2008 12 People You Need to Know: Dianna Parker

As director of research, assessment and planning for Ozarks Technical Community College, it’s her job to gather the numbers and translate them for staff members into terms they understand: goals, trends and achievements.

Parker provides the school’s administration with information to make informed decisions. Through assessment, she makes sure OTC students are learning what the administration thinks they’re learning. And through planning, she uses current data to prepare for the future.

Parker calls the most important part of her job finding out what the community wants and needs. “We want to be responsive,” she says.

Parker surveys employers about OTC graduates and how well they do in the workplace, she asks employers what they see as the future of a particular job category, and she does the research when employers ask the school to create new programs.

“We survey that portion of the community to see who would be the future employers of those graduates, to see what kind of demand there would be in the workplace and to see what the salaries would be,” she says.

A major challenge for Parker is quantifying student success without looking at graduation rates – often a misleading factor for community colleges.

“If students aren’t coming here to complete a degree, that doesn’t mean they’re not being successful,” she says. “A lot of students just come to improve their skills, and a lot of them are hired out of programs before they complete a degree, which we consider a huge success.”

Though Parker often makes recommendations to the administration based on her data, she calls her job behind-the-scenes, as few people realize there’s someone doing that legwork. While she essentially runs a one-woman department now, she says there are plans to hire support staff.

Parker came to OTC in April 2002 after 17 years as an economic and environmental analyst for Springfield engineering firm Ledbetter, Toth and Associates Inc.

“I really like digging into the data to find out what it can tell us,” she says. “Since I accepted the position at (OTC), I feel like I am doing what I was meant to be doing.”

As of December 2007, she was a doctoral candidate at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, pursuing a doctor of philosophy in higher education.

Dianna Parker

Position: Director of research, assessment and planning, Ozarks Technical Community College

Age: 47

Education: MBA, Missouri State University; bachelor’s degree in business administration, Drury University; certificate of accounting and data processing, Northeast Missouri State University

Career: 17 years as an economic and environmental analyst for Ledbetter, Toth and Associates Inc.

Q&A Date: May 13