The State of OCAIR, 2004-2005

Overview

We are pleased to announce that OCAIR is continuing to grow stronger. This year, nearly 50 new members joined OCAIR, including a number of non-ethnic Chinese. Members have actively participated on the listserv throughout the year, sharing comments, expertise, and the occasional joke. On some issues, members have had considerably different opinions and several rounds of debate ensued; however, in the end we respected each other’s opinions. We are all trying to improve the organization and active debate shows how much we truly care about this organization.

We not only benefit from this organization, but also contribute to it in any way that we can. We were deeply touched by the number of candidates who were willing to run for positions on the steering committee. We are so proud of all the candidates for being willing to take the responsibility to serve rather than declining the nomination. It shows that we are capable of overcoming our Chinese tradition of being humble and not visible. It also indicates that OCAIR has moved forward in the process of democracy.

OCAIR Steering Committee Initiatives

OCAIR 4th Virtual Conference - The OCAIR 4th Virtual Conference received paper submissions from Lina Lu, Zhao Yang, and David Cheng and Chun-Mei Zhao. The five-member peer review committee was very impressed by the high quality of all of the papers submitted. It was a very difficult process for the reviewers and the margins between the first and second place papers as well as the second and third place papers were very narrow. After a thorough review, David Cheng and Chun-Mei Zhao’s paper, “Achieving Multicultural Competence: Student Participation in College Activities and Its Impact on Multicultural Learning”, was selected as the OCAIR Best Paper for the 2005 San Diego AIR Forum.

Annual Elections - Chair-Elect, Shuqin Guo, supervised this year’s annual elections. Members continued to show their support of OCAIR by participating in the election, nominating other member, accepting nominations themselves, by voting, and by tallying ballots. Faxian Yang, Bill (Biao) Zhang, and Xianping Kong graciously accepted nomination for Chair-Elect; Annie Lin and Jiali Luo, for Member-at-large. Forty-five percent (45%) of the membership voted showing that there is strong interest by members in the organizational affairs of OCAIR. Bill Zhang was elected as Chair-elect and Annie Lin as Member-at-large. They officially began their terms on the steering committee at the OCAIR Annual Meeting at the 2005 AIR Forum.

Logo - OCAIR now has a new logo thanks to the diligent work of the logo committee and Yanti Lim, Charles Tandiwijaya’s wife. It can be seen on the “Affiliates” page of the AIR website and the OCAIR website. We are very glad that we finally have our own identity.

Listserv Subscription - The procedure for subscribing to the listserv has improved. New members (and returning members) will subscribe to the listserv at the OCAIR website. This ensures that the membership database and the listserv match. We had been troubled by the inconsistency for years, so we are very grateful to Ye, Shiji, Robert, and Meihua for their help.

AIR Listserv Server - The OCAIR listserv has moved from Bowling Green State University to the AIR server and is working well in its new location. Thank you to Robert Zhang for a job well done.

Mentoring Program - In April, OCAIR launched a mentoring program and four new members have been matched up with mentors. Even though it will take some time to see the effectiveness of the program, we strongly believe that mentees will benefit from the wisdom and experience of their mentors.

OCAIR Outstanding Service Award

Outstanding Service Award - At the 2005 AIR Forum in San Diego, Willard Hom received the Outstanding Service Award for sharing his book abstracts and other research work with OCAIR. Congratulations!

OCAIR Meeting Lecture

OCAIR is extremely grateful to Dr. Samuel Peng for sharing his thoughts about job opportunities for institutional researchers outside of academe. Dr. Peng is currently serving as the Director of the Center of Studies on Higher Education at Taiwan’s National Tsing Hua University.

Recognition of Service to OCAIR

OCAIR Best Paper Review Committee – Thank you to Faxian Yang, Yuxiang Liu, Lin Chang, Xiaoyun Yang, and Lillian Zhu for serving on the OCAIR Best Paper Review Committee.

Logo Committee - Ruan Hoe, Jing Luan, Ye Ji, Lily Hwang, and Brian Hu served as logo committee members. The final design was a modification of Lily Hwang’s original design. Lily Hwang, Meihua Zhai, and Ye Ji also helped tremendously with revision of the logo based on the suggestions of the membership.

Election Officials - Zhao Yang and Chun-Mei Zhao did a superb job as ballot counting officers in the OCAIR 2005 election.

OCAIR Listserv - Robert Zhang has been selflessly serving as the OCAIR Listserv owner for many years. He has contributed a great deal to the recruitment of new members.

Membership Database - Shiji Shen found a way to keep the web and listserv consistent by initiating web registration for subscription to the listserv. Thank you also to Ye Ji for taking on the responsibility of maintaining the membership database for OCAIR in the future.

OCAIR Website - Meihua Zhai updated web site to go with our new logo. The new look of our web site is very impressive and was completed over a single weekend.

Annual Gathering - Lijuan Zhai and Xiaoying Zhang organized the annual gathering banquet in San Diego.

Treasurer - Lily Hwang continued to serve as treasurer of OCAIR and prepared the plaque for the OCAIR outstanding service award.

Service of Members to Other Organizations

David Cheng - After serving for two years as the NEAIR Publication Committee Chair, David Cheng just stepped down from his position.

David Cheng & Shiji Shen - In October 2004, David Cheng, Shiji Shen, and six other members of AIR attended the AIR Conference in China. The conference was the first of its kind held in China and it was a great success. Over 150 educators and researchers from all over the country attended the conference. David and Shiji presented at pre-conference workshops and lectured at the formal sessions of the conference.

David Cheng, Jing Luan, & Meihua Zhai - David Cheng, Jing Luan, Meihua Zhai are serving on AIR Forum Publication Advisory Committee.

Timothy Chow - Timothy Chow was elected to the AIR Board and will chair the External Relations Committee.

Mindy Wang – Mindy Wang is serving as a member of the AIR External Relations Committee.

Jing Luan - Jing Luan taught an online seminar, Predictive Analytics in Higher Education Administration, for SPSS on May 17, 2005. In June 2005, he will visit China to lecture and meet with fellow Chinese higher education colleagues. He is currently serving as President of NCCCRP (http://www.ncccrp.org), which represents researchers and planners of the nation's 1,200 community colleges, and as Associate Chair of the Track 5 Committee of AIR. He was chosen to serve as the Data Facilitator by the Lumina Foundation for its national initiative, Achieve the Dream, which aims to increase the success of low income student and students of color.

Flora Yen & Charles (Heping) Deng - The NCCCRP Board appointed Dr. Flora Yen to be the Editor-in-Chief of the well read e-Parameter Newsletter. To date, Dr. Yen has coordinated five issues of the newsletter with timely, useful topics and informative research highlights. The newsletter has effectively documented success stories and kept the membership and affiliated organizations informed of our news and initiatives. The NCCCRP board has selected Dr. Charles (Heping) Deng as editor (filling Dr. Yen’s previous position) pending formal approval from the board. Dr. Deng is a researcher at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.

Accomplishments of Members

AIR Awards - Po Yang’s dissertation proposal received the AIR/NCES/NSF Improving Institution Research in Postsecondary Institutions Award for 2005-2006. At the AIR Forum, Po Yang received the Charles I. Brown Fellowship. She was also awarded a Dean's Grant for Student Research at Teachers College, Columbia University.

AIR Summer Data Policy Institute - Jean Chen, Li-Yun Wang, Yih-Lan Liu, Qinzhu Zhang, Mindy Wang, Hui-Min Wen, and Qiuheng Shi received fellowships to attend the 2004 AIR Summer Data Policy Institute.

China Information Economics Society - Jing Luan was elected for a 4-year term to the China Information Economics Society, the only person outside of China to be elected.

First International Conference on World Class Universities - Chun-Mei Zhao was invited to attend the “First International Conference on World Class Universities” in Shanghai (June 2005). The conference was by invitation only. Only about twenty people worldwide were invited to attend the conference.

NEAIR Research Grants - Mindy Wang received the NEAIR research grant 2004.

Publications by Members

Published
• Chen, Chau-Kuang, and John Hughes. 2004. Using Ordinal Regression Model to Analyze Student Satisfaction Questionnaires. IR Applications, http://www.airweb.org.
• Hom, Williard, Peter Bahr, and Patrick Perry. 2004. Student Readiness for Postsecondary Coursework: Developing A College-Level Measure of Student Average Academic Preparation. The Journal of Applied Research in the Community College 12 (1):7-16.
• Hu, Shouping. 2005. Beyond Grade Inflation: Grading Problems in Higher Education. Vol. 30, No. 6, ASHE Higher Education Report: Jossey-Bass.
• Zhao, Chun-Mei, George D. Kuh, and Robert M. Carini. 2005. A Comparison of International Student and American Student Engagement in Effective Educational Practices. The Journal of Higher Education 76 (2):209-231.

Drafts & Other Notes
• Lijuan’s paper, “Initial Validation of an Instrument to Measure Community College Student Satisfaction,” is in press for publication by the Community College Journal of Research.
• Jing Luan’s paper, "Using Academic Behavior Index (AB-Index) to Develop a Learner Typology – A Data Mining Approach," will be published soon.
• "Use Data Mining to Examine an Outreach Call Center's Effectiveness and to Build a Predictive Model for Classifying Future Marketing Targets" by Jing Luan, Cathy Summa, and Marcy Wieland will be out of print very soon (WIT Press).
• "Transfer Data in Studying Students Transitions" by Jing Luan, Dr. Rick Voorhees, and Dr. Greg Smith for The Journal of Applied Research in the Community College is in its final draft.
• "Data Mining Case Studies for Enrollment Management" for New Directions in Institutional Research by Jing Luan, Chun-Mei Zhao, Jeff Chen, Sutee Sujitparapitaya, Meihua Zhai, Tim Chow, and Pedro Avila is in draft.

Concluding Remarks

This year, OCAIR has continued to build on the firm foundations established by prior chairs and steering committees. We are certain that the above listing is incomplete, since the number of ways that OCAIR members serve the IR community is innumerable. We are very proud of all of our members and we encourage you to let us know about your accomplishments so that we may share them with the organization. We are also very proud of what we have accomplished as an organization thanks to OCAIR’s talented and dedicated membership.

All of us are grateful for having had the opportunity to serve you. We are certain that under Shuqin Guo’s leadership, OCAIR will achieve another new height next year.