Summer Fellows Lab

The Center for Institutional Research in Independent Schools regularly invites a small cohort of institutional research practitioners to join its Fellows Lab around a specific topic area selected by CIRIS. The goal of the Fellows Lab is to produce a resource that could potentially benefit the entire independent school institutional research community. Participants join the cohort and collaborate amongst themselves and with external organizations to create these resources.

CIRIS Summer Fellows Lab 2025-2026: An Independent School Data Style and Governance Guide

One of the most fundamental challenges facing institutional research in independent schools is data governance. Within a single school, data can be inconsistent across systems (e.g. system A uses different racial categories than system B.) Across schools, your school may define metrics like employee attrition differently than my school, and neither may align with how the organizations we report data to may want to define it. Without a shared data governance standard to aim for, it is hard for us to generate reliable, community-wide benchmarks, and even basic data analysis projects have to be customized from school to school to account for idiosyncratic data governance practices. The goal of the 2025/2026 CIRIS Fellows Lab will be to produce an independent school data style guide that the community can use as a reference for data collection and governance best practices. Throughout the process, the team working on the style guide will be aiming to balance three core questions:

• What are the most important metrics school leaders want to know, how do we define those metrics, and what are the best formats to use to record this data? We will be focusing on the areas of student admission/retention/attrition, employee hiring/development/retention/attrition, school financial/operational metrics, student academic data, and community demographics.
• How can we effectively store this high-value data in the major database platforms we use?
• How can we align this storable, well-defined, high-value data with external data reporting processes like regional accreditations, DASL, and/or INDEX? 

Who Will Be Involved?

CIRIS is looking to assemble a cohort of school employees to support the core of the project. Specifically, we are looking for experienced folks in the following areas: 

• Student admissions and enrollment management 
• HR/hiring/school business office and finance
•  Academic and student life leaders
• DEIB practitioners
• Database administrators, Tech office staff, and/or registrars
• Institutional researchers and data analysts (obviously!)

At different stages throughout the project, the CIRIS cohort will be connecting with folks from other partner organizations like NAIS, ATLIS, database companies, and regional accrediting associations as we navigate our core questions.

What's The Timeline?

Typically, the Summer Lab cohort has had some preliminary meetings on Zoom in the spring and then met together in person at Maret in June to conclude projects. Given the complex and collaborative nature of this project, it is unrealistic to imagine effectively tackling it in just a few months. Therefore, this Lab will kick off virtually in the spring of 2025, work throughout the 2025-2026 school year, and meet together in person at Maret to finalize the style guide in June of 2026, with its release scheduled for the start of the 2026-2027 school year. Members of the cohort should be able to commit to meeting once or twice a month (on Zoom) and investing some time in research throughout the upcoming 2025-2026 school year.

How Do I Apply?

Applications for the 2025-2026 CIRIS Fellows Lab are closed. Check back in the winter of 2026 for information about the next CIRIS Fellows Lab.