Position Summary Information
Job Description Summary
The Institutional Research Intern will collaborate with leaders from Academic Affairs, the Business Office, and Student Services to help answer one of the college's most important strategic questions: What's the right size and mix of students to ensure financial sustainability while maintaining student success? This is applied, high-impact work with real institutional data. By the end of the internship, you'll have built an interactive, scenario-based modeling tool that lets decision-makers explore "what if" questions about enrollment strategy.
This is a temporary, part-time position lasting approximately 6-8 weeks during the summer. The position is hybrid, with some hours completed on the college's main campus in Dowagiac, MI and some completed remotely, as negotiated with the supervisor.
Compensation: $31.25 per hour
Required Qualifications
- Current graduate student (Master's or PhD) in a quantitative field such as data science, statistics, economics, public policy, operations research, applied mathematics, or a related discipline
- Strong programming skills in Python or R, including data manipulation and analysis
- Experience with SQL and version control (Git)
- Ability to translate ambiguous business problems into structured analytical approaches
- Clear communication skills for both technical and non-technical audiences
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience building analytical applications or interactive dashboards
- Familiarity with higher education data concepts such as FTE, contact hours, cohort tracking, or state funding formulas
- Exposure to optimization, simulation, or causal inference methods
Other Information
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
- Develop a driver-based model that links enrollment to tuition revenue, state funding, instructional costs, and student success metrics.
- Transform curated datasets into a clean, validated modeling layer that reconciles against historical actuals.
- Package the model into an accessible application that non-technical users can run themselves.
- Build standard scenarios, run sensitivity analyses, and translate findings into decision-ready outputs for college leadership.
- Produce thorough documentation, such as model logic, data dictionary, user guide, and versioned code repository, so your work can be maintained after the internship ends.
- The duties listed in this job description are not all-inclusive, but a list of the major responsibilities. Additional duties not noted in the job description may be assigned by a supervisor.
Special Instructions to Applicants Physical Requirements
Must be able to complete the following with or without a reasonable accommodation:
1. The physical activity of this position.
A. Reaching. Extending hand(s) and arm(s) in any direction.
B. Walking. Moving about on foot to accomplish tasks, particularly for long distances or moving from one work site to another.
C. Fingering. Picking, pinching, typing or otherwise working, primarily with fingers rather than with the whole hand as in handling.
D. Grasping. Applying pressure to an object with the fingers and palm.
E. Feeling. Perceiving attributes of objects, such as size, shape, temperature or texture by touching with skin, particularly that of fingertips.
F. Talking. Expressing or exchanging ideas by means of the spoken word.
G. Hearing. Perceiving the nature of sounds at normal speaking levels with or without correction. Ability to receive detailed information through oral communication, and to make the discriminations in sound.
H. Repetitive motion. Substantial movements (motions) of the wrists, hands, and/or fingers.
2. The physical requirements of this position.
Sedentary work. Exerting up to 10 pounds of force occasionally and/or negligible amount of force frequently or constantly to lift, carry, push, pull or otherwise move objects, including the human body. Sedentary work involves sitting most of the time.
3. The visual acuity requirements including color, depth perception, and field vision.
The employee is required to have close visual acuity to perform an activity such as: preparing and analyzing data and figures; transcribing; viewing a computer terminal; extensive reading.
4. The conditions the employee will be subject to in this position.
None. The employee is not substantially exposed to adverse environmental conditions
Close Date 05/24/2026 Quicklink https://swmich.peopleadmin.com/postings/5263