About Us

The Office of Institutional Research (OIR) operates under the leadership of the Office of the Provost and works in close collaboration with the Office of Institutional Data (OID).

OIR’s core responsibility is twofold: 

  1. Provide official, reliable and trusted institutional data to external organizations.
  2. Administer all Official Lehigh Surveys, which provide the institution with critical insights into the Lehigh community’s experience.

Our external reporting responsibilities include:

  • All compliance reporting, including reporting to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE), NSF/NIH, and to accrediting bodies.
  • Ranking Agencies such as: U.S. News & World Report, Poets & Quants, Times Higher Education, etc.
  • College Guides: CollegeBoard, Peterson’s, Princeton Review, Fiske Guide, etc.
  • Data Sharing/Benchmarking sources: American Association of University Professors (AAUP), College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR), etc.
  • The Common Data Set: publicly-shared university-wide data as per a recognized set of definitions used by most higher education institutions. Definitions are established by data providers in the higher education community and publishers as represented by the College Board, Peterson’s, and U.S. News & World Report.

For external reporting, OIR primarily uses official 10th-day census data, including official admissions, enrollment, completions, graduation and retention rates, faculty and staff counts. When external organizations require data surveyed from current students, faculty, or recent graduates, OIR is also responsible for distributing these external surveys to the corresponding Lehigh populations..

Our internal survey work includes: