Overview

In a time of rapid technological and organizational change, institutions of higher education are being asked to build capacity for innovation while preparing their faculty, staff, and students for a future that refuses to hold still. The harder question sits underneath: as we scale these efforts, are we measuring what actually matters, and are we willing to let go of the practices and metrics that no longer serve our communities? For the institutional research and analysis leaders of APLU’s Commission on Information, Measurement, and Analysis, these questions are not abstractions. They arrive on every dashboard, in every survey, and in every conversation about what counts as success.

Presented as the opening session of the 2026 APLU CIMA Summer Meeting, held July 12 through 14 at the University of South Florida in Tampa, this panel brought together three presentations that were always one investigation. Dr. Angela Gunder and Dr. Josh Herron facilitated a conversation across three inquiries: Dr. Paul Marty of Florida State University on the mindsets and culture that allow institutions to adapt in an era of accelerating change, Dr. Michele J. Hansen of The Ohio State University on what a mixed-methods study of nearly 3,800 undergraduates revealed about how students are developing their AI literacies through the university’s AI Fluency initiative, and Dr. Melissa Vito of The University of Texas at San Antonio on whether we are measuring the right things at all, and how institutions exit what no longer serves their students. Participants then took up the investigation themselves, working in table discussions to name what their own institutions are holding onto that deserves reexamination, and what it would take to reimagine it.