Data Sharing

Accurate and consistent data are important to planning and evaluation. The Office of Institutional Research (OIR) website provides a large amount of data on our Institutional Data page, including factbooks, Common Data Set, and survey summaries. We also provide a number of reports to academic department chairs via Google Sites. These are outlined in more detail under the heading Readily Available Data.

If you are in need of student, course, faculty, or staff data beyond what is already provided, please review the information under the heading Data Request Sources. 

It is not possible for all data requests to be fulfilled due to time constraints, University priorities, and restrictions related to FERPA, HIPAA, and other privacy protections. The University's policy on the release of student information can be found here. 

We do not fulfill requests by faculty or students for academic research, classroom use (i.e., course projects, surveys, scholarly research) or personal use. If your work is related to the University's academic or administrative operation and has the support or sponsorship of your department or the University's senior administration, then please review the section on Data Request Sources and contact the appropriate office.

Requests for unit-record data (individual records of students, courses, or related data) are likely to be denied. Instead, we will work with you to establish a plan for analysis at the aggregate-level.

Data Request Sources

Inquiries about trend or historical data related to students or courses, or data related to a compliance submission (e.g., IPEDS, NECHE) should be directed to OIR through this data request form. Examples include:

• Enrollments in Economics courses by non-Economics concentrators over the last 10 years.
• Undergraduate students in a declared STEM concentration who studied abroad over the last 5 years.

Inquiries of a static and current nature about students or courses, space utilization, or scheduling should be directed to the Registrar’s Office through this data request form. Examples include:

• List of all first year and transfer students for the upcoming fall semester                
• Registration information for every course in the spring semester, except group and individual independent studies.

While OIR and the Registrar’s Office may answer questions about graduate and medical student enrollment, anything related to the admission or funding of these students should be directed to the Graduate School’s data request form or emailed to the Medical School. 

Questions about faculty and staff should be directed to the Faculty Data Manager and University Human Resources, respectively.

Readily Available Data

OIR provides information on a variety of topics, all available to the public on our website. Located on the Institutional Data page, you can find:

• Common Data Set - General information about the University, enrollment and persistence, admissions, academic offerings and policies, student life, annual expenses, financial aid, faculty and class sizes, and degrees conferred.
• Alumni Outcomes - Employment and post-Brown education of alumni; can be filtered by academic program.
• Factbooks - Data related to diversity, enrollment, degrees and completions, courses, undergraduate admission, tuition and fees, and employees.
• Surveys - Summaries of responses to surveys, including those related to climate and diversity, the Open Curriculum, the first-year experience, student engagement, student experiences, and alumni experiences.
• HEOA & Professional Licensure Disclosures - Consumer information as directed by the U.S. Department of Education.

Academic departmental data are provided to departments in a variety of ways. These are usually in the form of Cognos reports or Tableau dashboards that are only accessible to individual departments. 

OIR maintains a Google Site for each academic department with access to a variety of reports. These include:

• Enrollment and Concentrations - 10 year trend view of undergraduate enrollments and completed concentrations.
• Instructional Activity - Courses, faculty instruction, advising, completions.
• Survey Results - Summaries of Senior, Doctoral, Masters, and Climate Surveys. 
• Department Diversity - Completions, courses, faculty, and staff by gender and race.
• Faculty Activity - Demographics, teaching load, scholarly activity, and sponsored research.
• Faculty Roster
• External Review Report - Completions, demographics, student honors.

Through the Registrar’s Office, academic department administrators have access to a broad range of reports and dashboards about their students.  These include:

• Course Reports - Schedules, grade distribution, course rosters.
• Enrollment Reports - Demographics, class totals, overrides, registrations.
• Student Reports - Awarded degrees, concentrators and grad students, graduation preview list and ceremony attendance, undergraduate certificate students.
• Department Dashboard - Current year summary, course schedule, course offerings, undergraduate and graduate concentrators, course enrollments. Additional filters allow for 8-10 year historical views on some of the data on the Dashboard.

The Graduate School also maintains a number of reports in Cognos for use by academic departments:

• Graduate Course Grades
• Academic Events
• Appointment Awards and Funding

FAQ

Can I see information about departments or programs other than my own?

No, not at the individual level, although you can see aggregated counts of some things (e.g., course enrollments, completed concentrations) at the departmental and divisional level on the OIR Factbook.

I am a faculty member conducting a study/survey as part of my research. Can you provide me with data or email lists?

We do not provide data or contact information for academic research or class projects. However, if your work is related to an academic or administrative need of the University and has the support of your department, as well as senior administrators, then we may be able to help you.

I am a student and need data to complete a class project. Can you help me?

We do not fulfill requests submitted by students. We are more than happy to answer any questions you may have about the information found on the OIR website.

I have reviewed your Factbooks and would like to download one of them. How do I do this?

The dashboards on our website (Factbooks, survey summaries, alumni outcomes) are not downloadable. If there are one or two tables that you would like in a different format (e.g., Excel), please fill out the OIR request form and we will send it to you. However, we will not send entire dashboards.

Can we request an ongoing data file that includes all academic history (courses, grades, etc.) for our concentrators/graduate students so that we can build our own database?

No, this type of “data dump” will not be provided. Building a shadow database is not advisable. The central student information system is continually updated and student data is constantly evolving. Having a shadow system or database with snapshot data and then using that data to answer questions, particularly for external purposes, is problematic. Furthermore, student record data is protected under FERPA and as such should always be monitored and audited by central IT security standards and practices, especially in cases of a data breach, and its use and release should always be monitored by University data stewards.