern is with the
language that people use to define one thing when his researchers can be defining it
in other ways. The conversations that his office has let them define what their intent
is and how they will use it. His staff and himself included will make suggestions,
but most of the time, his staff will take on the direction of the requestors. This
allows him to have clear directions about what the intent is, how they are going to
define it, and the way to go about putting together a research report that addresses
the needs of the requestor.
All three researchers showed that they had customer service skills when
meeting with individuals. Within the realm of interpretation, Kurt was the only
researcher concerned with language and how things were written. Whereas Christine
and Scott put the ownership of the research question on themselves, Kurt puts that
ownership on the requestor. Kurt will most likely take on the direction of the
person(s) requesting the research, whereas Christine and Scott seem to want to
control the research design. They all talk about defining the question and meanings
to certain words. Christine and Kurt also have bureaucratic ways of taking research

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requests. Their offices use a “request form,” while Scott’s requests are organically
formed based on shared governance meetings.
Defining their Roles
As previously stated in the literature review, the term “Hispanic-serving
institution” is a fairly new identity (Laden, 2001). The federal definition for HSIs
states that there has to be at least 25% of full-time equivalent students who are
enrolled as undergraduates that are identified as Hispanic (USDOE, 2010). During
the interviewing process, all three deans/directors of institutional research were
asked two questions pertaining to the meaning of the HSI identity. The first question
asked for their personal definition and interpretation of the meaning of “Hispanic-
serving institution.” The follow-up question asked what it meant for them to work at
a Hispanic-serving institution.
Institutional Researchers’ Perceptions of HSIs
Christine viewed the term “HSI” as a label. She felt the term was a correct
term to use and that it was a symbolic title for serving all under-represented students.
She saw it as a launching pad in promoting equitable outcomes for all students at the
institution. This was evident when she made a correlation to poor, uneducated White
students in areas like Bakersfield or Victorville. She believed that focusing on just
Hispanic students would not be a service to the rest of the college student body.
According to Christine, this belief is not just within CCC, but extends to other
community colleges as well whether they are Hispanic-serving or not. Her belief

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that HSIs exist to serve all underrepresented populations was how she rationalized
not just solely serving Hispanics and how she viewed what her campus does.
Scott viewed HSIs as a term that was historical and rooted into the identity of
the institution. For him, HSIs have a responsibility to serve Hispanic students, and
he has accepted such a role.
The federal definition is 25%, but honestly, when we discuss it on our
campus it’s more than that, it’s more of a culturally definition because since
the college really started in 1945, we always have been serving that particular
community.

Scott also had a critical opinion on what type of schools were considered to
be HSIs in his mind. When he mentioned having taught at another institution in the
district that was a little more than 25% Hispanic, I mentioned that it was an HSI as
well and his response was “kind of.” His feelings were the same about HSIs in
Texas. “We are one of the largest in the states, one of the largest in the country for
serving Hispanic students because I don’t count those Texas ones that are like 12
colleges that count as one.” For Scott, the HSI identity is more than just about
having a 25% Hispanic population. It is a responsibility and a role that he believes is
necessary for Hispanic student success.
Kurt’s definition was simply put and aligned with the federal definition for
HSIs. “I think I drop back to the traditional term that’s employed by the federal
government of serving at least 25% Hispanic.” Kurt’s definition was the standard
definition because he saw a correlation between HSIs and Title V grants. This was
his definition even though MVC enrolls 48% Hispanic students.

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Table 4.4: Institutional Researchers and the Hispanic Serving Institution
Institutional
Researcher
“HSI”
Meaning
Key Words IR’s Role at an HSI
Christine Symbolic Correct term,
necessary, label
Serving all underrepresented
students, not just about
Hispanics
Scott Historical Responsibility,
cultural
Special brand of education,
help succeed, always focused
on the Hispanic population
Kurt Legal 25 percent, Title V
funding
Recognize, acknowledge and
address disproportionate
impact, weave Title V
programs into institution, not
separate out Hispanic students
Table 4.4 shows how each institutional researcher defined the term
“Hispanic-serving institution” with a list of key words that were used when speaking
about the definition. In addition, there are ways in which each institutional
researcher saw their role at an HSI. Overall, all three institutional researchers had
varying definitions of the term HSI when they were asked for their personal
definitions. Christine’s definition of HSI was a symbolic one. She thought that HSI
was the “correct term” to describe such institutions, but thought that it should be a
symbol for providing equity for all underrepresented students. Scott’s definition
came from a moral and historical standpoint. His definition was one of embracement
and celebration of the identity, and to him the definition served as a history of
serving Hispanics even before the federal definition was coined. Kurt’s definition
was a legal definition. He simply defined it the same way the Department of
Education defined it because of his correlation to HSIs and Title V funding

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Making Meaning of their Roles in HSIs
The follow up question asked the institutional researchers for their opinion on
what it meant to work for an HSI. Christine’s interpretation of her role in relation to
working for an HSI aligned with her earlier definition. She saw her role as serving
all underrepresented students, “For me HSI doesn’t mean just serving Hispanic
students, but all students…So providing access to all students to help them succeed
is a better, I guess for me a better way of looking at it than HSI.” She defined her
role as being charged with not just highlighting Hispanic students who do not
perform well, but to highlight all students that do not perform well. When I asked
her about Hispanic students, she always made sure to speak about “equity for all”
and would also discuss other ethnicities, demographic types (i.e. gender), or special
populations such as DSP&S. She expressed the need to have equitable outcomes for
all students at her institution.
Scott’s view on his role at an HSI shared the same sentiments as his personal
definition of what an HSI should be. For him, it is about helping their Hispanic
students succeed and promoting Hispanic student success. “When I was on campus,
just walking around and being around the students and the faculty, there was a
unique sense of dedication.” Scott saw his role in working at an HSI as what it
meant to work at Sunrise City College (SCC). Since this was the only institution he
worked for in an administrative capacity, he was only able to give an account of this
particular experience. According to Scott, HSIs are “a special brand of education.”
Scott finds his institution to be unique because of the community it serves. “We’re

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giving a special brand of education because we are giving an education to a
population that has been traditionally underserved by all colleges, all higher
education, also by community colleges.” He thinks that most people focus on the
challenges of working with underserved populations, but for him it is more
meaningful when he is able to see students succeed “because you have taken all you
can and made something work in an institution for students who in the past have
either in the past been ignored or struggled.”
Kurt saw that his role in working at an HSI was to recognize that he does
have a 48 percent Hispanic population at his institution and that fact needs to be
acknowledged. Some of the ways he has done that in the past were by obtaining
Title V grants and disaggregating data to show differences in Hispanic attainment.
Kurt viewed his role as being a guide in using data for informed decision making.
He has also made disaggregating by race/ethnicity a common practice at his
institution to show disparities in academic outcomes and continues to provide the
data necessary for others to have insightful conversation on how to improve upon
those outcomes.
Just like how each of the researchers had their own definition of HSI, they all
felt differently about their roles as a researcher within such an environment.
Christine felt that her role was not just to look at helping Hispanic students but to
look at helping other students who have done poorly academically as well. Scott felt
that he was giving a special brand of education to the Hispanic population and had a
feeling of pride in seeing students who have been traditionally unsuccessful succeed

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in the education area. Kurt viewed his role as using data both to reflect on the poor
academic outcomes of Hispanics and to help have informed conversations in ways to
improve upon them.
Supporting the HSI Identity and Mission as Institutional Researcher
There were similarities and differences with each researcher in how they used
their role to support the Hispanic-serving mission of their institution. This could be
seen when the researchers discussed four things: (1) viewing the negative Hispanic
academic achievement as a challenge as opposed to a deficit, (2) knowledge of
students’ histories and communities, (3) promoting the further disaggregating of
ethnic groups, and (4) understanding equity.
The Challenge
Scott and Kurt spoke specifically about handling the challenge of helping
Hispanic students. Christine mentioned needing to be responsive to all
underrepresented students. She stated that it is not just about helping Hispanic
students but helping all students succeed because community colleges are providing
access. Scott acknowledged that when you keep looking at the poor academic
outcomes of Hispanic students, one can dwell on the negatives. However, he
mentioned that what some people see as a negative, he sees as a challenge to
overcome. Kurt felt that he needed to find a way to speak about the positives and to
show something good that Hispanic students were doing. According to Kurt, there
are so many cases where the research mentions how bad Hispanic students are doing,
that there is never really a time when there is anything good mentioned. He wanted

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to find the good and highlight it to people within the institution so there was not
always a focus on the negative.
Understanding of Student Population
The researchers all have knowledge about the students and the communities
in which they serve. Christine had an interest in learning what the demands were
around the CCC district to see what types of curriculum they should offer for their
trade courses. Scott was able to go deep into detail about the community
surrounding SCC, the income level of the families, and the educational backgrounds
of the students. Kurt understood that MVC was 48% Hispanic, and that is something
that cannot be ignored. He also took the time to make sure they were being served in
their satellite campuses because those campuses were developed for that population
of students and for serving those specific communities. This knowledge of the
community is important because an understanding of whom they are serving helps
provide the necessary resources in doing so.
Further Disaggregating of Data
Kurt runs the only research office where data are always disaggregated
whether it is asked for or not. However, he did not mention the further
disaggregating of data with ethnic groups whereas Christine and Scott did. Christine
and Scott both mentioned that data need to be further disaggregated to more than just
the traditional ethnic categories. Both their campuses switched to the federal
definition which further broke down ethnicities. They both thought this was
important by the examples they gave on Asian students. They both mentioned that if

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the Asian category was further broken down to subgroups, one would see different
academic outcomes for different types of Asian students and avoid the Asian
minority myth.
Understanding Equity
The term “equity” was used a lot during the interviews. Christine’s use of the
word discussed helping all students and not just looking at Hispanic students. Again,
as she stated, “HSIs are purposeful because we are in the state of California, but
overall it should be about equity for all students and not just ethnicity.” According
to Christine, from a researcher’s standpoint, in addition to race and ethnicity, there
should also be a “focus on SES and students who are coming from different pockets
of communities where they are poor and we want to focus on that as well, so there is
a lot of outreach for more than just Hispanic students.” Scott’s use of the word and
his suggestions on how he can make others aware of equity issues show that he is
conscious of the problems at SCC. Since SCC is so heavily populated with Hispanic
students, members of the institution identify themselves as “we are the college that
provides access to this Hispanic population.” Having such an identity has
contributed to losing “the urge to look to see if Hispanic students are doing better
than any other students because for our general credit class, we are 75% Hispanic so
why do we need to break it down, those are our students.” There is an assumption
that if the students are doing well, then our Hispanic students are doing well
“because there are 75% of them. So until recently, there has not been a huge focus

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on equity issues.” According to Scott, there has always been a push for student
success, but not a push for “Hispanic student success.”
Scott helps members of the institution understand equity by utilizing the idea
behind the “Equity Scorecard.” In response to asking him how he would present
such information, he said,
I’ll point out that if our population is 75% Hispanic, then how come we only
have 40% Hispanics in business? There are 60% of Asians majoring in
business, so he begins to question, why is that that we don’t have Hispanics
being served in business? Is it that they don’t want to be in business? We
need to talk about it.

Kurt used the term “equity” to describe the different committees that he is
involved in as well as the names of other committees that MVC has (i.e. President’s
Equity Council, Women’s Equity Council). Since MVC has a population consisting
of 48% Hispanic students, Kurt mentioned that there is rarely a research project
generated where they do not look at disproportionate impact.
Kurt provided an example of how this can be done. Kurt did a study where
he identified 22 courses that had high enrollment and low success rates. The 22
courses represented 25% of the college enrollment. Within these courses, the
Hispanic success rates were lower than that of the general population. Due to this,
that has become the “focus on with various alternative learning strategies like
supplemental instruction, accelerated learning, learning to learn model out of Boston
College.” They will infuse these strategies into the curriculum and then the data will
be disaggregated to see what impact the strategies had for the Hispanic students.

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Conclusion
During the course of these interviews, Christine conveyed that she was
somewhat uncomfortable with discussing issues of CCC as a Hispanic-serving
institution. There were times in the interview when she wanted to assure me that
CCC was not just Hispanic-serving but serving of all students. She also asked to go
off the record when we discussed disaggregating data and individuals who do not ask
for data to be highlighted in such a fashion. It seems that a lot of what she associates
CCC with as Hispanic-serving is only attributed to the fact that CCC has a Title V
grant. She also had a very traditional way of looking at outcomes based on how she
would have done the hypothetical study on CCC serving their students.
Of the three interviewees, Scott was the only one who showed a true
connection with the Hispanic-serving identity. While Christine and Kurt used terms
that were “operational” and spoke about HSIs mostly in direct correlations with Title
V grants, Scott spoke about the students. Scott spoke admiringly about the students
who attend Sunrise. He said, “I don’t think it would be easy for me to work
somewhere else.” He described SCC’s students as having a “special drive,” and for
him, seeing that the students care about “education” for its own sake made him feel
that that there was a purpose for his drive to work. He also was the only researcher
who mentioned that the mission statement of the institution he worked at does not
reflect the true Hispanic-serving values that are representative of the institution itself.
Like Christine, Kurt did not discuss the Hispanic-serving identity of MVC
beyond it being 48% Hispanic. He also had a correlation of the HSI identity with

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Title V funding. However, unlike Christine, he does make efforts in addressing the
needs of the 48% of the students who are Hispanic. When asked the question with
the hypothetical scenario, Kurt was the only researcher who stated that the question
was not hypothetical at all because it is asked of him by his president. Kurt was also
the only researcher who mentioned disproportionate impact of students when looking
at programs. He was also the only researcher who has the disaggregation of data as a
standard operating procedure. So, although MVC takes a lot of time and effort into
not showing their HSI identity, many of their actions can be seen as helping Hispanic
students.

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CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION
In this chapter, I begin by discussing the important findings from this study.
I then discuss the findings based on the specific research questions--first by
discussing the ways in which the three institutional researchers act as agents of
organizational learning followed by how they act as agents of organizational learning
specifically in relation to Hispanic students. The last discussion of the findings
describes the role of institutional culture and how it supports or limits institutional
researchers’ capacity to act as agents of organizational learning at HSIs. Following
the discussion on the findings, I provide recommendations on what it might take for
these institutional researchers to become agents of organizational learning for the
institutions in which they serve. The chapter ends with an overview of further
limitations of this study and concluding statements.
To review, the overarching research question in this study is: In what ways
do the data collection, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination practices of
institutional researchers assist institutional actors to learn about the educational
outcomes of Hispanic students and reflect on how to improve them? The sub-
questions are: (1) how do institutional researchers’ interpretation of their position
support or limit their capacity to take on the role of agent of organizational learning?
(2) in what ways do institutional researchers produce knowledge to inform the
campus community about Hispanic students’ outcomes? and (3) how does
institutional culture support or limit their capacity to take on the role of agent of
organizational learning?

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Important Findings
The primary finding of this study was that the roles of the institutional
researchers in this case were not shaped by their affiliation with Hispanic-serving
institutions. However, they all, to a degree, have the ability to take on the role of
agent of organizational learning through the use of data to call attention to Hispanic
academic achievement. There were six key findings within this study. The first
three findings involve the role of the three institutional researchers and the last three
findings involve the Hispanic-serving identity. These findings were:
1. Institutional researchers are oftentimes reactive as opposed to proactive;
institutional researchers take requests more than initiate studies.
2. The priorities of institutional researchers are determined by the demands of
the president and followed by external regulatory agencies.
3. Institutional researchers help requestors understand research methodology as
well as provide assistance in information interpretation after a study has
concluded.
4. The way institutional researchers perceived HSIs and the way they made
sense of their role in one matters. How the three individuals defined the term
HSI reflected important differences in their perceptions about the role and
purpose of HSIs. Christine defined HSI as a symbolic term for including all
underrepresented students; Scott defined HSI as a moral/historical obligation;
and Kurt defined HSI with the legal definition provided by the USDOE

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(2011). Each researcher’s definition of HSI is likely to influence their
approach in using and presenting data.
5. Hispanic specific data were not the priority in research studies conducted by
all three institutions. This type of research was done only when asked for.
6. Although Hispanic specific research was not conducted unless it was asked
for, all three institutional researchers showed that the disaggregation of data
was utilized and could lead to highlighting Hispanic academic outcomes.
Based on these three interviews, institutional research offices can be central
to the institution. Depending on who the institutional researcher is, he or she will
typically conduct institutional wide studies, distribute information to others, have a
concrete understanding of the students and the community surrounding their
institution, and typically be the office where everyone, including the president, goes
for questions regarding the institution. With all these factors involved in their
everyday tasks, institutional researchers have the ability to serve as agents of
organizational learning based on Huber’s (1991) four constructs: (1) knowledge
acquisition, (2) information distribution, (3) information interpretation, and (4)
memory storage.
Interpretation of their Positions as Agents of Organizational Learning
Based on the findings reported in chapter four, there are ways in which the
three institutional researchers act as agents of organizational learning. Based on
Huber’s (1991) four constructs, an agent of organizational learning is someone who
would seek out new knowledge to pass on to others or change the ways in which

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people think about something. None of the institutional researchers showed all of
the characteristics of being an agent of organizational learning, but they all shared
some aspects of knowledge acquisition, information distribution, and information
interpretation.
Knowledge Acquisition
According to Huber (1991), knowledge acquisition involves active scanning
and learning within the organization. Based on the findings in chapter four,
Christine, Kurt, and Scott (to a lesser degree) defined their roles in a manner that was
reactive. This would undermine the possibility for knowledge acquisition because
they are waiting for research requests to come to them as opposed to seeking out new
research projects. Scott displayed the highest level of knowledge acquisition out of
the three institutional researchers because he took the time to understand and know
his students. He was able to describe the students that attend SCC and shared his
knowledge about their demographic backgrounds, their academic preparation
backgrounds, as well as their income levels. He took what he learned and actively
shared the information with others through the “New Faculty Institute,” as described
in chapter four. He used the Institute to connect faculty to the institution and allow
them to learn about the students they are educating. With the New Faculty Institute,
Scott mentions that faculty learned things about the students at SCC that they have
not known before. Acquiring new information that was previously unknown
supports one of Bauman’s (2002) three conditions to organizational learning in
higher education institutions.

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Information Distribution
Information distribution is how widely knowledge is distributed within an
organization (Huber, 1991). Besides conducting studies for individuals per research
requests, all three institutional researchers produce enrollment and compliance
related research reports that are posted on their respective institutional research
office websites. Anyone in the campus community as well as anyone outside of the
institution can view studies about the institution. In addition to what can be found on
the website, Kurt has a monthly newsletter that provides any type of interesting
information he feels may be insightful for the members of the institution. At the
time of our conversation, Christine was discussing the development of her newsletter
as well to address new information about the campus. Scott does not have a
newsletter, but information is widely distributed at SCC in a different way.
Members of the SCC community can obtain information on the SCC database where
individuals can seek out research data on their own.
Information Interpretation
The ways in which the three institutional researchers displayed information
interpretation varied. According to Huber (1991), information interpretation is the
process in which information is given meaning or given a new interpretation. This
construct is the human element part of organizational learning. Christine discussed
the human element aspect briefly about how it is important to have “people skills.”
The three institutional researchers all agreed that communication with individuals is
important in terms of developing research and explaining research results. Christine

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believes it is important to help individuals conceptualize what they really want in
terms of the development of a study. Kurt feels the same way about the development
process to make sure there is a shared understanding in how research terms are
described. There is even a meeting after the research is completed and given to the
requestor because Kurt cannot allow someone to misinterpret the data. Scott opens
the lines of communication to connect with individuals if they feel there is a problem
with the data. Scott does not believe that what an institutional researcher finds
should always be the final word.
Christine and Kurt also showed concern for their audience. Christine was
sensitive to how people would react to the language of institutional research. One
such example is the use of the word “data.” According to Christine, the word “data”
can sound punitive and she would much rather refer to it as “knowledge” or
“information.” This is one way to distribute information to make others feel more
comfortable when handling data. Like Christine, Kurt is also concerned with
language, but more of the presentation aspect. Kurt had concerns that data can easily
be misinterpreted because a lot of faculty members at MVC do not come from
research backgrounds. His staff has backgrounds in academic research, so the
biggest professional development piece for the staff in his office is to “debunk the
field language.” He does this by having research reports written in lay language and
research presentations made in lay language as well that can be friendly to a general
audience.

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Producing Knowledge about Hispanic Students’ Outcomes
My original question implied that institutional researchers were involved in
initiating studies. My findings based on interviews with the three institutional
researchers in these specific HSIs show that their roles are more reactive and
compliance oriented. However, there were variations across the three individuals.
Thus, while none of them actually said something as direct as “I decided to conduct a
study of how Hispanic students do in basic skills mathematics because I felt there
was a problem that people were not aware of,” there was some evidence of initiative
to increase awareness of Hispanic students’ educational outcomes.
Much like the literature on traditional institutional researchers being reactive
as opposed to proactive (Petrides, 2002), the three institutional researchers tend to
only collect data related to Hispanic academic outcomes when they are asked to do
so. When I provided a hypothetical scenario in which I was the president and asked
each of the three institutional researchers how they would conduct research in which
they analyze how their Hispanic students are being served, only Kurt from MVC
mentioned that it was not a hypothetical scenario and it was asked of him to do so.
This was not the case for the other two institutional researchers as it was not
something that had been asked of them. Since this was not asked of Christine and
Scott by their respective presidents, research on how their Hispanic students are
being served is not done. Much of the knowledge produced was to inform the
campus community within the three campuses studied for administrative and
enrollment purposes.

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Even though none of the researchers decided to ask an explicit question of
how they are doing to serve Hispanic students, it has been shown that the
disaggregation of data by race/ethnicity can provide new knowledge to members of
the campus community in regards to Hispanic academic achievement. In these
instances, the disaggregation of data highlights parts of the first and second of
Bauman’s (2002) conditions of organizational learning in higher education
institutions in which new ideas are formed and presented and doubt amongst
institutional actors begin to arise about current knowledge. There were variations
between the three institutional researchers on how they highlighted the educational
outcomes of their Hispanic students. Scott showed transfer rates to the faculty at
SCC to raise awareness that Hispanics were transferring at a much lower rate to the
UC system than other race/ethic student groups. Christine incorporated other
demographic characteristics such as gender when disaggregating data. In doing so,
she discussed that faculty members were shocked when she showed success rates for
Hispanic male students were even lower than Hispanic students in general. Kurt has
made the disaggregation of data a routine practice and all reports include data
disaggregated by race/ethnicity whether it is asked for or not.
Definition and Role within the Hispanic-Serving Institution
Chapter four described the three institutional researchers and how they
defined the term “Hispanic-serving institution.” It appears that the way the
institutional researchers define the term can shape how they perceive their role as an
agent of organizational learning in relation to Hispanic students. Christine defined

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“HSIs” as a symbolic term for all underrepresented populations. During the time of
the interview, Christine repeatedly stated that for her, HSIs are about serving all
students and providing equity for all. For her, to specifically address outcomes about
only Hispanic students would contradict her views on the symbolism of HSIs and
“equity for all.” Kurt’s practices are also shaped by how he defines “HSIs.” He
employs the legal definition of at least 25% Hispanic population (USDOE, 2011).
He will acknowledge that MVC is 48% Hispanic, but in terms of doing specific
research for that population, it is not something that is done unless it is asked of by
the president or it is needed specifically for a Title V grant.
Scott has a contrasting viewpoint from Christine and Kurt. Whereas,
Christine and Kurt chose not to acknowledge the Hispanic-serving status of their
institutions, Scott takes pride in SCC’s status. Although he may not seem to always
initiate studies specifically on Hispanic students, he takes the time to know his
students and feels a moral obligation to serve the students in the community. In
addition, he speaks about them admirably and sees it as a challenge to overcome in
dealing with a population that traditionally succeeds at a lower rate than other
racial/ethic group. Scott pointed out the missing Hispanic-serving identity in the
mission statement of SCC and suggested that it reads like a mission statement of any
community college. He understands the need to serve the Hispanic students at SCC.
The other two institutional researchers did not mention the missing Hispanic-serving
identity in their institutions’ mission statements.

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Institutional Culture and the Role of Institutional Research
Based on the findings in chapter four, the culture can support or limit the
capacity for institutional researchers to take on the role of agent of organizational
learning in general as well as in relation to Hispanic students. The two ways in
which culture plays a role for the three institutional researchers interviewed can be
attributed to the culture of their institutions and the nature of their positions.
Institutional Culture
In Christine’s case, she learned very quickly how her role and the
institutional research office’s role were shaped at Central Community College
(CCC). She started off being very proactive at CCC and went around the campus
telling others what needed to be done, but realized she was operating in a manner
that conflicted with the culture of the institution. Due to this, she decided to take a
more reactive role and waited for people to come to her for help or advice. This
limits her capacity to take on the role of agent of organizational learning because an
aspect of organizational learning is being proactive and seeking to find solutions to
problems based on the knowledge acquisition construct (Huber, 1991).
Contrary to Christine’s case, the institutional culture also has the ability to
make the research office central such as the case of Kurt and Mountain View College
(MVC). Unlike Christine at CCC, Kurt’s office is involved in all decisions made.
This was an initiative from the president, which was able to set a tone to the campus
community on where the research office stands in matters of importance. Kurt
mentioned that no new initiatives were started without going through his office and

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that data are used to make decisions. Due to this, Kurt and his staff have the ability
to take on many research projects to produce data that can be effective for problem
solving.
Current research (Contreras et al., 2008) has shown that there is a hidden
identity within HSIs. The lack of acknowledgment of the Hispanic-serving identity
can be another reason why these three institutional researchers are limited in their
abilities to becoming agents of organizational learning, especially in regards to
raising awareness of Hispanic students’ educational outcomes. The mission
statements for these three institutions do not mention the HSI status. When Christine
spoke about how she prioritized her research requests, one of the higher priorities
involved any research request that supports the mission of CCC. Being that the HSI
identity is not in the mission statement, Christine may not have the opportunity to
conduct studies on Hispanic students’ educational outcomes. At MVC, Kurt
mentioned that there are institutional-wide efforts to not speak about the HSI status
because they do not want to marginalize the Title V grant and make supporting
Hispanic students an institutional-wide issue. The suppression of the HSI status by
the institution as a whole can make it very difficult for Kurt to initiate specific
research on Hispanic students. What if this identity was in the mission? If a
mission statement clearly defined the objective of the institution to serve Hispanics,
it would in a sense force institutional researchers to take a closer look at Hispanic
data because there would be an expectation to do so. However, until that is clearly

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defined, there may never truly be a difference between being an institutional
researcher at a Hispanic-serving institution or a traditional institution.
Institutional Researcher Role
The nature of their positions, based on these three interviews, can also limit
or support their capacity towards becoming agents of organizational learning. A
common theme between the three institutional researchers suggested they spend a lot
of their time in meetings, taking up most of their daily operating hours. The
institutional researchers also described their positions and tasks as objective
scientists whose primary responsibility is to senior administration (president/board of
trustees) and compliance agencies. They are bureaucratic by nature, procedural, and
not creative, falling in line with the literature on institutional researchers (Morest &
Jenkins, 2007; Saupe, 1990; Terenzini, 1993; Walleri. 2003).
Time Restriction
Based on interviews with Christine, Scott, and Kurt, time is a valuable
resource. They spend a lot of their time in meetings and take on research requests
that are of high priority to senior administrators or regulatory compliance. Although
they all agreed that meetings generally take up a lot of their time, they can use the
meetings to their advantage to openly discuss issues of ineffectiveness that they
come across. According to Huber (1991), “Organizations frequently increase their
store of knowledge by acquiring and grafting on new members who possess
knowledge not previously available within the organization” (p. 97). They are in a
sense “carriers of new knowledge” (Huber, 1991, p. 97). Kurt has described this

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process by explaining that when he is in a meeting, it gives him a chance to infuse
data into the conversation and, if at the moment he is not able to do so, he makes
sure to get time in a future meeting to discuss something that he believes to be a
matter of importance.
Role Restriction
Chapter four discussed the priorities of institutional researchers (Table 4.2).
Christine mentioned the board of trustees/the president was her main priority
followed by regulatory agencies. Scott and Kurt mentioned the presidents as their
main priority and followed by regulatory agencies as well. The literature on
institutional research also suggests that institutional researcher primarily answer to
the president and then work on research projects dealing with regulatory agencies
(Morest & Jenkins, 2007; Saupe, 1990; Terenzini, 1993; Walleri, 2003). These
attributes suggest that these three institutional researchers are restricted to the type of
research they can handle on a daily basis. There does not seem to be many
opportunities where institutional researchers can actively seek out their own research
agenda. The institutional researchers across these three cases will always see their
roles as being reactive and responding to the needs of presidents and regulatory
agencies until they are given a chance to be creative and create a culture in which
institutional researchers can push their own research agendas on problems that they
come across while conducting research for others.

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Overview
Overall, one can come to the conclusion that organizational learning in
regards to raising awareness about Hispanic students’ educational outcomes is
lacking. However, the case can be made that the three institutional researchers have
certain qualities that make them agents of organizational learning. For these three
institutional researchers, their roles and the way in which they define it are not
shaped by their employment at Hispanic-serving institutions. The entity of being an
institutional researcher and the entity of the HSI are seen as separate. None of them
explicitly stated that they view their institutional research role differently because
they are working at a Hispanic-serving institution.
The culture of the institution is significant to how the institutional researchers
view their roles. An institutional culture that does not embrace the Hispanic-serving
identity or even acknowledges it makes it difficult for institutional researchers to
know they have to focus on Hispanic students or even make it a priority. However,
because these three institutional researchers exhibited qualities that can allow them
to be agents of organizational learning, certain recommendations can be made for
them to raise awareness of Hispanic students’ academic outcomes.
Recommendations
The findings show that there are certain practices that the institutional
researcher can apply in order to not fall into what Darder (1994) deems as traditional
and instead takes into account the Hispanic-serving identity culture of their
institution. Since Scott was the institutional researcher that showed the highest level

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of organizational learning and Hispanic-serving awareness because he approached
his position in a manner that suggested organizational learning values in regards to
knowledge acquisition, information distribution, and information interpretation. He
conveyed a desire to see Hispanic students succeed at SCC and takes pride in the fact
that SCC is continually graduating Hispanic students or transferring them to four-
year institutions. He really enjoys being surrounded by this student population and
understands their background. The recommendations describe what more someone
like Scott could do to use organizational learning to raise awareness in Hispanic
students’ education outcomes. These practices include: (1) reflecting on the current
role and institutional research practices to support the HIS identity, (2) not viewing
Hispanics as deficient, (3) providing and promoting sufficient services for the
success of Hispanic students, (4) understanding and knowledge of students’ histories
and community realities, (5) further disaggregation of race/ethnicity into further
racial/ethnic groups and (6) developing strategic alliances.
Reflecting on Institutional Research Practices to Support the HSI Identity
Institutional researchers working within Hispanic-serving settings need to ask
themselves what makes their role different than if they were to work at traditional
institutions. As suggested by Malcom et al. (2010), institutional researchers should
look at how the Hispanic-serving identity is reflected in the “mission, curriculum,
outcomes, resource allocation, hiring, reward system, and priorities” (p. 5). Even if
the institutional researchers were to see the Hispanic-serving identity reflected upon
themselves, there would need to be a reflection upon the culture of the institution as

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well to determine if this feeling is understood by everyone on campus. If the identity
was shared and understood by the rest of the institution, then, institutional
researchers could research how the “Hispanic-serving identity drives institutional
plans and priorities” (Malcom et al., 2010, p. 5).
Becoming an Equity Advocate
As mentioned throughout this study, Hispanics are one of the lowest
achieving racial/ethnic groups in terms of educational outcomes. Knowing this, it
would not be uncommon for people to believe that failure is inevitable. However, it
is equally important to be an advocate for these students and find the positives. A
positive attitude would mean looking at low achievement amongst Hispanics as
another challenge to overcome.
However, focusing on the positives is not enough when it comes to raising
awareness of Hispanic students’ educational outcomes. Institutional researchers
need to be equity advocates. As suggested by Dowd et al. (2007), people like Scott
need to continually bring up issues in equity when they are meeting with leaders of
the institution. They need to make it clear and always remind people that there are
inequities across the board in educational outcomes. It is not only important to
remind, but also to take ownership of the problem and not make the focus be the
student’s problem.
Provide Sufficient Services for Hispanic Students
During my interviews, I asked each institutional researcher the question of
how they would conduct a research study on how well their institutions were serving

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their Hispanic students. This question should be asked routinely since these
institutions are “Hispanic-serving.” Asking such a question and then performing the
action would qualify as “performance monitoring” (Huber, 1991). Huber (1991)
describes this as a routine or constant assessment on how organizations are meeting
their goals and expectations. The goal of asking “how well are we serving our
Hispanic students?” is to assess what is currently being done or not being done and
continue to improve upon it.
The institutional researcher can gather and provide data to make this a case
for additional services. They can involve themselves in different committees to use
their role in research to take part in examining how the institution supports looking at
services and equity. They also need to make their offices central to the needs of the
community to show that rarely a research project gets generated where
disproportionate impact is not examined. Institutional researchers can apply this to
their practice and suggest that every research project has data disaggregated by
race/ethnicity.
Understanding Student/Community Realities
If Hispanic-serving community colleges exist to serve the surrounding
communities of an institution, then it would make sense that members of the campus
community understand the students they are serving. This aspect of knowledge
acquisition is known as “searching and noticing” (Huber, 1991). Institutions should
examine their external and internal environments to look for problems or
opportunities for improvement followed by an examination of the effectiveness of

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fulfilling pre-determined goals. This may ensure that institutional researchers can
initiate the best research possible that will be beneficial to their students. If all other
community colleges used the same practice, it could connect the institution to the
community, thus actually, in a sense, “serve the community.” A commitment to
understanding the students shows an understanding of the Hispanic-serving mission.
There is also a sense of advocacy for the Hispanic population. Such an awareness
and commitment is contradictory to the “objective scientist” definition given to
traditional institutional researchers (Petrides, 2002). These motives are more aligned
to what Darder (1993) would refer to as “culturally democratic.”
Disaggregating of Data as a Standard Procedure
The disaggregation of data needs to become a standard operating procedure.
This study with these three institutional researchers showed that disaggregating data
helped make others aware of situations that they had not previously known or
thought about. The expectation of disaggregated data makes sense because if there
are enrollment data then there should be demographic information connected to it.
Establishing this culture should come from the top, as it may be more difficult for an
institutional researcher to do this if the disaggregation of data is not wanted or asked
for by senior leadership. If it is expected and a part of institutional culture,
mandatory disaggregation of data is something that can easily be performed by
institutional researchers. However, if this does not come from the top, institutional
researchers should try to take some small risks. This can be something as simple as

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disaggregating data on a report when it is not asked for to see what the reaction
would be when it is provided to the requestor.
In addition, institutional researchers should not rely on the traditional
definitions of race/ethnicity anymore. There is now increased importance of further
disaggregation of ethnic categories. As suggested by Darder (1994) and Hurtado
(2002), race/ethnicity needs to be further disaggregated to show the differences in
outcomes of subgroups of minority groups. This practice was recently instituted by a
large community college district in southern California. The admissions application
now has further ethnic categories beyond the traditional racial/ethnic categories.
Develop Strategic Alliances
Since institutional researchers are reactive by nature and typically take
requests from senior administration, institutional researchers can possibly use this to
their own advantage if they wanted to highlight Hispanic students’ educational
outcomes. If institutional researcher develop good rapport with certain individuals,
then they will be more likely to be able to have more freedom on how they report
research findings. Both Scott and Kurt have good relationships with their presidents
and it showed with their ability to disaggregate data and put issues on the table
during meetings with other senior administrators.
Although the president of an institution is an obvious choice to develop a
strategic alliance with, there are other individuals institutional researcher may like to
develop relationship with. For the purpose of improving basic skills, one might want
to develop a good rapport with the math and English deans. Doing so will allow

171
institutional researchers the ability to perhaps discuss issues of equity with them on
the outcomes of Hispanic students and their ability to move past basic skills and onto
college level courses. Institutional researchers may even be able to have these deans
think about asking for disaggregated data on a regular basis.
The program review committee is also an alliance that institutional
researchers would like to partake in. Some common themes across the three
institutions on what program review is include: 1) examination of how a program
meets and contributes to the mission of the institution and the successes and
challenges of a program; 2) data-driven decision making and; 3) helping the college
with accountability and accreditation mandates. Developing an alliance with this
committee will allow institutional research to have input on how programs can be
evaluated.
Additional Limitations
Having completed this study, there are further limitations that need to be
addressed. As discussed in chapter three, I am relying on the institutional
researchers’ interpretations of their own work since I did not have an opportunity to
observe their daily tasks or attend their meetings. I am writing my findings based on
interviews, a literature review on institutional researchers, and public knowledge
about the institutions based on their websites. Having not done any observations, I
am not able to see the nature of the meetings that they attend and have to take their
experiences for “face value.” Even though much of what they say they do now does
not show strong organizational learning in reference to HSIs, it is possible they are

172
doing things that they are not aware of. However, the nature of their answers and my
findings do align well with what was said in the literature review on both
institutional researchers and Hispanic-serving institutions.
Another limitation upon completing the study is that, in retrospect, the Huber
(1991) framework had limitations on its own and had to be supplemented with
Bauman (2002) and to a degree with Dowd et al. (2007). By using Huber’s (1991)
constructs as a framework, organizational learning within higher education can be
facilitated by using data (Bauman, 2002) as well as framing the institutional
researcher as teacher (Dowd et al., 2007).
Conclusion
Throughout the literature and the portrayal of these three cases, the tendency
of institutional researchers is to be reactive. With this holding true, what if there was
a way to put pressure on institutional researchers, especially those in HSIs to report
or at least monitor Hispanic students academic outcomes on a frequent basis?
Pressure needs to be coming from the institution through student learning outcomes
(SLOs), through the federal level (Title V grants), and through the national level
(2009’s American Graduation Initiative).
Student Learning Outcomes
California Community Colleges have student learning outcomes (SLOs)
which is defined as “knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes that a student has
attained at the end (or as a result) of his or her engagement in a particular set of
collegiate experiences” (Western Association of Schools and Colleges, 2011).

173
According to Volkwein (2011), SLOs are central to the purpose of any educational
organization. SLOs can allow institutional researchers to accurately measure student
outcomes by looking at starting and ending points based on the set goals of an
institution.
With the success rates of Hispanic students in basic skills math and English
(Table 1.1) being so low, institutional researchers have an opportunity to continually
assess Hispanic students in those particular courses because of the SLOs related to
each math and English course that is taken.
Federal HSI Title V Grants
Currently, there are no accountability measures for recipients of Title V
grants. The USDOE (2011) defines that an institution is maintaining its eligibility is
the institution is “making substantial progress toward achieving the objectives
described in its grant application including, if applicable, the institution’s success in
institutionalizing practices and improvements under the grant.” To show that an
institution is making progress, recipients of the Title V grant would need to produce
an “Annual Performance Report” with six sections: 1) the executive summary, 2) the
institution profile, 3) activities, focus, and outcomes, 4) project status and budget, 5)
technology, and 6) institutionalization (USDOE, 2011).
Developing similar measures for all institutions would be difficult as all
institutions are not the same, even with HSIs (EdExcelencia, 2007). The researchers
from EdExcelencia (2007) interviewed multiple presidents from various HSIs
suggests that accountability measures measure the “value-added” aspect of an

174
individual’s education. However, it may be difficult to operationalize value-added.
There are still some aspects that the federal government can use when assessing the
Title V recipients. If one were to argue that the goal of Title V funding was to make
Hispanic outcomes more equitable, then there should be quantitative data that shows
equitable outcomes across areas such as retention and graduation rates, employment
after graduation, advancement out of basic skills courses, GPAs, and other
measurable outcomes.
American Graduation Initiative
In 2009, President Obama announced the American Graduation Initiative.
This initiative was proposed in order to strengthen community colleges and he called
for an additional five million graduates by 2020. This initiative would provide
grants that “would enable community colleges and states to innovate and expand
proven reforms…and the approaches that demonstrate improved educational and
employment outcomes will receive continued federal support and become models for
widespread adoption” (White House, 2009).
Unlike SLOs and Title V grants, this initiative is more about expanding
services for community colleges than improving specific measure outcomes. This
initiative allows the community colleges improve upon themselves by things such as
building partnerships with businesses to improve upon the workforce, expand course
offerings, improve basic skills programs, and offer more student services. Although
these types of goals are not as quantifiable, there is still a basis of what institutional
researchers can use to develop ways to measure these outcomes.

175
Perhaps with strong accountability mandates, institutional researchers would
be forced to spend more of their time monitoring and assessing Hispanic students’
academic outcomes. These mandates would have to come from the institution
(internally) and from the federal and national government (externally).
Based on the research by Meyers (2007), the various internal and external
mandates, and the lack of success in basic skills math and English amongst Hispanic
students in community colleges, institutional researchers play a vital role at the
institutions in which they serve. They hold the knowledge that can be necessary in
making a difference on how issues of equity are addressed. Being that they hold the
knowledge, they need to find a way to communicate that information to make others
aware of the situation to make a difference. Institutional researchers have the ability
to use data to close the gap in educational outcomes by making others within the
institution aware that there are inequitable outcomes between Hispanics and other
racial/ethnic groups. Making other people within the institution aware is the first
necessary step in order to reduce the gap. Institutional researchers at Hispanic-
serving institutions can apply Huber’s four constructs of organizational learning: (1)
knowledge acquisition, (2) information distribution, (3) information interpretation,
and (4) memory storage when using data to make others aware of trends in
education.

176
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183
APPENDIX A: WEBSITE ANALYSIS PROTOCOL

Category Data
Related URL
College
Title V Recipient
Researcher
Date conducted
Inst. Researcher
Research
question
What evidence exists in the website that would document
the Hispanic-Serving identity?
Mission
statement

Possible search
strings:
Look into key words in overall
website and how they are used:
1. “Hispanic-Serving Institution”
2. “HSI”
3. “Hispanic”
4. “Latino/a”
5. “Chicano/a”
6. “Title V”

Look into key words in mission
statements signifying diverse
populations
7. “access”
8. “diversity”
9. “inclusion”

Search 1:
"Hispanic-Serving
Institution"

Search 2: “HSI”
Search 3:
“Hispanic”

Search 4:
“Latino/a”

184
Category Data
Related URL
Search 5:
“Chicano/a”

Search 6: “Title
V”

Search 7: “access”
Search 8:
“diversity”

Search 9:
“inclusion”

IR Website
Document Types
HSI Specific
Docs.

Other comments
(impressions,
observations)

185
APPENDIX B: INTERVIEW PROTOCOL

Institutional Researchers as Agents of Organization Learning in
Hispanic-Serving Institutions

Interview Protocol

Introduction
• Greet the interviewee warmly introducing yourself (if appropriate). A
short (three-five minutes max) warm-up conversation is good; even if you
are already acquainted.
• Ask again for permission to turn on the recorder and identify on the
recorder persons present, location, and time.

Begin interview with:
I really appreciate your willingness to talk with me, I know you are busy and that
time is your most important resource. As I mentioned in my e-mail, I am a doctoral
student at the Rossier School of Education and a former institutional researcher at a
nearby community college working on my dissertation titled “Institutional
Researchers as Agents of Organizational Learning in Hispanic-Serving Institutions”.
For my study, I have selected to study three to five Hispanic-serving institutions that
have seemed to embrace their Hispanic-serving identity based on a prior website
analysis. I am looking to see the role that institutional researchers play in helping to
enhance that role through the use of data. So I will first ask you general questions
and then I will ask you some more specific questions. Consequently, there are no
right and wrong answers to any of the questions—only honest answers. Are we
ready to begin or do you have some questions to ask me?
Everything you say is confidential. In the transcription of this tape and in the
final report neither your name nor the name of your college will be used.”

Research Questions
In what ways do the data collection, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination
practices of institutional researchers assist institutional actors to learn about the
educational outcomes of Hispanic students and reflect on how to improve them?

The sub-questions are:
(1) How do institutional researchers interpretation of their position support or limit
their capacity to take on the role of agent of organizational learning?

(2) In what ways do institutional researchers produce knowledge to inform the
campus community about Hispanic students’ outcomes? and

186
(3) How does institutional culture support or limit their capacity to take on the role of
agent of organizational learning?

Notes and Impressions
Date:

Time:

Weather:

Misc:

Interview Questions

Background Question

1. How long have you been in your current position as an institutional
researcher?
Probes: on becoming an institutional researcher; training required to being an
institutional researcher.

2. If I followed you through a typical day, what would I see you doing?

3. How involved are you in the data reporting of request from members of you
institution (i.e. do you just take their request and work on it, do you call them
to explain a certain methodology, do you offer advice on how to disaggregate
the data)?

4. What types of data are asked of you to be produced on your campus?

Questions Regarding Hispanic-Serving Institutions

5. The term “Hispanic-serving institution” is a fairly new identity for
institutions of higher education. After an analysis of 20 Hispanic-serving
institutions in Los Angeles County, your institution was one of the few that
explicitly stated that the institution is a HSI. How would you define the term
“HSI”?

6. In your own opinion, what does it mean to work for a Hispanic-serving
institution?

7. What are your impressions on the awareness of the Hispanic-serving identity
on campus?

187
Questions Regarding Organizational Learning

8. When conducting studies, has there ever been a time where the results made
you challenge current assumptions of the institution or question the data?
Can you tell me about such a time and what you did upon learning that?
Probes: what happens when you realize it; do you tell people; what do they
say.

9. The role of an institutional researcher can be defined as a teacher of data.
How do you view your role in relation to such a definition?

10. As a former institutional researcher myself, more often than not, institutional
researchers report the data but do not help to interpret the data and findings to
the individuals that ask for such data. How do you help (if you do help) to
interpret data and findings to individuals who ask for data?

11. If I were to ask you for advice on doing a study on the effectiveness of an
intervention program for basic skills math students, what would you tell me
on what type of data I should be looking for?

12. What types of data do you get to present to senior administration on campus?

13. Do you disaggregate data by race/ethnicity when looking at academic
outcomes?

Questions Regarding Being an Agent of Organizational Learning in HSIs

14. Can you tell me about your experiences in producing Hispanic-specific data?

15. As an institutional researcher, how would you incorporate the Hispanic-
serving identity into your role and your everyday responsibilities?

16. What initiative have you done recently to highlight the academic
performance of Hispanic students at your campus?

17. What are some of the things you can do or did to enhance the identity to the
rest of the campus through the use of data?

Concluding Question

18. Is there anything else that we have not discussed which you would like to say
about your role as an institutional researcher at your institution?

188
Closing
• Close the interview by stating: “Thank-you for your time. You have my
contact information in case you think of anything else you would like to add
at a later time or if you wish to inquire about the results or progress of this
research project.”

Post-interview
• As soon as possible after the interview, review and edit the interview notes
while your memory is still fresh.
• Write a letter of thank-you to the interview participants.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This study examined three institutional researchers from three different Hispanic-serving community colleges in southern California to examine how they would use data to act as agents of organizational learning and raise awareness of Hispanic students’ educational outcomes within their respective institutions. This study was of a qualitative nature, and findings were based on data comprised of interviews and content analysis. Based on the data collected, this study found that these specific researchers’ roles were not shaped by their affiliation with Hispanic-serving institutions and that using data to raise awareness of Hispanic students’ educational outcomes was not a primary concern. However, even though raising awareness of Hispanic students’ educational outcomes was not a primary concern, these three institutional researchers exhibited qualities that would suggest the ability to take on the role of agent of organizational learning through the use of data to call attention to Hispanic academic achievement. These qualities or practices include: (1) reflecting on the current role and institutional research practices to support the HSI identity, (2) not viewing Hispanics as deficient, (3) providing and promoting sufficient services for the success of Hispanic students, (4) understanding and knowledge of students’ histories and community realities, and (5) further disaggregation of race/ethnicity into further racial/ethnic groups. These are further discussed and used as recommendations for the future practice of institutional researchers at Hispanic-serving community colleges to serve their Hispanic students better.

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Designing equity-focused action research: benefits and challenges to sustained collaboration and organizational change

Asset Metadata

Creator Lee, John (author)

Core Title Institutional researchers as agents of organizational learning in hispanic-serving community colleges

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Education (Leadership)

Publication Date 04/05/2012

Defense Date 03/06/2012

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Community colleges,Hispanic-serving college,institutional researchers,OAI-PMH Harvest,organizational learning

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Bensimon, Estela Mara (committee chair), Dowd, Alicia C. (committee member), Lorenz, Georgia (committee member)

Creator Email John.Lee1128@gmail.com,lee62@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-2405

Unique identifier UC11288225

Identifier usctheses-c3-2405 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-LeeJohn-566.pdf

Dmrecord 2405

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Lee, John

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA