Essential Services

The Institutional Research and Strategic Analytics Office provides services to the SJSU university community, the CSU system, and the general public in a number of areas. 

Mandatory Reporting

IRSA is responsible for administering the business processes to communicate official institutional data to the CSU Chancelor's Office. As part of that role IRSA coordinates with business partners on campus to ensure timely, accurate, and complete reporting on behalf of SJSU. 

Managing Data Assets and Data Governance

In addition to building and maintaining our own data infrastructure, IRSA works with campus partners to jointly steward the ecosystem of data assets for the whole university. As part of this joint effort, IRSA aims to ensure that there are clear definitions, technical procedures and sound business logic for the data collected.

University Dashboards

IRSA creates and maintains a variety of dashboards that display university-wide data for the purpose of strategic decision making. Among those, a large number can be accessed publicly on our University Dashboards webpage.    

Enrollment Management

As part of this service area, IRSA collaborates primarily with other partners in the Division of Academic Affairs on data modeling that focuses on incoming students. The aim of this work is to optimize the alignment of student enrollment with program requirements, course section supply, and faculty workload. 

Modeling Faculty Workload

IRSA provides technical support to Academic Business and Strategic Operations in support of the business processes that gather information on faculty workload and secure approval using the Assigned Time System. Data models that IRSA provides, such as student to faculty ratio, further seek to illuminate the intersection between instructional workload and course-based enrollments. 

Student and Alumni Experiences and Success

Projects in this service area focus on building understanding about and measuring the impact of experiences, behaviors, skills, abilities and more that are developed through programs, resources, and services provided by SJSU. Insights may be gained e.g. through the administration of surveys to various larger or smaller student or alumni groups.

University Rankings and College Guides

IRSA supports SJSU by providing publicly available information to media outlets for the purpose of positioning SJSU in the rankings and guides that prospective students and their families consider when choosing a college.

Course Evaluations

IRSA administers course evaluations for SJSU to facilitate the collection of feedback from students about their course-based experiences and quality of instruction. The resulting reports are used as one source of information to inform faculty development.

Performance Reviews

In accordance with policy requirements, IRSA supports the university leadership with the administration of surveys that are conducted as part of performance reviews for department chairs, deans, and higher level administrators. The survey results are used by the review committees to inform their reports.   

Customized Data Analyses & Reports

Data for grant applications or compliance tracking, accreditation or certification related data, and Public Record Act requests are often requested of IRSA. The scope and requirements for these types of projects vary and are determined in collaboration with the requester in light of the data available as well as potential data security limitations.  

Technology Platform Implementations

IRSA manages several platforms used for core services and provides training on how to use them. We also provide subject matter expertise related to strategy development, implementation, and data management for technology platforms connected to strategic priorities.