Data Analyst Job Description

SimpsonScarborough, a market research firm that works exclusively with colleges and universities, seeks a full-time Data Analyst for its Old Town Alexandria, VA headquarters office. We are a small, dynamic team looking for a self-motivated and enthusiastic new member. Candidates must have a thorough working knowledge of SPSS. Interest in market research and higher education is preferred.

The Data Analyst is responsible for analyzing quantitative survey data, preparing quantitative research reports, and programming/testing online survey instruments.

The responsibilities of the Data Analyst include:

• Cleaning raw survey data for analysis
• Analyzing survey data and interpreting findings
• Coding and summarizing open-ended survey responses
• Preparing charts and graphs that clearly present survey findings
• Preparing a comprehensive research report in Powerpoint
• Working with other team members to prepare the final deliverable for the client in a specified timeline
• Programming and testing online survey instruments

Qualifications:

• Working knowledge of SPSS and statistics is required. The Data Analyst will be expected to run frequencies, crosstabs, ANOVAs, t-tests, etc.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Excel, Powerpoint, Word
• Knowledge of best practices in survey design is preferred
• 0-3 years experience (accepting entry-level candidates if have SPSS experience)
• Self-motivated, eager to learn, and team-oriented
• Ability to work independently with minimal oversight
• Strong communication and social skills (wallflowers need not apply!)
• Bachelor’s Degree required

Candidates will be asked to complete a short skills test in SPSS upon acceptance of application.

Salary range is $40,000-$45,000, commensurate with experience. Full benefits package.

Please submit cover letters and resumes to Wanda Hoath, at wh@simpsonscarborough.com by Friday, May 24. For additional information about SimpsonScarborough, please visit our website at www.simpsonscarborough.com.

SimpsonScarborough, a higher education market research firm headquartered in Old Town Alexandria, is seeking summer interns with academic background in marketing and/or communications. Candidates should be entering their junior or senior year and/or have completed at least three quarters of their marketing and/or communications studies. Position is also open to graduate students. SimpsonScarborough interns will have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience with market research projects.

Interns will:

* Help with the creation and formatting of client presentations and reports
* Learn how to recruit for focus groups
* Learn how to work with quantitative analysis
* Participate in proposal preparation
* Travel to at least one client meeting with SimpsonScarborough staff

Interns are asked to work 40 hours a week; $3,000 stipend is available. For greater detail about the firm, please visit our website at www.simpsonscarborough.com.

For more information or to submit your resume for consideration, please contact:

Wanda Hoath
Administrative Assistant
571.257.7251
wh@SimpsonScarborough.com

In their August 15 Wall Street Journal article “Marketing Pros: Big Brand on Campus,” Emily Glazer and Melissa Korn highlighted the emergence of chief marketing officers on college campuses (It should be divulged here that Teri Lucie Thompson of Purdue University was used as an example in the article, and that Purdue is one of our clients.) The authors began the article by stating that “schools are getting the message about messaging,” but allude to the idea that this increasing interest in marketing is primarily due to the increasing cost of tuition. The article implies that schools turn to marketing under pressure as they are on the defensive about their costs. While it is certainly true that the rising cost of tuition is a problem and demonstrating the value of college degree is important, the article oversimplifies the issue.

It is not uncommon for those in the field of marketing higher education to hear some of the criticisms levied toward the industry and mirrored in this article:

• “Schools blur the line between academia and the corporate world…”
• “Schools…are focusing on sales rather than intellectual capital,”
• “Executives…are just the latest symptom of bloat in college administration.”

These perceptions are really reinforced if you read the comments made by readers of the article.

The problem with the article is that it spends the first two thirds of its content focusing on the criticism of marketing’s role in higher education before it gets around to mentioning that it is a “competitive, cluttered marketplace.”

Furthermore, the article gives voice to the idea that “young adults should not go to college at all” and my favorite quote, “if you need large marketing budgets, it suggests that something has gone wrong with the substance of the product…how many nonprofits spend this type of money on marketing?”

While college is not for everyone and some majors obviously provide higher paying jobs than others, it is hard to ignore the most recent statistics on the value of a college degree. Georgetown University recently published a study that found that, on average, a four-year college graduate earns 84% more than a high school graduate. Further, “people with an associate degree earned less than those with a B.A., on average. The difference is about $500,000 to $600,000 throughout a career. Over the course of a lifetime, a college degree is worth an extra $1 million in earnings … (over a high school diploma).” So maybe college is a good financial investment after all.

Any tier-one research institution, like Purdue in the article, competes for students on a national and international level. Compare the budgets of marketing for colleges and universities competing on this plane with corporations that do the same, or even non-profits that are national in scope. The average university spends less than 1% of their budget on marketing (which by the way is the same average for non-profits).  The average in the business sector ranges from 4-10% depending on what source you use. For-profit universities spend up to 23%. Not quite the same. Also, what do you think the marketing budget might be for national non-profit campaigns like “Got Milk”, the United Way or the American Cancer Society.

Despite what was reported in the Wall Street Journal, the American Marketing Association’s Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education did not begin in 2001. The Symposium first took place in 1989, sponsored by Xavier University, then co-sponsored by AMA beginning in 1991 and residing with AMA ever since. It is not a new thing, but rather developed more than 20 years ago in response to the changing competitive market.  There was already a growing understanding of the shifts in the marketplace and what tools may be needed to survive and thrive.

It is a “cluttered competitive marketplace.” The recently published “Almanac of Higher Education” by the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that there are 3,418 public and private universities offering anywhere from an associate degree to a doctorate. In addition, there are another 1,216 for-profit institutions competing in the same arenas.

At the same time, the number of potential college-age students will continue to decline across the nation until the year 2015 (Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, WICHE), and the number of Hispanic and Asian students is growing rapidly in place of a declining white population. The biggest hit in the number of potential, traditional-age students is in the Midwest and Northeast, where the potential market is predicted to decline by 10%. (As an interesting side note, 55% of private universities and colleges are in these same geographic markets.) There are more schools competing for fewer students.

Competition across state lines for students is also well chronicled. In particular, as state schools have their budgets cut, they are looking for additional sources of revenue, which means the state next door or the international student. Higher paying, out-of-state students are becoming more and more attractive as a means to remain financially sound.

As we compete for students, resources and reputation in an increasingly competitive marketplace, marketing is one tool among many that is necessary for colleges and universities to use as they navigate the future. Sound finance, strong HR (think quality faculty and staff), good use of physical resources and technology are all part of the equation.

Why are chief marketing officers on the rise? How about because the level of competition is rapidly increasing and that marketing, as demonstrated in this article, is misunderstood and underappreciated by many on campus (although as the article stated, this is changing). The skill set is often found outside the academy where the competition and its impact are better understood.

It is important to note that every organization that wants to distinguish itself from the competition, ensure it is relevant to its constituents, or make sure it is visible to those who might be interested in what it’s doing or what it is offering, needs to understand and practice effective marketing. This is true if you are a for-profit, a non-profit, a NGO, a political candidate or a university. For many years colleges did zero marketing believing in the adage “if you build it, they will come.” The reality is, this only happens in the movies.

Every year, Beloit College releases its Mindset List to give a snapshot of how the incoming freshmen class, of whom most were born in 1994, views the world. Take a look at the full list for all 75 items; some of my favorites are below:

1. Robert De Niro is thought of as Greg Focker’s long-suffering father-in-law, not as Vito Corleone or Jimmy Conway.

2. For most of their lives, maintaining relations between the U.S. and the rest of the world has been a woman’s job in the State Department.

3. Outdated icons with images of floppy discs for ‘‘save,’’ a telephone for ‘‘phone,’’ and a snail-mail envelope for ‘‘mail’’ have oddly decorated their tablets and smartphone screens.

4. There have always been blue M&Ms, but no tan ones.

5. Along with online viewbooks, parents have always been able to check the crime stats for the colleges their kids have selected.

6. Martin Lawrence has always been banned from hosting Saturday Night Live.

7. History has always had its own channel.

8. While the iconic TV series for their older siblings was the sci-fi show Lost, for them it’s Breaking Bad, a gritty crime story motivated by desperate economic circumstances.

9. Little Caesar has always been proclaiming ‘‘Pizza Pizza.’’

10. Despite being preferred urban gathering places, two-thirds of the independent bookstores in the United States have closed for good during their lifetimes.

- Renee Daly

To prepare for the future and keep the institution on a trajectory of growth and expansion, Guilford College developed a strategic long-range plan for 2011- 2016.  As a result, one of the college’s  objectives was to evaluate Guilford’s marketing and communications efforts and identify specific ways the institution could enhance its overall image and visibility. We spoke with Camilla Meek, who served as senior director of marketing communications at Guilford through July 31, 2012, and asked her to share the steps they took to assess the college’s marketing and communications efforts and the benefits they derived from this activity.

Q. Tell us about Guilford College.

A. Founded by Quakers in 1837, Guilford College is an undergraduate liberal arts college in Greensboro, North Carolina with a diverse student body.  While no longer affiliated with the Religious Society of Friends, the college’s core values and governance still reflect its founding principles of social justice and egalitarianism. The college has enjoyed a long history of academic rigor emphasizing writing, critical thinking and the sciences. The student body includes traditional-age as well as adult students. We also have one of the most successful and highly ranked early colleges (high school students) in the country. So we need to tailor our marketing and offerings to a wide range of demographics and needs.

Q. What was your role at Guilford?

A. I joined Guilford in 2010 to lead the integrated marketing effort that was prescribed in the college’s strategic long-range plan for 2011-2016. The college has experienced growth in the past decade, but the marketing communications staffing and expertise hadn’t kept pace with that growth. We wanted to intelligently plan a path for developing our capabilities in this area, so we engaged SimpsonScarborough to audit our past communications efforts, as well as to examine the roles, staffing and effectiveness of the communications and marketing department.

Q. What was the outcome?

A. The communications audit consisted of internal interviews and qualitative research, such as comparisons with peer institutions in the areas of staffing, resource allocation, production workflow, asset management, measurement of communications efforts and the state of our work relationships with other departments.

SimpsonScarborough’s recommendations addressed the positioning of communications and marketing department relative to other divisions of the College: for example, the staffing of the office, governance of College brand standards, and the importance of marketing metrics in a dashboard. In total we received 22 recommendations as part of the detailed assessment. One year later, we have implemented approximately half of them. Some are larger initiatives, such as a physical move of our office from an off-campus site to a location on-campus, which will happen when space becomes available.

We also participated in a CASE-sponsored online metrics dashboards webinar by Elizabeth Scarborough that gave some excellent examples and guidelines.

Based on the recommendations of the audit, we reorganized the department and added one position, a digital communications coordinator and brought in some additional student workers for more routine editing and web site work.

A more intangible outcome was that the communications audit opened up a dialogue with some groups within our division that felt they hadn’t been well served by our department, and a year later, our collaboration has greatly improved.

Although we weren’t aware of it at the time, the work done by Simpson Scarborough dovetailed nicely with a college-wide administrative assessment initiated by the president and the vice presidents for administration and finance earlier this year. We were able to demonstrate that the department was understaffed in relation to its peers and gain some budgetary support from the administration.

Q. What advice do you have for communications professionals with limited resources and increasing demands for output?

A. Part of my approach is to train up as many people across campus as possible in areas like social media, web editing, photography and videography, and most of all thinking in terms of contributing useful content that our office can repurpose across our media platforms.

With today’s distributed mode of communications and social media, literally every academic and administrative department can have a voice and a front door to our public. Guilford College’s culture is independent by nature and by way of its Quaker history, so we have to allow for that freedom of expression in our communications strategy. Integration of communications only works if you have the buy-in of those at the top of the org chart and those who actually do the work of communicating.

One of the best things I’ve read recently that resonated for me about my daily work is from Tina Fey’s funny autobiography, Bossy Pants. She said she had to learn that as the producer of 30 Rock her role was to stifle creativity. Really?

“Producing is about discouraging creativity,” she says. “Everyone in every department wants to show off their skills and contribute creatively to the show, which is a blessing. You’re grateful to work with people who are talented and enthusiastic about their jobs. You would think that as a producer, your job would be to churn up creativity, but mostly your job is to police enthusiasm.”

That sort of gave me permission to own the creativity squelching part of my job because that’s one of the hardest parts, like when someone is inspired to redesign the college’s logo in their spare time.

Camilla Meek can be reached at camillameek@yahoo.com

Purdue University made headlines when it launched its “Makers All” campaign in 2010.  Since then, the campaign has been stepped out considerably. The University’s communications have been completely integrated around “Makers All.” In fact, Purdue has achieved a level of integration that’s extremely rare in higher education.

In this profile of the campaign, which was developed by Vice President for Marketing and Media, Teri Lucie Thompson, in partnership with Ologie, of Columbus, Ohio, the vast extension of “Makers All” is apparent. Campus banners, posters, bus wraps, art installations, microsites, mobile sites, websites, billboards, print ads, college and school sub-brand websites, flyers, brochures, admission materials, fundraising communications, t-shirts, promotional items, email, direct mail, trade-show materials, magazines, newsletters, and even marketing for athletics all reinforce the Purdue “Makers All” brand strategy. Take a look and you, too, will gasp when you see the legs on this campaign.

The natural question is, What has the campaign done for Purdue?  Well, the number of female engineering students is up 30% this year. Traffic on the Difference Makers website is up 120% over 2010. Admissions were up 9% last year.  Communications to parents are up 20%.  And the campaign, and its creator, have been decorated with numerous awards.  Clearly, the marketing and media team are living the brand…..they are the ultimate Brand-Makers!

Elizabeth Scarborough

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US News and World Report recently covered a study that monitored 605 different students across 6 different public universities taking an introductory statistics course. The study suggests there is no difference in the outcome of online and traditional classroom teaching of statistics.  What do you think about this study? Check it out through the link below:

http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2012/07/25/study-online-learning-outcomes-similar-to-classroom-results

-Leslie Baldino

SimpsonScarborough, a higher education market research firm headquartered in Old Town Alexandria, is seeking a fall intern with academic background in marketing and/or communications. Candidates should be rising juniors or seniors and/or have completed at least three quarters of their marketing and/or communications studies. SimpsonScarborough interns will have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience with market research projects.

Interns will:

* Help with the creation and formatting of client presentations and reports
* Learn how to recruit for focus groups
* Learn how to work with quantitative analysis
* Participate in proposal preparation
* Travel to at least one client meeting with SimpsonScarborough staff

Interns are asked to work 20 hours a week; $1,500 stiped is available. For greater detail about the firm, please visit our website at www.simpsonscarborough.com.

For more information or to submit your resume for consideration, please contact:

Wanda Hoath
Administrative Assistant
571.257.7251
wh@SimpsonScarborough.com

The Colby College Office of Communications set out to capture a time-lapse video of commencement, but after all the chairs were put away, the camera was still rolling. What they ended up getting is breathtaking…….and a nice way to encourage alumni to give to the Colby Fund.

– Renee Daly

When Villanova University recently launched its ten-year strategic plan, one key component entailed more fully sharing the Villanova story with a national audience.  In order to measure progress, Villanova hired SimpsonScarborough to conduct research that established baseline metrics for measuring perceptions of Villanova among internal and external audiences.  We spoke with Ann Diebold, Vice President for University Communication at Villanova, and asked her to share more about the process and what these research findings mean for the University.

Q. How long have you been working at Villanova? Tell us a bit about the University.

A. I have been at Villanova for five years and am responsible for overseeing the University’s communications and marketing efforts. Villanova is an Augustinian Catholic University located 12 miles west of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with approximately 10,000 undergraduate, graduate and law students. Villanova has five colleges: the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the School of Business, the College of Engineering, the College of Nursing and the School of Law.What is most distinctive about Villanova is our University’s Augustinian Catholic intellectual tradition, which is the cornerstone of an academic community in which students learn to think critically, act compassionately and succeed while serving others. As our students grow intellectually, Villanova prepares them to become ethical leaders who create positive change everywhere life takes them.

Q. Why did Villanova decide to do this type of baseline research?

A. The University recently launched a ten-year strategic plan, and a key component of that plan is to better tell the Villanova story to a national audience. We invested significant time and energy in a branding initiative, which resulted in strong, clarified messaging. As part of that work, we also wanted to make sure that we set a baseline for both internal and external constituents’ perceptions of Villanova and the Villanova experience. We partnered with SimpsonScarborough to evaluate 1) the internal community members understanding of the Villanova value proposition, 2) key external influencers awareness of our distinctive attributes, and 3) students and their parents’ perception of Villanova as a high-quality, Augustinian Catholic institution. The resulting research data provided us with a set of critical baseline data, against which we can measure our progress over time.

Q. How do you see this research helping inform Villanova’s marketing and communication efforts?

A. This research is crucial. Not only does the data show the extent to which we’ve been successful in communicating Villanova’s distinctive attributes, but it points out areas of opportunity, enabling us to make appropriate adjustments to our communication strategy. In essence, this research indicates how we’re doing, and where and when we need to “turn up or down the volume” on specific messaging.

Q. How did you share the findings from such a comprehensive study with your key stakeholders?

A. We spent a lot of time with SimpsonScarborough working to analyze and segment information into appropriate overviews for our various internal audiences; what is appropriate for our president wouldn’t necessarily be specific enough for representatives from our colleges, for example. We have an enormous amount of rich data, and we were committed to making sure it was actionable, not overwhelming to any particular group. 

Q. What advice do you have for other colleges/universities looking to conduct similar research?

A. Go for it! While juggling resources is a challenge for any university, compiling and analyzing quantitative data to help inform your communication efforts is well worth it. It provides directional information, allows for more strategic decision making and will give you a concrete way to measure the effectiveness of your efforts.