Institutional Research Associate II

About the Role

The Office of Institutional Effectiveness at Syracuse University seeks an Institutional Research Associate II to join a highly collaborative team supporting data-informed decision-making across the University. This role contributes to the development and implementation of research that informs strategic action by the University and its component units, including developing data collection protocols, analyzing data, and communicating findings to provide actionable insights for administrators, faculty, staff, and students.

What You'll Do

• Work with senior staff to identify research needs, define research questions, and develop quantitative and qualitative methodologies that advance institutional priorities.
• Lead small- and medium-sized research projects, managing multiple short- and long-term projects concurrently.
• Collaborate with other members of the Research Team to execute research projects, including surveys of students, faculty, and staff, and analysis of institutional records.
• Clean, structure, and analyze data to identify trends and generate actionable insights.
• Leverage University-approved AI tools to optimize workflow.
• Build and analyze datasets to fulfill ad hoc requests and support larger research projects, including merging data across multiple sources such as institutional records, surveys, and external agencies.
• Communicate research findings to non-technical audiences through written reports, presentations, data visualizations, and dashboards.

What We're Looking For

• Bachelor’s degree in a social or behavioral science field strongly desired; postgraduate study preferred.
• 5+ years of experience in social or behavioral science research; 3+ of these years in institutional research in a university setting strongly preferred.
• Proficiency in descriptive and inferential statistical analysis (means, distributions, t-tests, regression); experience with qualitative research is a plus.
• Proficiency in merging data across disparate sources (e.g., institutional records, surveys, external agencies); proficiency in a statistical programming language for data manipulation, analysis, and visualization, with the ability to write clean, reproducible code. Experience with R is preferred.
• Ability to communicate research findings to non-technical audiences.
• Experience with dashboarding software (Power BI, Tableau) strongly preferred.
• Experience with survey design and administration strongly preferred.
• Experience querying relational databases is preferred.
• Experience with or openness to leveraging AI tools (e.g., Claude, Chat GPT) to streamline workflows and enhance productivity is preferred.

Nice to Have

• Experience with R (preferred).
• Experience with dashboarding tools (Power BI, Tableau) (strongly preferred).
• Experience with AI tools (preferred).
• Experience conducting institutional research in a university setting (strongly preferred).
• Postgraduate study (preferred).

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary: $76,000 per year