CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES FOR DATA COLLECTIONWendy Y. Carter, Robert Williams, Renetta G. Tull, Janet C. Rutledge University of Maryland Baltimore County

Commonalities in the Annual CGS & AGEP Data Requests

PhD Completion

New Fall PhD Students All PhD Student Enrollees Number of PhD Recipients PhD Candidates

Differences in Annual CGS & AGEP Data Requests

Number of students from each cohort who left:

With /wo a Masters Degree After achieving Candidacy Transferred out Stopped out Continuing Status unknown

Fall Applications Fall Admits New Fall Graduate Enrollees New Fall Masters Enrollees No. of ALL Graduate Student

Enrollees No. of ALL Masters Enrollees No. of Masters Degree Recipients

PhD Recipient Plans

CGS ATTRITIONAGEP PhD & MASTERS

Matching Our Programs to Different Taxonomies

PROG CGS AGEPCOMPUTER SCI ENGR COMPUTER ENGR

MEES PHYSC EARTH, ATMOS & OCEAN

CHEM ENGR ENGR ENGR

MECH ENGR ENGR ENGR

ELEC ENGR ENGR ENGR

ENVIR & CIVL ENGR ENGR ENGR

LANG LIT CULTURE HUMANITIES NOT APPLICABLE

BIOL LIFESCI BIO

MOLECULAR BOP LIFESCI BIO

BIOCHEM LIFESCI CHEM

NACS LIFESCI INTERDISCIP

MATH MATH MATH

STAT MATH MATH

CHEM PHYSC CHEM

COMPUTER SCI PHYSC COMPUTER SCI

HUMAN CTR COMP PHYSC COMPUTER SCI

INFO SYST PHYSC COMPUTER SCI

ATMOS PHYS PHYSC EARTH, ATMOS & OCEAN

GEO SCI PHYSC EARTH, ATMOS & OCEAN

APPH PHYSC OTHER PHYSCI

HUMAM SVC PSYCH SOCSCI NOT APPLICABLE

GERONTOLOGY SOCSCI OTHER SOC SCI

PUBL POLY SOCSCI OTHER SOC SCI

APPLIED DEV PSY SOCSCI PSYCH

60 CGS Demographic Templates

Broad Categories(6)

Gender M, F, UKN

(3)

RACE Am Indian,

Asian, Black,

Hispanic, White,

Other (6) INTERNATIONAL

TOTAL No. of Templates

1.Engineering 3 6 1 10

2.Humanities 3 6 1 10

3.Life Sciences 3 6 1 10

4.Mathematics 3 6 1 10

5.Physical Sciences 3 6 1 10

6.Social Sciences 3 6 1 10

        60

CGS TEMPLATES

120 Demographic Data Entry Points

AGEP TEMPLATES

Workload Challenges CGS & AGEP

Entering data into multiple worksheets increases human error & requires many work hours.

Even with broad categories; Race, Gender, Citizenship, Year-- potential violation of confidentiality issues exist.

Difficulty in recycling the data for internal purposes.

When there is personnel turnover recreation of the data is difficult.

With new system migration to People Soft requires a recreation of the process of data mining again.

Low response rates for exit surveys.

Solutions for CGS PhD Exit Survey Low Response Rate

Tie to graduation process & Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED).

Send out timely reminders. Mail out with SED. Encourage students to fill out both surveys online. Put the link to survey on Graduate School’s website

in the list of requirements for graduation.

Solutions for CGS PhD Exit Survey for Non-Completers

Make department staff aware of the survey and the withdrawal form.

Encourage students to fill out a withdrawal form. If they fill out the withdrawal form, conduct a short

phone interview and ask if they would be willing to fill out the PhD Exit Survey.

For students who are dismissed the challenge still remains.

Opportunities: Lessons Learned & Value Added

Moved from using Frozen data (snapshot) to Live data. Improved our data quality & our data collection. Graduate departments became better stewards of their

data. Provides checks & balances of current 3 stand alone

SIS Progression Graduation databases Graduate Assistants

Departments are kept informed about their Completion Rates, Attrition Rates, & Graduation Rates.

Helped us in planning for the conversion to PeopleSoft.

Contact Information:

Wendy Y. Carter, Ph.D. drcarter@umbc.edu Robert Williams robwill@umbc.edu Renetta G. Tull, Ph.D. rtull@umbc.edu