Academic Assessment and Information Analyst

This position has been deemed critical by the School of Humanities and Sciences Dean’s Office and is exempt from the hiring freeze.

Work Arrangement: This is a hybrid position based on the Stanford campus, with a minimum of 3 days per week on site.

Budgeted Salary: The budgeted base salary range for this position is $143,111 to $151,918 annually.

The School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S) is the foundation of a liberal arts education at Stanford. The school encompasses 24 departments and 25 interdisciplinary programs. H&S is home to fundamental and applied research, where free, open, and critical inquiry is pursued across disciplines. As the university’s largest school, H&S serves as the foundation of a Stanford undergraduate education no matter which discipline students pursue as a major. Graduate students work alongside world-renowned faculty to pursue and shape foundational research that leads to breakthroughs and discoveries that shed new light on the past, influence the present, and shape the future. Together, faculty and students in H&S engage in inspirational teaching, learning, and research every day.

Department/Program Description: 

The Humanities and Sciences Data and Planning team is the data and analysis function behind decision-making in the H&S Dean’s Office. We source, integrate, and validate data from university systems covering student records, faculty appointments, degree enrollment and conferrals, finances, course enrollment patterns, and space, and we build the dashboards, models, and reports the deans rely on when weighing resource decisions. We take open-ended questions from the deans and from units across the school, turn them into defined analyses, and present the findings. We assess how the school’s academic programs and initiatives are performing, serve as the school’s primary point of contact for internal and external data requests, and provide the analysis underpinning annual and long-range planning. The work is technical and collaborative, connecting us to every unit in the Dean’s Office and to data partners across the university.

Position Summary

The Academic Assessment and Information Analyst is a key member of the School of Humanities and Sciences Data and Planning team, reporting to the Chief of Staff and working closely with the other Dean’s Office functional teams and with the Institutional Research & Decision Support (IR&DS) team. The role is responsible for analyzing the key academic drivers in the school to support the decision-making of the Dean and Senior Associate Deans. The Analyst gathers, interprets, monitors, and analyzes information on policies, procedures, demographics, and operational outcomes, yielding actionable information across a wide range of areas, and conducts assessments of initiatives undertaken by the school. The Analyst also provides expert knowledge of Stanford’s reporting systems and delivers reporting for the Dean’s Office and in support of our departments and programs. The Analyst works with minimal supervision as part of a team of analysts supporting our office.

This is a 100% FTE, exempt, continuing position and will be based on the Stanford campus.

If you believe that this opportunity is a match for your knowledge, skills and abilities, we encourage you to apply. Resume and Cover Letter are required for consideration.

Thank you for considering employment opportunities with the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Preferred Requirements

Additional highly preferred qualifications for this position include:

Bachelor’s degree in a quantitative or analytical field — statistics, data science, economics, social science research methods, higher education administration, or a related discipline — and five to eight years of experience in institutional research, data analysis, or reporting. Master’s degree preferred; relevant experience in a university setting may substitute.

Proficiency with data retrieval and manipulation tools such as Tableau Prep Builder, Alteryx, Python, etc.

Experience building and maintaining dashboards in Tableau or a comparable tool

Experience designing and conducting program assessment or evaluation — defining measures, collecting data, and reporting on outcomes

Familiarity with higher education data domains — student records (enrollments, degree conferrals, courses), faculty appointments, financial, staff and space data

Demonstrated ability to translate an open-ended question from a non-technical stakeholder into a defined analysis, and to present findings clearly to senior leadership

Strong judgment about data quality and discretion with confidential institutional data

Ability to manage concurrent requests with competing deadlines and communicate tradeoffs proactively

Experience using AI tools to accelerate analytical work — drafting and debugging code, exploring unfamiliar datasets, or synthesizing qualitative material — paired with sound judgment about when output requires human verification

Demonstrated use of AI tools in analytical work, and interest in helping the team develop its practices for using them well.

Successful candidates will have a sense of curiosity and a desire to solve problems. They are comfortable navigating ambiguity and managing changing priorities, work collaboratively across teams, and bring a learner’s mindset — thinking strategically and holistically about their work. They take initiative and are ready to tackle complex problems.

Responsibilities

Core Duties:

• Answer questions by developing research methodology, gatheringdata and/or using appropriate statistical techniques on availabledata.

• Drive the collection of new data and the refinement of existingdata sources through the use of algorithms and/or other advancedtechniques.

• Fully analyze the problem, question existing processes andassumptions, gather data and information, find, and evaluate alternativesolutions, and propose best course of action.

• Explore data from multiple angles, determine meaning behind thedata, and recommend ways to apply the data.

• Communicate, convey, and visualize informed conclusions andrecommendations across an organization’s leadership structure in amanner that “tells the story” behind the data and influences how theorganization approaches the challenge.

• May interact with senior leaders and faculty with writtensummaries and/or presentations on assigned research.

• May delineate the information to be gathered, collect data at theproject inception, prescribe how to structure the data, and specify thedata warehousing structure for future access.

• Through data, may predict what actions will be taken in adesignated timeframe for a prescribed issue/challenge.

• May need to collaborate with other organizations to gather data.Proactively seek and locate data, including outside benchmarks orcomparative data, to support or refute proposed decisions.

Minimum Education:

Bachelor’s degree.

Minimum Experience:

Four years extensive experience or combination of education andrelevant technical field experience solving analytical problems usingquantitative approaches.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Demonstrated experience querying, processing, analyzing, andreporting on large data sets.

• Proficiency in manipulating and analyzing complex, high-volume,high-dimensionality data from varying sources.

• Experience in empirical research and answering hard questionswith data.

• Interpersonal and communication skills to effectively conveyfindings and influence senior leadership & faculty.

• Ability to use data retrieval and manipulation tools such as SQL,R, Python, etc. in conjunction with data visualization tools such asTableau to present data clearly to non-technical audiences.

• Familiarity and experience with intermediate statistical methods;advanced proficiency with statistical tools such as SPSS, STATA, R orsimilar tools.

• Ability to tell stories with data using data visualizationsoftware Ability to present data clearly to non-technicalaudiences.

• Flexible analytical approach allowing for results at varyinglevels of precision.

• Familiarity with strategic planning concepts.

• Strong project management skills.