Meet our Staff

Mission: to provide data, expertise, analyses, and staffing necessary to support the University's planning, institutional research, and university assessment committees and processes.

The Office of Planning and Analysis supports the University's leaders and strategic planning processes by providing objective, accurate, and timely information, analysis, and advice to inform decision-making and resource allocation processes. In addition, the Office conducts studies that describe, analyze, and evaluate the operations and outcomes of the University and maintains an electronically accessible database of institutional trends.

Responsibilities and Activities
The Office of Planning and Analysis (OPA) serves several internal and external constituencies. OPA is the source for official university statistics, based on our databases of student and employee data.

Internal Requests
OPA provides statistics for a wide on-campus constituency, such as students writing class reports or ASMSU proposals, faculty developing grant proposals or trend studies for particular courses, and administrators planning resource allocation. OPA works closely with the Registrar's Office, Personnel and Payroll Services, the Affirmative Action Office, Career Services, Athletics, Admissions and New Student Services, and University Relations to design research projects, provide data, and conduct analyses.

The Office of Planning and Analysis provides information for the University Planning, Budget and Analysis Committee (UPBAC) in the form of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for academic departments, comparative cost and productivity data from the in the form of Delaware Study, and ad hoc reports.

External Requests
OPA provides data for over 100 surveys sent to MSU annually. Off-campus requestors of institutional statistics include local news media, the Commissioner for Higher Education, the Governor's Office of Budget and Program Planning, federal agencies, and other colleges and universities. OPA regularly prepares reports for the Integrated Post-Secondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the College and University Professionals Association (CUPA), the Delaware Studies of Instructional Costs/Productivity and of Faculty Activity, and Oklahoma State University's annual faculty salary survey (accessible only to MSU). The Common Data Set (CDS), a format developed by four major guidebook publishers, which has become the de facto standard for basic college reporting, is available online.

Many of the statistics produced by OPA are available to the campus and the general public through MSU's Web site. OPA's oldest collection of institutional data, the Blue Book (originally named for the color of its binder), dates from 1976-77 and reports five years of productivity indicators for instructional departments, with data aggregated by college. A Blue Book archive is also available.

Since February 2002, the Office of Planning and Analysis (OPA) reports to the President's Office, and the Executive Director is a member of the President's Executive Committee.

Office of Planning and Analysis Staff

Jim Rimpau, Executive Director, Planning and Analysis And Chief Information Officer , rimpau@montana.edu

• Provide leadership and guidance for the University Planning and Analysis Office.
  
• Serve on the President's Executive Committee.
  
• Member of the University Planning, Budget and Analysis Committee.
  
• Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee.
  
• Develop and propose policies, procedures and/or new initiatives designed to enhance the processes and outcomes of various activities including enrollment management, space management, strategic priority action plans, annual operating budgets, institutional effectiveness and efficiency, and assessment of return on program investments.
  
• Serve as a resource for the University Planning, Budget and Analysis Committee, the Strategic Planning Committee, the Information Technology Advisory Committee, and the University Assessment Committee.
  
• Direct and participate in the collection, analysis and presentation of institutional and/or comparative data that are used to support and enhance policy formation and decision-making.
  
• Directs the reporting of all institutional data required by Federal, State and accreditation agencies and the Board of Regents as well as by campus administrators and committees.

• Primary contact for the Delaware Study of Instructional Costs and Productivity.
• Coordinate the annual Faculty Activity Survey.
• Consult on survey design and analysis for campus constituents.
• Provide a variety of ad hoc and term-by-term reports that present academic, human resource, and financial data for an assortment of committees, departments, faculty members as well as other extramural requestors for MSU information.
  
• Support the Director and Office of Planning and Analysis in formulating and implementing queries and other data mining projects.
  
• Design statistical strategies for answering questions about Montana State University-Bozeman faculty, staff, students, alumni and graduates.

Ben Sharp, Research Analyst, bsharp@montana.edu

• Provide a variety of ad hoc and term-by-term reports that present academic, human resource, and financial data for an assortment of committees, departments, faculty members as well as other extramural requestors for MSU information.
  
• Maintain and develop databases for collection of IPEDS-related data in order to then complete all IPEDS surveys.
  
• Collect and maintain Blue Book data and present the information via the Web and through Key Performance Inicator reports.
  
• Maintain student data in order to develop Graduation and Retention Studies.
  
• Support the Director and Office of Planning and Analysis in formulating and implementing queries and other data mining projects.

Terry Dysart, Research Analyst, tdysart@montana.edu

• Provide institutional data for online reports including Quick Facts, Common Data Set, and Trend Data.
  
• Respond to requests for university information from national sources such as U.S. News & World Report, Peterson's Guide to Graduate Schools, Chronicle Guidance, College Board, and the National Science Foundation.
  
• Design statistical strategies for answering questions about Montana State University-Bozeman faculty, staff, students, alumni and graduates.
  
• Design and maintain website for the Office of Planning and Analysis and help generate and maintain the facts and stats therein.
  
• Design and maintain the University Planning, Budget and Analysis Committee website.

Return to regular view	Text-only	Updated: 6/7/07