Institutional Planning & Analysis

Assessment of IPA's Services

Institutional Planning and Analysis administered an anonymous survey between February 3 and February 28, 2011 to 897 regular instructional and non-instructional employees to assess the quality of our services. Results from the survey, which had a 30% response rate, are available here

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Data Warehouse / Decision-Support Update

In Fall 2010, the Data Warehouse Team successfully launched the first prototype data mart (Admissions) using both a dimensional model and a Cognos cube.  A demo of the prototype, using Cognos reporting tools (Report Studio and Analysis Studio), was presented first to the Admissions Office and the Provost/EVC and then to the Deans, VC Student Affairs, and AVC Enrollment Management. 
To validate the Team’s overall approach and assess technical, design, and modeling capabilities, we engaged a review by IBM consultants in October 2010.  [IBM acquired Cognos in November 2007.]  This 5-day review covered the following objectives:

• Validate the overall design approach, including its extensibility and sustainability, to confirm viability of future integration of dimensional models and cubes
• Evaluate use of Cognos tools to be sure that they are put to optimal use in the design of the dimensional models and cubes and the underlying framework manager packages
• Evaluate use of the Oracle ETL tool (OWB)
• Confirm campus’ choice of hardware and operating system platform for Cognos
• Identify other products, staff skill sets and/or levels, alternative approaches, etc. that might significantly improve staff productivity and product delivery schedule.

Findings/Recommendations:
IBM found that our current architectural configuration with Cognos was in line with proven best practice methodologies within the current development and production environments.  A data architecture review of both the ODS and data warehouse was recommended to insure standard data warehouse practices were in use.  Another recommendation was to utilize a commercial ETL tool, rather than using custom code (PS-SQL) to do all the ETL processes.  This would greatly reduce development time and improve sustainability and maintenance.  IBM also noted that the team use a more formal project management methodology and go forward with plans to create the Data Warehouse Steering Committee.

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Updated information

The UCM Profile tab now contains two documents, the UC Merced Profile and the Campus Accountability Framework. Each campus in the UC system has prepared an accountability framework document highlighting campus accomplishments and data about students, staff and faculty

You can now see the profile document for each campus in the UC system by going to the links tab. The campus profiles are part of the accountability and transparency movement underway in higher education to give the public easy access to information about multiple aspects of student collegiate life.

In addition to the UCM profile tab, the Student Stats and the Faculty and Staff tabs have also been update with the most recent information from the campus. We hope you find the information you need. If not, please let us know by submitting a request so we can continue to improve our site.

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