Leadership

Laura Jensen, Ph.D.

Laura Jensen, Vice Provost for Planning and Effectiveness, has over twenty years of professional research experience and worked at the University of Colorado and Front Range Community College before coming to Colorado State University. She is committed to helping the institution better understand issues surrounding student success, program evaluation, assessment, enrollment, faculty/staff, research, and operations. She serves on a variety of internal and external committees related to educational research, reporting, and data management.

Stephanie Foster, Ph.D.

Stephanie Foster, Director of Assessment, supports the CSU community to create and use meaningful strategies for understanding student learning from the classroom to the educational program level and to the institution as a whole. Dr. Foster brings expertise in assessment and evaluation, especially in general education and high-impact practices such as undergraduate research, service-learning, and Honors education. Dr. Foster earned a PhD at the University of Georgia’s Institute of Higher Education.

Heather Novak, Ph.D.

Heather Novak, Director of Institutional Research, Planning and Effectiveness, began working at CSU in 2004. She is passionate about understanding the institutional factors that facilitate undergraduate student success, especially for low-income and first-generation students. Her academic training focused on both quantitative and qualitative research methods and her expertise is in multivariate analyses and quasi-experimental research design. Heather enjoys working on research projects that inform policy and curriculum.

IT Staff

Tae Yamaki, M.C.I.S

Tae Yamaki, Senior IT Developer and BI Data Architect, is responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining interactive reports for university leadership teams, campus community, and external constituents. She also utilizes the National Student Clearinghouse to handle all student tracking requests and automating routine reporting processes.

David Newton

David Newton, Senior IT developer, has been working at Colorado State University since 2016 after spending over 15 years as a software engineer, database administrator, and database developer. He joined IRP&E in the fall of 2022. He holds a B.S. in Physics from the United States Naval Academy.

His main responsibilities include the extract, transformation and loading clean accurate data used in the IRPE reports and interactive dashboards utilized by the campus community and leadership teams.

Research Analysts

Nicole Ross, Ph.D.

Nicole Ross, Research Analyst, joined IRP&E in May 2021. Nicole returned to her home state of Colorado in 2018, after living in North Carolina for 8 years where she completed her Ph.D. in Higher Education Public Policy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Nicole’s career goal is to use data to inform policies, practices, and procedures that promote student success. To accomplish this, she uses a suite of quantitative and statistical tools to find meaning and craft compelling narratives. Nicole is passionate about data literacy and tries to make all of her work accessible to a broad audience.

Lee Tyson, M.A.

Lee Tyson, Research Analyst, joined IRP&E in 2018 after spending over 15 years in the private sector as a survey researcher and operations professional. Lee has extensive experience managing survey projects (instrument development, sampling, weighting, analysis, and reporting) and mining data to support decision-making and strategic initiatives. Lee enjoys crafting compelling narratives of results, identifying key themes and trends, for a variety of audiences. She holds a Master’s degree in Educational Psychology, research and evaluation methods emphasis, from the University of Colorado Denver. Lee is also pursing her Ph.D. in Education, Equity, and Transformation in the School of Education at CSU.

Data Specialist and Executive Assistant

Tyson Koss

Tyson Koss, Institutional Research Analyst, earned his B.A. from CSU and returned to work for the Vice President of Administrative Services. He has worked in IR since 2006 and is responsible for providing data to the annual surveys that contribute to University rankings (e.g., US News) and promotion.  He also serves as the administrator for the Schedule Course Adjustments, Instructors and Times (SCAIT) system.

Lindsey Laverentz

Lindsey Laverentz, Executive Assistant, is responsible for a wide range of duties within the Office with a primary focus on providing administrative support to the Vice Provost for Planning and Effectiveness. She earned her B.S. from CSU and returned in 2015 as an administrative assistant in the Equine Sports Medicine service at the Colorado State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital before this current role. 

Staff resources (including on-boarding materials) are available online.