Vision for ATS Research and Data
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Editor's note: This presentation was prepared for the 2025 ATS Student Data and Resources Consultation (Pittsburgh, PA, April 3-4). Summary and transcript below have been edited for clarity.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A decade ago, ATS brought research in-house, building a "bridge" between schools and data on two foundations—informational humility (data must be interpreted with critical openness, with partner researchers) and structural hospitality (researchers must have access; schools must be helped to use data).
The vision is for ATS to be the go-to resource for member schools and leaders by establishing a parallel field: the study of theological education.
Capacity has grown substantially: a Research Advisory Committee, expanded research staff, 20+ adjunct consultants, and intentional inclusion of underrepresented communities and disciplines (sociology of religion, psychology, anthropology, ethics, history, public policy).
Tools and data access have expanded—including the ATS Student Questionnaires (Qs), the Strategic Information Report (SIR), a 30-year data visualization tool on the ATS website, and added qualitative studies (six leadership roles, Black student debt, alum workforce alignment, economics of theological education).
Upcoming work includes a financial-worth tool for senior leaders including chief financial officers (CFOs) evaluating new programs, plus integrating institutional, Qs, and survey databases to ask predictive and conceptual questions (school closures, enrollment growth, institutional health, "innovation factors").
KEY QUOTES
"ATS Research cannot know everything. We must approach data with a critical openness to learning and growth."
"Our vision has been to be the go-to resource for ATS schools and leaders by establishing a field of the study of theological education parallel to the study of higher education."
"[We are] helping the school leaders go beyond, well, how many of this do we have, to what predicts school closures and other significant organizational change."
TRANSCRIPT
§ Opening
Good morning. I'm so glad to get to share a little bit about ATS Research with you. I'm sorry that I'm not able to be with you in person—I am probably on a plane about right now—but we have this [format], and I'm very grateful to be able to share with you. I'm going to be sharing a little bit about ATS Research through a bit of a story. That story breaks down eventually, but you'll get the gist.
§ The Bridge: Two Foundations and Two Roads
The story begins about a decade ago when the Board of Directors brought research in-house, and by doing so, they built a bridge between the schools and research and data. The bridge had two foundations, two named [pillars], and two main roads to and from the data. Let me explain a bit.
The two foundations are our values, on which we do everything related to research: informational humility and structural hospitality. By humility, we mean that ATS Research cannot know everything. We must approach data with a critical openness to learning and growth. And we also need partner researchers to help us with the analysis, but especially the interpretation.
Hospitality: these researchers must have access to the data. We need to expand data sharing—that was one of the very first things that I did when I first came to ATS, was to expand that data-sharing policy. We're also committed to helping schools and leaders know which data will help them and how to interpret those data.
We also had two main roads at the time, to and from the data: the ARF (the Annual Report Form) institutional data collection process) and the Qs (the Student Questionnaires). Those are still our very robust, large data sets, and we always encourage researchers to request data from those two sources.
§ Mission and Vision
Our mission is to support the mission and work of ATS, of course. Some of you may know that we're actually two organizations—the Association of Theological Schools and the Commission on Accrediting—and we are often seen mainly as that accrediting agency. ATS Research exists on the other side, the Association side, which provides programs, resources, and a bunch of services to help schools and their leaders.
To that end, my vision has been to be the go-to resource for ATS schools and leaders by establishing a field of the study of theological education parallel to the study of higher education.
§ What We've Built Over the Decade
That was then, ten years ago. Today, on those two foundations of humility and hospitality, we have been able to do several things.
People and networks. We've added people and networks to our ATS Research function, mainly through the Research Advisory Committee—people like Nancy Ammerman, Mark Chaves, Scott Thumma, and David Wang, who are the principal investigators of these large grant-funded projects for theological education and the religious world, and have done enormous work and have had lots of influence in moving theological education in a certain direction. We've also added research staff: Christopher The, and we continue to rely on the expertise of our data team—Chris Meinzer, Alissa Horton, Christopher Olsztyn, Spencer Smouse, and of course Monica Laughery and Mary Boyle—plus we have regularly used over 20 adjunct research consultants.
We're continuing to bring researchers together—Christopher The in particular has been instrumental in this—from communities that are not consistently at the table. That's a very strong commitment that we have. This includes a range of research disciplines: we rely heavily on sociologists of religion, but also researchers from psychology, anthropology, ethics, history, public policy, et cetera, as well as institutional leaders, because of our particular emphasis on applied research.
Tools and access. We've enhanced our tools to access the data, not just for ourselves internally, but also for our publics. We've significantly developed the SIR (Strategic Information Report), and have created a data visualization tool on ATS's website. If you're not familiar with that, please stop somebody—Christopher The and David Wang are both champions of this tool. It's a way, for the first time, to see data 30 years in one visualization. It used to be that you would have to go to each year's annual data table and then figure out how to combine all of the data; now you can see it all in one shot and play with it, because there are a number of different filters where you can disaggregate the data and look for patterns. We've also strengthened the webinars on the Qs, and are looking to create data visualizations for the Qs as well as other survey data.
Expanded roads. We've expanded the roads to and from the data. As I mentioned, our main roads were the ARF (institutional data) and the Qs, but we've also added surveys and various qualitative research. For example:
We completed a set of studies on six leadership roles in ATS schools, and are hoping that others will use the data there.
We have a study on Black student debt.
We more recently have completed our second version of the alum workforce study—and importantly, [it found] a misalignment between job and credentials: what alums say that they need in the workforce, and what schools are offering in their degree programs. So a misalignment there. I've had a lot of mileage out of those findings.
Very recently we have completed an economics-of-theological-education resource, where we commissioned a historical research project looking through an economics lens at what has happened in higher education and identifying seven different challenges. We then brought together seven presidents and deans to react and respond to that resource and connect it to theological education.
§ Upcoming Work
We're working on a tool where senior leaders, working together with their chief financial officers, can evaluate the new educational programs schools are excited about—but looking at them from the perspective of financial worth, because those two need to go hand in hand. For example, if the organization's finances need help, concretely how does that school figure out the financial picture? How can that be addressed? These tools are meant to help schools do that.
Additionally, we're trying to connect all the databases. By looking at how the institutional database connects to the Qs database and to the surveys, we can figure out patterns by type of school, by individual, by different groupings. All of that is helping us—and helping the industry—ask broader questions of the data: helping school leaders go beyond how many of this do we have to what predicts school closures and other significant organizational change? For example: can we predict the type of school that would increase in their enrollments? What factors or variables are related to other factors and variables, and how are they related? What constitutes institutional health? Is there such a thing as an "innovation factor"? With these and other conceptual ideas, we can actually drill down a little bit more now that we've built from that bridge that was created.
§ Closing
So the [ATS] Board's building a bridge a decade ago is helping ATS realize this vision for the industry: to be the go-to resource for ATS schools and leaders by establishing a field of the study of theological education.
I'm sorry that I can't be with you to receive your questions and to hear what your reflections are on what I have shared, but I leave you in the most capable hands of Christopher The, and I look forward to meeting you in person in the very near future. Thank you.
DESCRIPTION: Remarks by Deborah H. C. Gin, ATS Director of Research, recorded for the 2025 ATS Student Data and Resources Consultation. Gin frames the ATS Research function through a decade-long trajectory when the ATS Board of Directors moved theological education research in-house, thereby building a bridge between member schools and rigorous data. Since then, ATS' research portfolio has expanded to include the ATS Student Data Services area, periodic studies of faculty, senior leadership, alum workforce, and economics, and emerging questions for the assessment of learner formation. By naming where the bridge metaphor breaks and where new strategic horizons appear, Gin invites the 2025 Consultation participants into dialogue about how member schools are better served through stronger, more responsive student formation research and resource development.
KEYWORDS: open access / free access; qualitative research; ATS Student Data and Resources Consultation (2025); presentation (transcribed); ATS Research and Data; theological education as field of study; institutional reporting; industry trends; quantitative research; mixed-methods research; student formation
CITATION: Gin, Deborah H. C. 2025. "Vision for ATS Research and Data." ATS Formation Repository, Association of Theological Schools, April 3. https://www.atsformationrepository.org/resources/vision-for-ats-research-and-data.
