Melinda Roy

Melinda has over a decade of professional experience in data analysis and research across higher education, public service, libraries, and healthcare sectors. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Non-Fiction from University of King's College.

Own Your Decision-Making Flaws: Tips for SEM Leaders

Most leadership teams and planning committees are made up of the core data users. But leaders may not understand their own decision-making habits and are unable to describe their data needs. Leaders are better able to contribute to data strategy discussions when they know the underlying issues.

Understanding Institutional Micropolitics: Tips for SEM Leadership

Implementing strategic enrolment management at any institution is a political process. When institutions lean into, and explore this reality, they are quicker to garner support from employees and administrators for SEM, and are better prepared to implement a SEM framework.

7 Reasons to Replace Your Professional New Year’s Resolutions with a Bingo Card of Possibility

When I was hired by Plaid we created a 60-day plan of goals for onboarding. As the goals shifted over time, I became focussed on what I wasn’t accomplishing. This year, I wrote a list of potential achievements and put them on a bingo card.

The Importance of Data Literacy Service Planning in Institutional Research

Without a strategic service approach for information or institutional research offices, users are left to wander through a vast collection of data in hopes of finding the right metric, at the right aggregation level.

Social tagging: A Data Literacy Quick Win for Large Organizations

Software providers often promote tags as way to help users find content. Yet many data analysts and institutional research administrators, including myself, are quick to dismiss them. But focusing on the messiness of end-user assigned tags ignores their function as a data literacy learning tool.

Why the Academic Library is your Friend as an Institutional Researcher

While conferences offered idea generation and excitement for the institutional research office, regular reading kept me energized about my work. Giving analysts time to read and collect ideas is an easy retention strategy.

Using Technology in Academic Advising to Empower Students

As technology shapes how we find information, I wanted to know what social media says about academic advising. Most Tiktok videos tagged with #academicadvising were negative. How can institutions use technology to change the story told on social media?

Beyond the Strategic Enrolment Plan: Examples of Target Setting Processes in the Frameworks

Aside from assessing the weight-bearing capacity of the framework, introducing a new process or task for strategic enrolment management differs between the four frameworks. In this post we’ll review how institutions who want to implement enrolment targets would do so in each of the frameworks.

Beyond the Strategic Enrolment Plan: Indicators of a Resilient Framework

The more highly structured a framework, the more decision-approval and accountability is transparent, and data is evident in proposal development and assessment. An institution with a SEM plan can be responsive regardless of framework.

Beyond the Strategic Enrolment Plan: Framework Challenges & Knowing when to Restructure

When SEM becomes a struggle beyond a single process, or when multiple targets seem unachievable, the framework may no longer be able to bear the weight the institution requires.