Meeting the Challenge: - The Council of Independent Colleges

Welch Suggs
• College/Community Partnerships (1993-1999)
• Implementing Urban Missions (1997-2001)
• Engaging Communities and Campuses (1998-2005)
Helping institutional leaders obtain information that
can be useful in decision-making is another long-standing
area of interest for CIC. The concern that colleges have good
data for institutional research dates back to the Institutional
Research and Planning Project of 1972, a three-year initiative
for which CASC secured $900,000 in grants from the U.S.
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to help
colleges set up offices of institutional research.
Another early CASC initiative was Advancing
Quality Education. One of its components involved
administering voluntary standardized tests at CASC member
institutions to track the preparation of students in their
sophomore and senior years, and then comparing the results
to those of similar students at other kinds of institutions.
The second component was a survey of the business practices
of small colleges. Together, the two components established
that CASC members were similar to other small colleges in
their financial administration and student achievements. The
results also gave the organization a benchmark to evaluate
later experiments and measure deviations from the norm.
Data-informed decision-making is becoming
increasingly vital at institutions with limited budgets and
sharply rising costs. In 2002, CIC initiated a series of Data
and Decisions Workshops in partnership with the Association
for Institutional Research to train college teams to acquire
and make use of institutional and comparative data to
inform campus decision-making. The Data and Decisions
Workshops are funded by the National Center for Education
Statistics.
In 2004, with assistance from The William Randolph
Hearst Foundations, CIC developed the Key Indicators Tool
to benchmark data on students, faculty, and finances for
2001
CIC announces a new strategic plan and grants the first Heuer
Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Undergraduate Science
Education. The Council launches the Teaching Scholar Partnerships
Program to assist institutions to improve mathematics, science,
and technology education in K-12 classrooms; and Presidential
Leadership Services to strengthen college and university leadership.
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