Dr. Joseph Lanni has been appointed director of institutional research at Southeast Missouri State University.

Lanni has been serving for the past year as a research fellow in the post-secondary education statistics division of the National Center for Education Statistics in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Lanni replaced Dr. Fred Snider, who retired.

"His specialty is applied research and policy analysis," said Dr. Dennis Holt, Southeast associate provost, to whom Lanni will report. "He just finished a one-year fellowship at the National Center for Education Statistics, where he has been doing research on student success models, retention and identification of at-risk students."

Lanni has 11 years of experience in institutional research at Montgomery College in Maryland. He earned his bachelor of arts degree in sociology from the State University College of New York at Genesco. He earned his master of science degree in urban planning from John Hopkins University and his doctoral degree in sociology from American University.