How we helped a History Department plan its future
We do a lot of things at Impact Architects — build strategies, conduct research, support partners, learn, and share. But at its core, our work helps answer complex questions. How do we know we’re having impact? What are the best research methods and indicators? And what should we do next?
Recently, State University of New York at Geneseo, a public liberal arts college located in Western New York, came to us with a question about potentially adding a new program: Is this even a good idea? Or, put differently, how feasible is the idea we have?
The History Department at SUNY Geneseo is considering starting a master’s program for people wishing to earn an M.A. in history or in social studies education for adolescents. The department had anecdotal evidence to suggest that starting such a program would, indeed, be a good idea, and that they would be able to enroll students to support the associated costs. But these anecdotes, largely external inquiries and interest from current students, aren’t enough to provide a solid ground from which to make a consequential decision.
We partnered with the History Department to conduct a feasibility study to get some real intelligence to inform their decision, and ultimately answer the question: Is a masters program even a good idea?
Our Approach
Our approach to answering this — and any question — is to look at it from multiple angles, seek out currently existing data, and identify areas that need additional primary data. In this case, the first thing we did was to get the 30,000 foot view about the state of graduate education in the United States, as well as in New York State. We used data from the National Center on Education Statistics and the New York Department of Education, as well as recent journalism, to situate SUNY Geneseo’s decision in context. We found that while graduate programs in the United States were booming just a few years ago and have been considered an opportunity for institutes to make up revenue gains from lost state funding, programs in the social sciences and history weren’t beneficiaries of the boom.
Next, we went from 30,000 feet all the way to the ground-level. There are over 250 institutions of higher education in New York State, and our task was to identify all of the institutions that either have a graduate program in history or social studies education. There’s no publicly available database for this, so we had to make our own. We manually looked up the information we needed on each school’s website and, in preparation for our later analysis, we also recorded other institutional details, such as location, institution type (public, private, for profit), tuition, and other program details. Ultimately, our research identified 58 institutions that fit the criteria for comparison.
Finally, we needed to generate some primary data to understand whether people — current SUNY Geneseo students, SUNY Geneseo alumni, and recently graduated social studies teachers in New York — have any interest in a graduate program. We developed a survey and coordinated with SUNY Geneseo to distribute it to current students and alumni. The New York State Council for the Social Studies helped distribute the survey to current teachers, a group whom SUNY Geneseo hypothesized might comprise a substantial proportion of enrollment in a graduate program in history. We more or less found evidence to support the History Department’s anecdotal signals: Current students were the most enthusiastic, followed by alumni, and then social studies teachers without ties to SUNY Geneseo.
Our Answers
Ultimately, we recommended the SUNY Geneseo History Department develop a small scale pilot program to satisfy the existing demand among those who already have a relationship with the college, as surfaced through our survey. A pilot would also provide space for learning and development in order to avoid common problems that contributed to the slowed growth of graduate programs we found in our research. Finally, a pilot would create an opportunity to develop the program’s identity, while learning and distinguishing itself from the peers we identified in our competitive landscape analysis.
While Impact Architects is in the business of tackling tough questions, the answers are almost never as simple as “Yes” or “No.” Instead, we help provide context, insights, and useful recommendations that can serve as guideposts. We do this through tailored research and survey design, together with clear and detailed presentation of our findings. Working our way from a question to answers is how we support our clients, no matter the industry, ensuring any organization can make the best contextualized and data-informed decisions with confidence.
Do you or does your company have a burning question you need answers to? Let us know.
