Planning Data and Resources

The SBS Dean's Office has produced a variety of data and resources to help support SBS department and program planning and decision-making. Below are links to OneDrive folders and examples of files that can help Chairs, Directors, faculty, and staff quickly find useful information including, but not limited to, department budgets, course scheduling, enrollments, and demographics.

Budget and Finance
(Department dashboards, CPE revenues, state allocations)

Enrollment Management
(Enrollment management guide, course enrollments, course distribution grids)

Headcounts and Demographics
(Enrollment profiles, degrees awarded, faculty and staff headcounts)

Instruction
(Sections taught and student credit hours)

Org Charts
(Org charts by unit)

Strategic Plans
(Campus, SBS, and departmental strategic plans)

In addition to the folders above, SBS also has a Data Guide. If you have any questions or requests related to planning data and resources, contact sdepaula [at] umass [dot] edu (Saulo DePaula).

Other useful sources of data and resources at UMass Amherst include:

University Analytics and Institutional Research (UAIR): UAIR, formerly the Office of Institutional Research (OIR), provides information and analysis that supports the decision-making process, complies with reporting requirements of external agencies, and responds to ad hoc requests for information. Many of the official statistics about the campus, and Academic Affairs in particular, are reported by UAIR. Commonly searched data provided by UAIR include:

Flagship Analytics: Flagship Analytics is the university's analytics platform powered by Tableau. It is providing the university with interactive dashboards of key student data. A core set of dashboards is available to all faculty and staff on headcounts, course registrations, student maps, completions, and more.

Additional dashboards on class size, student movement, course and student success, and financial aid are available after attending a training session. Training sessions are open to all faculty and staff who need access to more data. Sessions will be scheduled based on demand – they will be listed here. If there are no sessions listed or none of the dates/times work, please let us know so we can schedule accordingly. All dashboards show aggregate data only, access to individual data or data files is not available at this time.

Academic Analytics: Academic Analytics (login required) aggregates, curates, visualizes, and contextualizes data on the research created by scholars and provides user-friendly business intelligence tools to visualize and identify patterns from those data. These tools provide a new understanding of the research accomplishments of scholars, departments, programs, and the entire institution – and they point to directions in which to grow the research footprint strategically and in line with the University’s mission.

Office of Academic Planning and Assessment (OAPA): OAPA supports the University’s assessment and evaluation priorities by marshaling evidence and promoting a culture of evidence in line with the University’s Strategic Plan. In addition to providing direction and consultation on campus-wide and department-based student learning assessment, OAPA supports intentional improvement by contributing evidence for the strategic planning process and designing and directing survey and evaluation research projects across campus.

SPIRE: SPIRE is the University's secure online student information system. SPIRE is a multifunctional resource for students, staff, and faculty, providing a broad range of services. The SPIRE Query Viewer allows authorized users to run pre-built queries, view results online, and download data. There is a vast and growing list of queries, including lists of students in a specific major/college, within a specific academic standing, or who received a specific grade in a given semester, amongst countless others.

Student Success Collaborative Navigate (Navigate): Navigate is UMass Amherst’s student success management system serving as a retention and persistence platform, offering a variety of tools to proactively advise, monitor student success, and evaluate performance/interaction trends for students. Navigate offers student appointment scheduling (including two-way calendar integration for faculty/staff), proactive appointment-based outreach, event check-in, tracking of student interactions/documenting student interactions, reporting and analytics, and early alert and referral pathways.