Policy Number: V-7
Last Reviewed: April 18, 2024
Responsible Dept.: Office of Institutional Effectiveness
A signed copy of this policy is available in the President’s Office.
Purpose
Virginia Western Community College’s institutional data is a College asset by definition, practice, and intent. The purpose of this document is to establish an official policy for reporting student data to external agencies.
Policy Statement
To ensure consistency in reporting, the Office of Institutional Effectiveness (IE) is the College’s official source of institutional student data. IE coordinates the collection and reporting of data for a variety of external and internal purposes. IE is prepared to assist other offices in obtaining necessary data to complete additional reports for which they are responsible. All data for release to external constituents must be reviewed and approved by the Associate Vice President of IE.
Examples of constituents include:
- Program accreditors
- Federal Reporting
- State Reporting
- Local College Board
- Foundation Board
- Virginia Community College System
- State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV)
- Media Outlets
- Social Media
Other General Information
Aggregate data such as enrollment, retention, and graduation rates are available to the public on the Institutional Research Website. If you need information that is not posted, please use the Data Request Form to make your request. These data requests are subject to applicable privacy and confidentiality laws. If you are an external constituent and would like to make a request under the Freedom of Information Act, please follow the guidelines on the Freedom of Information Act Website.
Procedures
- If the requester needs student data (i.e., program enrollment; student demographics, retention, graduation rates, student success rates) and the data is for the following, then the requester will need to complete the electronic form:
- Internal data-driven decisions
- External sources (i.e., media outlets)
- External agencies (i.e. program accreditors, SCHEV)
- The Coordinator of Institutional Research and Assessment (CIRA) will contact the requester, discuss the needs, terminology, timeline, and methodology for this request.
- CIRA will meet with administrative computing for query verification.
- IE will create a report for the requester.
Applicability
This policy applies to all faculty, staff, and administrators.
