Assessment and Research at the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity (AROMAD)

Function

Assessment and Research at the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity (AROMAD) provides data/assessment services in relation to federal (NIH, NSF, US Dept. Ed…), state, private, grant and gift proposals, annual performance reports within OMAD and select campus units. We also process and produce organized information to help staff/faculty with better decision making in day-to-day operations, planning, and future policy formation and practice. All operations are aimed at maintaining and enhancing performance and opportunities for underrepresented, low-income, first-generation and other underserved students.

History

Assessment and Research at the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity (AROMAD) was created and organized by Gene Kim, Arlyn Arquiza, and Candy Kamekona on 2014/2015, when Gene was appointed as the first ever full-time Director of Assessment and Research in OMAD. The first priority for the team was to officially organize an assessment team, and to put more emphasis on modernizing and automating repetitious and high volume tasks via SQL, Python, and R programming language to address larger and more complex workloads/projects as a cohesive/coordinated yet flexible unit. The team also created a comprehensive project calendar for more efficient and effective service delivery (the team also became a continuously training and preparing/preemptive unit). Presently, the team still works with various programming languages and illustrates data insights and patterns to various stakeholders. The team also assist in specifically articulating and operationally defining (putting stuff down on paper) assessment/data needs of stakeholders who are at brainstorming/decentralized (“diffused in idea”) developmental stage(s) in their measurement projects.