Drawing on four examples of institutional research undertaken at San Joaquin Delta College (SJDC), this paper offers six principles to help researchers make their work more relevant and to enable decision makers to utilize research more effectively. The research examples provide brief descriptions of the need for, methodology of, and findings of…

In early 1990, Prince George's Community College (PGCC), in response to declining enrollments, developed an affordable and locally effective geo-demographic cluster system for meeting the college's research and marketing needs. The system, dubbed "PG-TRAK," is based on a model developed 15 years ago as a corporate marketing tool, and involves…