Blog

In today’s Inside Higher Ed, Ithaka S+R’s managing director Catharine Bond Hill asks “Can Higher Ed Change America’s Negative View?” In the piece she explores why higher education institutions have lost the public’s trust and sketches out how colleges and universities can regain it.    …

Borough of Manhattan Community College I have had the opportunity this spring to speak with students about their educational objectives, their academic and information usage practices, and the barriers they face as a part of the first phase of the Community College Libraries & Academic Support for Student Success (CCLASSS) project. Through this project, we and seven other partner colleges, aim to explore (1) how student success can be defined in a way that is inclusive of…

Last year we published findings from the Library Survey 2016. We have been running this survey on a triennial basis since 2010 to examine the attitudes and behaviors of library deans and directors at not-for profit four-year academic institutions across the United States. The Library Survey report aims to provide academic librarians and higher education leaders with information about the important issues and trends that are shaping the purpose, role, and viability of…

We’re happy to share the news that the American Talent Initiative now includes 100 institutions committed to expanding opportunity for more high-achieving, low- and moderate-income students. The full press release about reaching this milestone is below.   In just over a year, ATI has grown from 30 to 100 institutions working to attract, enroll, and graduate high-achieving, low- and moderate-income college students The American Talent Initiative (ATI), a Bloomberg Philanthropies initiative led by the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence…

Can changes to the advising process help less advantaged students persist and graduate? This is the question at the heart of an $8.9 million First in the World validation grant awarded to Georgia State University, on behalf of the University Innovation Alliance (UIA).  The Monitoring Advising Analytics to Promote Success (MAAPS) project seeks to bring to scale and test the impacts of a proactive advising system for low-income and first-generation students. Ithaka S+R was brought on to the project as…

For over five years Ithaka S+R has successfully developed large-scale research projects through our Research Support Services program to study the research support needs of scholars in disciplines including history, art history, chemistry, religious studies, agriculture and public health. We are now launching…

I am thrilled to announce that digital preservation expert and scholarly communications leader Oya Y. Rieger will be joining Ithaka S+R as a Senior Advisor on our Libraries & Scholarly Communication team on July 1.   Oya has worked at Cornell University for over 25 years and currently is the Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources & Preservation Services. When Oya joins Ithaka S+R, she will continue her affiliation with Cornell, staying on as…

Academic libraries have been rethinking their strategic directions and services portfolios. I have argued recently that academic libraries face certain essential transformations, as they move beyond print general collections towards a variety of other roles. In a current project, Ithaka S+R and OCLC Research have been developing a typology of higher education institutions to explore the different ways that libraries are evolving at a service level. An essential…

Ithaka S+R is preparing to field our seventh national US Faculty Survey on the research and teaching practices, perceptions, and needs of scholars at four-year colleges and universities. Over the past month, we have had the opportunity to speak with four outstanding project advisors who have helped inform our focus for this upcoming survey cycle. The 2018 US Faculty Survey will be designed to continue tracking critical trends in higher education…

Invest in talented young adults, and they will help us solve the world’s problems. That was the charge of Dan Porterfield, president of Franklin & Marshall College and incoming president of the Aspen Institute, to college and university presidents who gathered February 22-23 in New York City for the American Talent Initiative annual presidential summit. The effort, funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and co-led by the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program and Ithaka S+R, has an ambitious goal: attract, enroll and…

Digital technologies have made it easier for scholars to find and access information online—in fact, as the 2015 Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey showed, nearly all scholars in the U.S. begin their searches for information using electronic resources these days. But these innovations largely focus on peer-reviewed publications and fail to capture other forms of information to an adequate extent, despite that more than 60 percent of scholars in the survey say that freely available online materials are an…

Last November, we held the inaugural William G. Bowen Colloquium on Higher Education Leadership. Named for our late, founding board chair and president emeritus of Princeton University and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the event brought together 50 higher education leaders and experts to discuss several contemporary challenges including diversity and inclusiveness, free speech and student activism, and the role of technology in higher education. Today, Kevin Guthrie, Cappy Hill, and I are publishing three papers…

We are thrilled to announce that Nicole Betancourt has joined Ithaka S+R as our assessment associate to support our surveys work. Nicole was most recently the assistant project director at Clarion Research, where her work focused on managing market research projects within the transportation, media and entertainment, and technology sectors. At Ithaka S+R, Nicole will be leading the day-to-day operations of our Local Surveys Program–an area where we have seen…

On Friday, February 9th I attended the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Office of the Digital Humanities at the National Endowment of the Humanities. It was a jam-packed, vivid testimony to the ODH’s vision and work, featuring a keynote by Kate Zwaard, Chief of National Digital Initiatives at the Library of Congress, and John Unsworth, University Librarian and Dean of Libraries at the University of Virginia, shorter remarks from leaders in the digital humanities (…

Ithaka S+R and Two Year First Year (TYFY) recently launched a research collaboration to expand our knowledge of institutional practices to support first year students in two-year degree programs across the country. We asked Brad Bostian, president of TYFY and director of first year experience at Central Piedmont Community College, to describe why he started TYFY and the importance of understanding the needs of first-year community college students. –Rayane Alamuddin People often asked those of us who started the…

Ithaka S+R is gearing up for our seventh national US Faculty Survey on the research and teaching practices, perceptions, and needs of scholars at four year colleges and universities. Last week at ALA Midwinter, we had the opportunity to meet with library deans and directors and past local survey participants to discuss the evolution of this national survey and gather feedback on possible directions for future coverage.

Over each of the past five years, the total number of undergraduate students in the United States has declined. There are multiple potential reasons for this trend: rising tuition, questions about the value of a postsecondary education, and shifting demographics have all likely contributed. While the impact of this trend has been felt across higher education institutions, private liberal arts colleges have been hit particularly hard, as have liberal arts programs offered at public institutions, marked by a…

Over the past three years, Ithaka S+R has conducted three wide-scale analyses of employee diversity in cultural organizations. These have included academic research libraries, the cultural sector in New York City, and American art museums. In all three studies, a common picture has emerged: staff in professional–and especially leadership–roles are more predominately white than is the population more broadly. But, as…

To help incoming college students succeed, many institutions offer First-Year Experience (FYE) programs. But most of the research on the scope and effectiveness of these programs centers on four-year colleges and universities. This is a significant oversight given that 38 percent of all postsecondary students are enrolled at community colleges or other two-year programs. To begin to fill this research gap, Ithaka S+R and Two Year First Year (TYFY) recently launched a research collaboration focused…

The academic library is transforming. This diagram illustrates some of what I see as its most essential transformations. Libraries are transforming in terms of their collections – towards electronic collections, towards shared collections, towards open access, and towards distinctive holdings. Complexities abound for discovery, access, processing, and preservation. And libraries are also transforming beyond collections, towards a partnership with scholars and students in support of research, teaching, and learning workflows. This…