When Jane Zeff walks into a room, chances are she's not empty handed. From admissions and enrollment reports to student surveys, the director of Institutional Research is well known for disseminating her trademark clear-covered, black-bound reports across campus.
Need to know the average SAT scores, by major, for accepted full-time, first-time regular-admit freshmen? Ask Jane. Wondering about the fall 1999 head count of undergraduate students by major, ethnicity or gender? Ask Jane. Better yet, look through one of the dozen reports she and her colleague, Marc Semler, generate each semester and you're sure to find the answer.
Preparing reports is just one aspect of the job Jane has held for the past two years. She also conducts and analyzes surveys, and right now she is eagerly awaiting the return of the student satisfaction report card that was sent to a random sample of freshmen and seniors."It will be interesting to compare what freshmen and seniors are saying about student satisfaction and resources," she said."That's exciting."
"Institutional Research serves the whole campus community," she said."But I truly believe that students come first and we need to help them as much as we can. Faculty members are doing their part in getting students to completion, but we in the administrative offices also play a big role. For me, one way is getting out information about students' opinions, including what they feel are the positive and negative aspects of the University experience. It's important to know the negative points as well so we can work on making MSU even better."
Jane also loves the arts and reading. When she is not catching a ballet performance in New York City or serving on the Board of Trustees for the Hoboken Public Library, she enjoys a good mystery novel by Anne Perry.
Stratification is one of Jane's favorite areas of sociology. She earned a doctorate in sociology with a concentration in historical demography and urbanization from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
"This field has helped me to understand how society works and my place in it," she said."It's also taught me to think logically and to hypothesize, and it's given me tools to find answers to questions."