Urbish retires from Office of Institutional Research
Founding director has collected data on Rice for 17 years

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

When Leona Urbish was growing up on a farm near Hallettsville, Texas, her brother used to play with toy trucks and cars, and she would create the bridges, highways and roads for them.

Decades later, Urbish’s knack for strategic planning paved the way for Rice University’s Office of Institutional Research (OIR). As the founding director of the office in 1994, Urbish built a database of information about Rice that ranges from statistics on student enrollment and research funding to analyses of the university’s growth, diversity and institutional climate. She will retire June 30, but her legacy will live on as the OIR continues to add to that extensive database.

	LEONA URBISH

”Leona has been a pioneer in establishing and building our institutional research office, and I know all of the people she has helped at Rice join me in wishing her well in her retirement,” said Vice President for Finance Kathy Collins, who oversees OIR.

Malcolm Gillis, who hired Urbish when he was president of Rice, said he established an institutional research office early in his term to provide more information on Rice’s strengths. ”Leona was our first choice to lead the new office,” he said. ”Her work allowed us to enhance our communications with donors, alumni, accreditation agencies and the national and regional press. We are indebted to her for her exemplary service over nearly two decades.”

Urbish said she is ”very proud” of the office and her staff. ”I know that what I have provided here at Rice are some standards that have weathered the test of time,” she said. ”Initially we discussed at great length how to present certain things and how to determine the appropriate methodology and protocol. Our goal was to become the central location for reliable, consistent data that people could use to make good, solid decisions. We accomplished that.”

Urbish came to Rice with a B.A. in English from the University of Houston, an M.Ed. in administrative management from UH-Victoria and a Ph.D. in higher education administration and management from the University of Texas at Austin, plus previous experience with institutional research at UH, UT and St. Edward’s University and in the corporate world.

One of OIR’s first products was a pocket-sized ”Rice Facts” booklet — a convenient overview of the university that gave the number of students and faculty, a brief history of Rice, a description of the various schools, financial support and other basic details. It became a yearly publication so that the numbers could be updated and compared. ”Rice Facts” is now available online only at rice.edu.

OIR soon branched out from compiling numbers and other facts to collecting raw data from surveys that could be analyzed and summarized. The OIR staff also conducted surveys of undergrads, alumni, grad students, faculty and other groups.

Information from surveys of alumni can be particularly valuable, Urbish said. A survey of engineering alumni revealed that after they entered the working world, many felt they needed to develop their skill at giving presentations at meetings; Rice’s Brown School of Engineering added that training to its curriculum as a result of that feedback, she said.

The OIR also collects longitudinal data for use by the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE), an organization of 31 private peer universities and colleges that share information about admission, financial aid, costs and other details. The OIR participated in conducting formal surveys, along with the other member universities, so that comparative analyses of institutional characteristics and perceptions could be made. COFHE adapted Urbish’s methodology for conducting surveys because of its high response rate (70-80 percent) and still uses it today.

OIR also became responsible for filing a dozen or so annual reports to the federal government’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, the annual faculty survey for the American Association of University Professors and a number of annual reports to the Association of American Universities, and also for compiling the Common Data Set – a standard collection of facts used by publishers of undergraduate admissions guides.

”It’s essential that our data be as accurate and complete as possible because it’s also used for U.S. News and World Report’s ranking of America’s best universities and for Times Higher Education’s ranking of the world’s best universities,” Urbish said.

OIR also does special projects. ”We might get a question from the board or someone on campus, and we’ll have to pull together data in a completely different way to answer it,” Urbish said.

When Urbish was hired, she had one research associate — Astrid Jernick. Today the OIR team consists of Senior Research Officer Paula Cox, who has worked with Urbish almost 17 years, and Research Analyst Danielle Texera, who has been with the team five years. “They are excellent at what they do, step in to help each other when needed and know how to analyze a request or set of data to discern the most appropriate and efficient way to present the information,” Urbish said.

The Internet has made the collection and storage of data much easier and faster than it was when OIR was created. The office has its own internal drive for storing data and keeping it secure, but the file cabinets still have hard copies of original reports and surveys from the early years, Urbish said.

As she heads into retirement, Urbish has been reflecting on her 17 years of institutional research at Rice. ”It becomes your home,” she said. ”This is what you think about when you get up, and it’s always a part of how you plan your day. As I think about leaving, it will be a big tug of the heart and of the head.”

Urbish is keeping her post-Rice options open, but she foresees some ”fun travel” in her motor home, continued community involvement with her church, the Rotary Club of Houston, several professional organizations and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, and