LEXINGTON, Va. March 10, 2025 — Col. Andrew Luna, director of the Office of Institutional Effectiveness (OIE) at Virginia Military Institute, holds the distinct honor of being the only person to receive the Southern Association of Institutional Research’s (SAIR) Best Paper Award five times since its inception in 1980. Luna presented the most recent paper at the annual SAIR conference last September, but was only recently notified of his winning achievement.

Luna co-authored the paper titled, “The Matrix Revisited: How a Popular Assessment Tool Can Be Used in Higher Education,” with Jodi Carrier, a doctoral student and schoolteacher in Clarksville, Tennessee.

According to Luna, the paper describes how the Boston Consulting Group Matrix, a successful business strategy tool used since the 1970s, can identify both market growth and market share of academic programs.

“For example, in the soft drink industry, market growth relates to how a particular company’s soft drink sales do against its competitors. With market share, the company is interested in how their soft drink sales compare to other products they sell. For attaining a degree of higher learning, market growth relates to how a college’s degree attainment compares against attaining the same degree in the same subject among other comparative colleges. Within market share, we compare degree attainment in a certain subject with the other degrees the college offers. This can reveal the internal and external strengths of each academic program. This type of analysis can help a college strategize for future growth and success,” Luna explained.

As part of the Best Paper recognition, both Luna and Carrier have been invited to present the paper at the national Association for Institutional Research’s annual conference in Orlando, Florida, in May.

“This is quite an honor, and I am very thankful that I was able to work on the paper with a very good graduate student. I am also excited that colleges and universities across the country are realizing the significance of our paper,” shared Luna.

Luna came to VMI last September and also serves as the Institute’s liaison officer during VMI’s comprehensive review process every 10 years to maintain accreditation. The mission of the OIE is to promote a culture of continuous improvement at VMI by providing evidence-based information for the purposes of decision making, planning, and resource allocation.

Marianne Hause
Communications & Marketing
VIRGINIA MILITARY INSTITUTE