I found Nick Warcholak’s comments answering the question of, “what types of skills or abilities are most critical for institutional researchers today” most compelling because his advice was very practical. As HIED 801 is my first class dealing with Institutional Research, I have been looking interested in determining is institutional research is a good fit for me. Warcholak mentions issues intelligence as being necessary because you must learn about the foundational structure of an institution before you can effectively support it, and these are the skills that you learn in graduate school. He ended by noting that if you do not have a computer science background you are at a bit of a disadvantage when you begin a position as an institutional researcher. “So I encourage people who are thinking about a career in IR to maybe take a course on database management or programming in SQL. Something that’s going to help them deal with the data when they get there,” Warcholak says.
He also stresses the necessity of exploring and learning from as many sources as you can while working in IR to enhance your contextual intelligence. This can be done by going to different colleges and exploring. In his response to how the field of IR is changing, he mentioned how important being able to gather and analyze data is, and how this will become one of the more coveted skillsets as the field advances.

I appreciate when a professional values collaborative life-long learning, and though Warcholak’s comments, it was clear that he regards on the job learning to have as much weight as formal learning within graduate school. I also think that the advice to take courses focusing on computer science skills that will be utilized within the job is very helpful. I look forward to discussing elective options with my advisor to ensure that I will be marketable. Many of the expert’s discussions were valuable and I learned a lot of practical advice from these short clips.