Director of Institutional Research
Bucknell University, Pennsylvania, United States
Rita (Xiaoyan) Liu
Presenter 1 Experience
Dr. Rita (Xiaoyan) Liu is currently serving as the Director of Institutional Research at her institution. She is very knowledgeable about research methods and has many years of institutional research experience in student engagement, achievement gap, freshman retention, graduation, learning outcomes assessment, and program evaluation. Over the past five years, she has been evaluating the test-optional policy and developed a dashboard to monitor its impact on admissions, student diversity, graduation rates, retention, and academic performance. She has also presented these findings to relevant departments.
Presenter 2 Name
Timothy Chow
Presenter 2 Experience
Dr. Timothy Chow is currently serving as Director of Institutional Research and overseeing institutional research projects and external reporting at his institution for many years. Out of concerns for the prospective students and their families who might be facing continuing challenges associated with the pandemic, his institution has adopted a test-optional admissions policy since 2021-2022 academic year. Since then, Timothy is tasked to investigate any potential impact on first-year students associated with the test-optional policy in terms of their performance in first mathematics coursework, first term GPA, and their subsequent retention rates for returning for their second college year. He has followed three entering fall cohorts and gathered relevant information to support ongoing process for evaluating the potential impact of the test-optional policy. Timothy has shared preliminary findings on this topic with the Board of Trustees, across campus, as well as, at the state IR conference.
To Test or Not to Test: That Is the Question
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
3:45 PM – 4:45 PM East Coast USA Time