Position Summary

The Office of Planning and Institutional Research, part of the Office of the Provost, supports Columbia’s senior leadership through the collection, analysis, and reporting of data on issues of institutional importance. We are seeking a research analyst, reporting directly to the Associate Director and working closely with the Associate Provost and leadership of the Office of Academic Programs, to be a key contributor and collaborate with other team members to help realize the Office’s goals of presenting important institutional data to diverse audiences and executing research projects that address strategic questions for the University.

Responsibilities

• Producing research reports and briefs relating to survey data, student outcomes, faculty trends, and research funding, among other topics, and presenting these findings to audiences internal and external to the University.
• Designing and updating automated reports for University constituents, using business intelligence software for data visualization or other reporting tools.
• Responding to surveys and requests for information about the University and its schools from various external entities such as U.S. News, the Middle States Commission, New York State Education Department, National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (SARA), and the federal National Center for Education Statistics (IPEDS).
• Working with personnel across the University on Provost’s Office projects to collect and summarize data for internal reporting and to inform decision-making.
• Assisting with the design, documentation, development, maintenance, and oversight of OPIR databases.
• Ensuring data integrity and consistency across multiple institutional data systems through systems design, planning, and data cleaning/reconciliation, often in collaboration with administrative teams around the University.
• Other related duties, as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor's degree or its equivalent; preferably with coursework in statistics, computer science, information technology, social science, or related discipline.

Two years relevant data science and/or quantitative research experience required, including familiarity with extracting data and producing basic descriptive statistics.

Experience with the Microsoft Office suite, particularly Excel and PowerPoint.

The ideal candidate will also display strengths in one or more of the following areas:

• Data visualization: Graphical reports and interactive dashboards; advanced design of visualizations in statistical software packages such as R or JavaScript-based visualization packages; business intelligence software; Drupal, HTML/CSS.
• Statistical and empirical analysis: Statistical packages such as Stata, SPSS, R, or Python data analysis libraries; survey design and analysis.
• Data management: Data warehousing; process automation; advanced SQL syntax; relational database design; data dictionaries and metadata; version control.
• Experience with scripting languages such as Python or Perl. Interest in large datasets and producing analyses from multiple, unstructured data sources.

Preferred Qualifications

Master’s degree in statistics, computer science, information technology, social science, or related discipline. 

Project management experience.

Note: Finalists will be expected to demonstrate basic SQL and statistical proficiency, and may be asked to submit samples of their work.