Revised 9/25/2026

Introduction

The Association for Institutional Research (AIR) is committed to informing its membership and the general public about resources, services, and professional development opportunities to advance data-informed decision making in higher education. We are committed to maintaining your trust by protecting your personal data and, to the extent possible, ensuring that your personal data is secure.

This Privacy Notice explains how we collect, use, share, and protect personal data. It also describes the choices available to you regarding the use of your personal data. Please read this Privacy Notice carefully to understand our policies. If you do not agree with the data practices described in this Privacy Notice, we advise you not to use our website or services.

Note: The AIR website, services, and apps are not intended for use by or designed for children under 13, and we do not knowingly or intentionally collect information about children under 13.

We recognize that information privacy is an ongoing responsibility and therefore will update this Privacy Notice from time to time as we undertake new personal data practices or adopt new privacy policies. We reserve the right to amend the Privacy Notice at any time, for any reason, without notice to you, other than the posting of the amended Privacy Notice at this site.

We may email periodic reminders of our notices and will email members and all active records in our database of material changes, but you should check our website frequently to see the current Privacy Notice that is in effect. To help us communicate with you, you are responsible for ensuring we have an up-to-date, active, and deliverable email address for you.

What Is Personal Data?

AIR acknowledges that there are many potential definitions of “personal data.” Our definition of personal data is any information about an identified or identifiable person, which can include direct identifiers, such as name, address, email address, and national identification numbers, or indirect identifiers such as location data or IP address. This list of data elements is not exhaustive, and we consider the definition of personal data in the broadest possible context.

AIR collects and uses information that, alone or in combination with other information, could be used to identify you (“personal data”) to deliver our resources, programs, products, and services and inform you of various resources, programs, products, and services related to our association’s mission and purpose, as described in “How We Collect and Use (Process) Data” below. This data is collected in various online forms and through our business relationships.

How We Collect and Use (Process) Data

We collect and use personal data to ensure we provide you with information about news, services, community collaboration, and professional development opportunities that advance institutional research, institutional effectiveness, and data-informed decision making within higher education.

The information we hold enables us to engage in basic communication with you, helps us to enhance your experiences on our website, and allows us to improve our resources, programs, products, and services and the efficacy of our communications with you. AIR and its service providers (such as event contractors) collect and use the following types of information.

Personal information you provide to us in your profile and other engagements

• When you become a member, individually or through your employer, or create an AIR profile, we collect personal information such as your name, title, employer’s name, work address, email address, and phone number.
• We ask you to voluntarily provide certain demographic and professional information, such as age, gender, ethnicity, years in higher education, professional background, and professional interests. We use demographic information to help us understand our community and, where applicable, support AIR’s nominations and governance processes. Members of AIR’s Nominations and Elections Committee may review individual demographic and professional information when developing candidate slates. We use professional background and interest information to develop programs and services and communicate relevant opportunities to you. Providing this information is optional. We limit access to AIR personnel, authorized volunteers, and service providers who need the information for these purposes. We retain this information in accordance with our data-retention practices. You may update or clear it from your active profile; however, prior information may remain in historical, audit, backup, or other system records.
• If you receive AIR benefits through your employer or an organizational membership, we may share information with the applicable organizational membership administrator and/or voting delegate. This information may include your name, membership status, membership type, membership history, event registration status, and whether you serve as an organizational membership administrator or voting delegate.
• We use your personal information to administer member and nonmember relationships; provide requested membership benefits, programs, products, and services; respond to your communications; and complete transactions. We may use basic information from your profile to prefill transactional forms and send confirmations, receipts, service notices, and other communications relating to your transactions or relationship with AIR.
• We use information about your professional background, interests, and engagement with AIR to understand stakeholder needs, improve and tailor our programs and services, personalize your experience, and recommend relevant content or opportunities through our website, email, apps, and other service platforms.
• We may inform you about AIR events, resources, programs, products, services, and other opportunities that may interest you. You may opt out of promotional communications as described in the “Communication” section below. Opting out of promotional communications does not prevent AIR from sending transactional, service-related, governance, or other communications that are necessary for your relationship with AIR.
• To facilitate networking, we may include your name, organization, and contact information in the AIR Member Directory, AIR Hub, and, if applicable, the AIR Forum app. You may manage available directory preferences through your profile, subject to any listing requirements associated with designated organizational or governance roles as described below.
• AIR may publicly identify organizations that hold organizational membership in AIR, including in member listings, newsletters, publications, and other communications. AIR will not publish personal contact information for individual organizational representatives unless otherwise disclosed or authorized.
• We retain information about your transactions and engagement with AIR, including participation in events, webinars, volunteer activities, and courses, to administer those activities, maintain appropriate records, understand the use of AIR’s programs and services, and identify relevant resources or opportunities.
• If you volunteer for a working group, committee, or elected leadership position, we may publish your name, title, organization, photograph, and information about your AIR role on our website and in materials associated with the group or activity. You may ask AIR about available options for limiting a public listing; however, some identification may be necessary to perform or document particular governance or leadership roles.
• If you voluntarily participate in an AIR survey, interview, or focus group, we use the information you provide for the purposes explained when the information is collected, which may include conducting research, understanding stakeholder needs, assessing satisfaction, and improving AIR’s programs and services. Research findings and reports ordinarily present information in aggregate or de-identified form unless AIR tells you otherwise and obtains any consent required for an identified use.

Publications and resource use

• AIR produces various publications, reports, and educational materials, which are linked on our website. Much of our content is open access, however, some material requires membership or a profile login for access. We use web analytics tools and login information to track how often people gain access to or read our content. This information is used to help us understand what content is most useful for our members.

Online community participation

• AIR offers community groups—online discussion communities for collaboration and networking purposes. These groups are open to the public; your name and email address are used for subscription purposes. Terms and conditions for AIR Hub are available here.

In-person events and web conferences

• AIR hosts many events throughout the year. These include in-person meetings and conferences like the AIR Forum, as well as live online trainings (collectively referred to as “events”). If you register for one of our events, an AIR profile is required (regardless of your membership status), and we will access this data to provide you with information and services associated with the event. During event registration, you may voluntarily provide information about accessibility or dietary needs so that we can respond to your request. We limit access to this information to AIR personnel and service providers, such as event venues and caterers, who need it to fulfill the request. We retain this information in accordance with our data-retention practices, and it may remain in historical, audit, backup, or other system records after the event.
• If you are a presenter at one of our events, we will collect information about you including your name, employer, and contact information. We may also collect information provided by event attendees who evaluated your presentation and associate it with your record in our database. In certain instances, and with your consent, we will make and store a recording of your voice and likeness.
• If you submit a proposal to present at an AIR event, we will collect information about you and your co-presenters (if relevant) including name, employer, contact information, proposed abstract, and other information associated with your proposed session.
• If you evaluate proposals for an AIR event, we will collect information about you including your name, employer, contact information, and your evaluations of the assigned proposals.
• We keep a record of your participation in AIR events as an attendee or presenter, which may be used to provide you with information about other relevant AIR resources, programs, products, and services, or to help us better understand your interests and tailor our offerings to meet your needs.
• As a participant in the AIR Forum, you will have the option to download the AIR Forum mobile app to help you navigate the conference and plan your schedule. AIR provides the app provider, Cadmium, with the name, company, title, and email address of every registered attendee so Cadmium can administer the app and send app invitations. For attendees other than presenters, this information is not visible to other app users unless the attendee downloads the app, signs in, and chooses to share their profile. Attendees may change their profile visibility at any time in the app settings. Sponsor representatives are registered attendees and can view profiles that attendees choose to make visible. Presenters must be included in the app and cannot hide their presenter profiles from session listings or the app. The app provider’s handling of information is described in Cadmium’s privacy policy at https://www.gocadmium.com/privacy-policy.

Visiting the AIR website and automatically collected data

• As is common practice on most websites, AIR collects certain information automatically on our website and stores it in log files. As you interact on our website, we may collect information about your computer or device and visits to our website (“automatically collected data”) through cookies, Internet Protocol (IP) address tracking/URL tracking, and other tools (collectively referred to as “tracking technologies”).
• The types of automatically collected data on our website using these and other tools include: the search terms you use, new or returning user information, browser information, computer or device type, operating system, internet service provider, website usage, referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, number of clicks, and ads viewed. We may use your website usage in conjunction with profile and registration form information to help us understand how our website and services are being used.
• We may use information about your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, analyze trends, track visitor engagements, and gather information that assists us in identifying visitor preferences. We also may use your IP address to enhance our security and investigate an actual or potential security incident.
• Where permitted by applicable law, we may process information necessary for website operations, security, analytics, and service improvement based on our legitimate interests. Where consent is required for particular cookies or tracking technologies, we will seek consent in the manner required by law.
• Session cookies are used to enhance and make more efficient the user’s experience during a site visit. Once the user closes the browser, the cookie terminates.
• Persistent cookies store small text files on the user’s hard drive for extended periods of time and “remember” visit activities to help make subsequent visits more efficient. Users may remove persistent cookies by following internet browser help instructions.
• Please note that the AIR website offers some links to external sites, to which these privacy practices do not apply. We make no promises regarding the policies or business practices of these other websites.

Your correspondence with AIR

If you correspond with us by email, the postal service, or other form of communication, we may retain such correspondence and the information contained in it and use it to respond to your inquiry; to notify you of AIR events, publications, or other services; or to keep a record of your complaint, accommodation request, and the like. If you wish to have AIR refrain from communicating with you, please contact us at air@airweb.org.

(Note: If you ask AIR not to contact you by email at a certain email address, AIR may retain a copy of that email address on its “master do not send” list in order to comply with your no-contact request.)

Purposes for processing your data

• As explained above, AIR processes your data to provide you with the resources, programs, products, or services you have requested or purchased from us, including membership services, events, publications and other content, and professional development. Additionally, we use your information to refine our programs and services to better tailor them to your needs and to communicate with you about other services AIR offers that may assist you in your career or otherwise help you do your job. We also strive to facilitate communication among colleagues in the higher education institutional research and data community. To these ends, we collect and maintain data about our members and stakeholders to enable us to communicate with them, share information relevant to them, and allow them to communicate with each other.
• AIR reserves the right to use the personal data that it collects to identify the source of any inappropriate use of information resources managed by the association, including but not limited to, offensive or illegal postings to online discussion lists, collaboration sites, and other communication vehicles; denial-of-service actions; unauthorized use of online services and network infrastructure; misuse or unauthorized use of the AIR name, logo, or other representations of the association; and to protect the personal safety and privacy of our employees and service providers, members, online users, and the public under the policies and practices described in this Privacy Notice.

Payment card information

• You may choose to purchase goods or services from AIR using a payment card. Payment-card information is submitted directly to AIR’s payment processor. AIR does not currently process or store complete payment-card information in its systems.

What happens if you don’t provide us your personal data?

• You can access many AIR resources without creating an AIR profile or providing profile information. Other resources, events, trainings, or member benefits require limited personal data so AIR can fulfill your request, process a transaction, or authenticate access.

Communication

We may contact you by email, postal mail address, or phone number that you have on file with us for business purposes.

We send transactional emails to individuals with whom we have a business relationship; these emails regard a service or product you purchased or requested, and you may not opt-out of these emails.

We may send promotional communications about AIR events, resources, programs, products, and services where permitted by applicable law. Where consent is required, we will seek and record consent in the manner required by law. In other circumstances, we may rely on another legally permitted basis, such as an existing membership or business relationship. You may opt out of promotional communications at any time by using the unsubscribe link in an email, updating available communication preferences in your profile, or contacting AIR. Opting out of promotional communications does not prevent AIR from sending transactional, service-related, governance, or other communications necessary for your relationship with AIR.

If there is a concern regarding your personal data, we will contact you when required to do so by law. To do this, we will use the email address on file for you.

If for any reason you think there is a problem regarding communications to you, please let us know by contacting air@airweb.org.

Third-Party Sharing

General Sharing

We share personal data with third parties only as described in this Privacy Notice. These third parties may include service providers that process information on AIR’s behalf; authorized AIR volunteers and committee members, including members of the Nominations and Elections Committee, for the governance and other purposes described in this Notice; organizational membership administrators and voting delegates; event presenters, participants, co-sponsors, partners, exhibitors, and corporate supporters under the circumstances described below; parties with whom you direct or authorize us to share information; and governmental, regulatory, legal, or other recipients when disclosure is required or permitted by law.

We seek to limit the information shared to what is reasonably necessary for the applicable purpose.

Service Providers

We share your personal data with third parties that provide certain services to us to assist us in meeting business operation needs. These parties are authorized to process your personal data, on our behalf and pursuant to our instructions, only as necessary to provide these services to us. We use third-party service providers, including, but not limited to:

• Association management software provider to help with management of business-related data
• Email hosting services to send email
• Event registration and presenter proposal submission service providers
• Career center job board provider
• Discussion platform provider to manage online forums
• Providers of research and analytics services, including Google Analytics
• Email marketing service provider(s)
• Billing and credit card merchant systems to process payments
• Providers of cloud computing infrastructure services

These providers are authorized by AIR for our business operation needs; however, we make no promises regarding the policies or business practices of third parties and encourage you to familiarize yourself with their privacy policies before providing them with your personal data.

• We may disclose your personal data to our agents or subprocessors for the purposes identified above. In such cases, the agent or subprocessors will be obligated to use that personal data in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Notice.
• We will not sell, distribute, or lease your personal data to third parties unless we have your permission or are required by law to do so.
• We may disclose your personal data without your permission to the extent that it is required to do so by United States, Canada, European Union, or other national law, in connection with any legal proceedings or prospective legal proceedings, and in order to establish, exercise, or defend AIR’s legal rights.

Event-Related Sharing

AIR shares event information in the following circumstances:

Operational event administration. We may share limited registration and contact information with event registration and platform providers, venues, other event contractors, presenters, designated event participants, co-sponsors, and event partners when reasonably necessary to plan, administer, or deliver an event. This may include distributing educational materials before an offering, coordinating group assignments, inviting attendees to an event-related session, providing event access, supporting accommodations, communicating schedule or logistical information, and conducting follow-up directly related to the offering. When AIR shares a full or partial registration list with a co-sponsor or event partner for these purposes, the recipient may use the information only to administer or support the event and not for its own marketing unless the attendee separately chooses to receive those communications.

Participant and networking lists. AIR may include your name, title, and organization in a participant list, online event platform, mobile application, or other networking tool available to registered participants. Participation is optional when AIR or the applicable platform provides a visibility choice, except when identification is necessary for a presenter, session, governance, or other designated role. The AIR Forum app practices are described above.

Sponsor mailing lists and communications. AIR provides Forum sponsors with pre- and post-conference attendee mailing lists that include each attendee’s name, title, institution or company, and the physical mailing address on file for the attendee’s institution or company. Attendees cannot opt out of inclusion on these mailing lists. Under AIR’s sponsor terms, each list is limited to one-time use. During registration, attendees may separately choose to receive a limited number of emails from eligible Forum sponsors. If an attendee opts in, AIR may provide those sponsors with the attendee’s name, title, company, physical company mailing address, and email address.

Badge scanning and lead retrieval. At certain in-person events, your badge may contain or be associated with basic registration and contact information. If you voluntarily present your badge to a sponsor or exhibitor for scanning, you consent to share your name, company, title, and email address with that entity, which may use the information to send you communications and materials. This disclosure is also included in the AIR Forum terms and conditions accepted during registration. The sponsor’s or exhibitor’s subsequent use of the information is governed by its own privacy practices.

AIR seeks to limit event-related sharing to the reasonably necessary information for the stated purpose.

What Other Exceptions Are There?

Individual AIR services may have their own privacy notices with further information about how they use your personal data. You are responsible for reading these policies upon engaging with these optional AIR services; if you do not consent to these additional policies, you should not use the optional service.

Data Subject Rights: Your Choice

Access to Personal Data

You may request access to personal data AIR maintains about you and ask that it be corrected, updated, or handled in accordance with your preferences and applicable law. To submit a request, email air@airweb.org with the subject line “Privacy Request.” We may request information reasonably necessary to verify your identity and locate the relevant records. We will respond within the period required by applicable law or, when no specific period applies, within a reasonable time.

Rights Under Applicable Privacy Laws

Depending on where you live, applicable law may provide you with additional rights regarding your personal data. These rights may be subject to exceptions or limitations. AIR will review verified requests and respond as required by applicable law. To submit a privacy request, email air@airweb.org with the subject line “Privacy Request.” We may request information reasonably necessary to verify your identity and understand your request.

Withdrawing Your Consent

You have the right to withdraw your consent for any marketing material. To do this, you may send an email to air@airweb.org, click on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any of our emails, or change your preferences within your profile.

International Users

AIR is based in the United States, and its websites and services are operated from the United States. If you access AIR’s websites or services from outside the United States, your personal data may be transferred to, stored in, or processed in the United States or in other countries where AIR’s service providers operate. Privacy and data-protection laws in those countries may differ from the laws where you live. AIR handles personal data as described in this Privacy Notice and in accordance with applicable law.

Security

We are committed to ensuring that your personal data is secure. To prevent unauthorized access or disclosure, we have put in place appropriate technical and organizational measures to safeguard and secure the personal data we process. No system is 100% secure, and therefore we can’t provide assurance with 100% certainty that your personal data will be secure. Be mindful that you are responsible for protecting your username and password and that it is not to be shared with others.

If we experience a security incident involving personal data, we will investigate the incident and take reasonable steps to contain and remediate it. We will notify affected individuals, regulators, clients, service providers, or other parties when and as required by applicable law or contract. Any notice will include the information required by applicable law, which may include information about the incident, steps AIR is taking in response, and actions affected individuals may take to help protect themselves.

Data Retention

We retain personal data for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Notice, including to provide membership and services, maintain transaction and participation records, comply with legal, accounting, tax, contractual, and other recordkeeping obligations, resolve disputes, enforce agreements, maintain communication preferences, and protect AIR and its community. Retention periods vary based on the type and sensitivity of the information, the context in which it was collected, operational needs, and applicable requirements. Information removed from an active profile may remain in historical, audit, backup, or other system records in accordance with our data-retention practices.

Changes to Our Privacy Notice

It is our policy to post any changes we make to our Privacy Notice on this page. In some cases, we provide additional notice of changes. If we make material changes to how we treat your personal data, we will notify you by email to the email address specified in your account and/or through a notice on the website. The effective date of this Privacy Notice is listed at the top of this page.

AIR may change this Privacy Notice from time to time by updating this page.

Questions, Concerns, or Complaints

If you have a question or complaint about how you believe we have handled a request under this Privacy Notice (including requests submitted with the subject “Privacy Request”), please let us know, and we will work to fix it. You can email us at air@airweb.org or call 850-385-4155.

Further Information

If you have any questions about this privacy notice or questions or complaints about the processing of your personal data by AIR, please contact us at:

Association for Institutional Research 2241 North Monroe St PMB 1413 Tallahassee, FL 32303
air@airweb.org 850-385-4155

FAQ

How Can You Change How AIR Uses Your Information?

Balanced with our goal of sharing information with our constituents is our commitment to respecting preferences for how our constituents’ personal information will be used. Here are the various ways to control the use of your information. (Note: Primary Representatives of member institutions, by virtue of the responsibilities they agree to in taking on this role, may not remove themselves from listing in the Member Directory or from transactional messages. Additionally, voting delegates cannot opt out of messages regarding nominations and elections.)

Changing Email and Directory Listing Preferences

Log in to your AIR profile (“MyAIR”) to change your:

• Promotional communications preferences
• Listing status in the AIR Member Directory

If you have questions or need assistance, please email your request to AIR at air@airweb.org or call 850-385-4155.

Removal from All Nontransactional AIR Emails

If you wish not to receive any communications from AIR (including newsletters, news announcements, and information about resources, programs, products, and services), except those that pertain directly to transactions you conduct with AIR, please send a message with this subject line: REMOVE FROM ALL EMAIL or log in to manage your communications preferences and select “To be excluded from all communications, check this box.”

Unsubscribing from Discussion Group Lists

To remove yourself from a discussion group, select the Join or Leave List option located by the group name on the My Groups web page.

How Can You Update Your Personal Information?

Log in to your AIR profile (“MyAIR”) to change your:

• Basic personal information
• Biographic information
• Username and password

If you have questions or need assistance, please email your request to AIR at air@airweb.org or call 850-385-4155.

Cookies

AIR places small files, known as “cookies,” onto your computer to collect information about how you browse our website.

Cookies are used to:

• Measure how you use the website so it can be updated and improved based on your needs
• Remember the notifications you’ve seen so that we don’t show them to you again
• Identify you once you’ve logged in to the site

Cookies are small text files that web servers typically sent to users’ computer when they visit a website. Cookies are stored as text files on users’ hard drive, and can be accessed by web servers when the user visits a website or views an advertisement. A session cookie is a cookie that stores information as a user is using the Site but is deleted once the browser session is finished.

A persistent cookie is a cookie that stores information as a user utilizes the Site and stores and uses that information in connection with future visits of the user to the Site. Third-party cookies and/or web beacons are cookies or web beacons provided by our technology and/or advertising partners. Any third-party cookie or web beacon that we authorize for use on the Site only collects that information described below for the same stated purposes as if we were directly collecting the information.

For a third-party cookie or web beacon, the third-party will have access to the collected information in order to provide us with information or services to enhance the performance and functionality of the Site.

You can find out how to manage or disable cookies at usa.gov.

How We Use Cookies

Measuring website usage (Google Analytics 4)

We use Google Analytics 4 to understand how people use our website and to improve our content, services, and user experience. Google Analytics may collect information such as the pages you view, how long you spend on the site, how you arrived at the site, links or buttons you select, approximate location, and browser and device information. It also uses cookies and other pseudonymous identifiers to distinguish users and sessions. Google may process IP addresses to provide the service, including deriving approximate geographic information, but states that raw IP addresses are discarded after use and are not associated with user identifiers.

AIR uses the basic Google Analytics 4 service. We do not use Google Analytics advertising features, Google Signals, User-ID, or user-provided data collection, and we do not intentionally send directly profile information—such as your name, postal address, email address, or telephone number—to Google Analytics. You can opt out of Google Analytics tracking by using Google’s available browser opt-out tool or by managing cookies through your browser or any cookie controls AIR makes available.

Measuring LinkedIn campaigns and website activity (LinkedIn Insight Tag)

We use the LinkedIn Insight Tag to understand visits and engagement associated with AIR’s LinkedIn communications and campaigns. The tag may collect information such as the page URL, referring page, IP address, device and browser characteristics, timestamp, cookies, and other pseudonymous identifiers. AIR does not use the tag for website retargeting or audience-building. LinkedIn’s processing of information is governed by its own privacy and cookie materials, and LinkedIn members may manage advertising choices through their LinkedIn settings.

Measuring website usage (Higher Logic)

We use our email marketing system, Higher Logic, to deploy a cookie when you interact with a marketing communication, such as a marketing email, to collect information about website usage.

Higher Logic stores information about:

• Your email
• Which pages you visited
• Your history arriving at our website

We use this information to evaluate the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns and personalize your experience by recommending relevant AIR programs and services to you.