reporting efforts while contributing to a culture of data-informed decision-making. This is an exciting opportunity for a professional passionate about higher education analytics, research, and transforming data into meaningful action.
This role requires an on-campus presence; it is not a remote position.
Candidates for searches must have current authorization to be employed in the United States without employer sponsorship.
Position Function:
Responsible for directed and self-guided research to find key insights that may shape policy, providing stakeholders with actionable information, and helping to develop the analytics needed for decision-making. This position will help manage and utilize complex datasets stored in the Ball State’s data warehouse. Address issues of interest and create visualizations that will be used in institutional research presentations, briefs, and reports for the consumption of various Ball State constituencies (Board of Trustees, senior leadership, the provost/president, and state agencies).
Duties/Responsibilities
- Design and conduct analyses to address institutional questions, including defining methodology, selecting appropriate data sources, and applying statistical techniques.
- Interpret analytical findings and communicate data-informed insights in clear, accessible, and actionable formats for various campus audiences and stakeholders.
- Compile, analyze, interpret, and report institutional data to support strategic planning, decision-making, assessment, accreditation, and compliance initiatives across the university.
- Collaborate with campus stakeholders to define research and reporting needs, recommend appropriate analytical methodologies, and develop customized data reports and insights to support institutional decision-making.
- Document research methodologies, data queries, processes, and analytical assumptions to promote transparency, consistency, and reproducibility in institutional research and reporting activities.
- Utilize Data Insider blog as a repository for and communication of completed research projects.
- Apply institutional data definitions and contribute to discussion on data governance efforts.
- Perform other related duties as assigned.
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in data analytics, data science, business analytics, operations research, statistics, psychology, computer science or a related quantitative research field.
- At least two years of experience conducting data analysis using statistical tools such as SPSS, SAS, Stata, R, etc.
- Ability to interpret or code SQL from relational databases.
- Demonstrated ability to clean, analyze, and interpret complex datasets and communicate findings to non-technical audiences.
Preferred Qualifications
- Master’s degree in psychology, computer science, data analytics, data science, business analytics, operations research, statistics, or related field.
- Higher Education institutional research experience.
- Knowledge of Higher Education ERP systems (e.g., Banner).
- Technical expertise in data management, statistical analysis, qualitative/quantitative research methods.
- Experience in predictive modeling and/or machine learning techniques (e.g., clustering, decision trees, random forests, etc.).
- Ability to analyze complex topics, problem solve, synthesize, and communicate results clearly both orally and in writing to various audiences.
- Tableau visualization experience.
How to apply:
For inquiries, please contact: Drew Miller, Director of Institutional Research, at the following email address: drew.miller@bsu.edu
Please apply via the online Ball State University job portal.
Please list three professional references within the online application.
