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.

Cultivating Advising Success: Advisor and Advisee Types

Developing an advising team requires a similar approach to building a cooperatively-maintained greenhouse: identify distinct needs for specific student groups then develop a team of advisors with complimentary roles and skills to serve those needs.

Cultivating Advising Success: Structural Models

Many post-secondary institutions have a mandate to serve their local community as well as international students, so the advising approach must be designed to meet the needs of both groups. Many institutions practicing strategic enrolment management choose to go with a hybrid model for this reason.

Cultivating Advising Success: Theoretical Approaches

Academic advising has gone through three main theoretical evolutions: Problem-based, Prescriptive-based, and Developmental advising. Best practices for advising may differ depending on the educational offerings and community they services, many institutions are moving to a Developmental approach.

Cultivating Advising Success: Should You Restructure Your Advising?

The solution to a struggling advising unit is not always a redesign; while restructuring can be an obvious way to show students you as an institution are addressing the challenges, it can be less effective than taking a more strategic, holistic approach to understanding the units’ challenges.

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.