The Association for Institutional Research (AIR) recently announced Director of Institutional Analytics and Research Dr. Greg V. Michalski as a recipient of the Charles F. Elton Best Paper Award. This prized award celebrates the scholarly papers presented at the Annual AIR Forum. It specifically seeks out those papers that best exemplify the standards of excellence established by the award's namesake and that make significant contributions to the field of Institutional Research (IR). 

Co-written with John Zilvinskis of the Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research, their paper, titled “Mining text data: Making sense of what students tell us,” is being published in the AIR Professional File, which features journal-length publications grounded in relevant literature that synthesize current issues, present new processes or models or share practical applications related to IR.

Established in 1966, AIR is the world’s largest professional association for institutional researchers. Designed to help education professionals in various institutional research-related fields, AIR offers educational resources, best practices and professional development opportunities to utilize institutional research effectively.

“It’s a true honor to be selected for this award,” said Dr. Michalski. "As institutional researchers, we are always focused on developing, sharing and using research to assist decision-making and continuously improve our institutions to benefit our students, community and society at large. The field of text analytics is a promising area with the potential to assist in developing new practices to even more completely serve our students and the College."