The design and use of a departmental decision support system at Florida State University are described from the perspective of a department head. The decisions selected for study are ones of adequacy, equitability, quality, efficiency, and consistency. The complexity of the decision is related to the complexity of the support system. The major decisions the department head made were ordered from the complex to the more simple and a support system was designed to match these levels of complexity. The computer supported decision system was located in the Department of Educational Research within the College of Education. Components of the system include: requirements and decisions, decision timeframe, data considerations, and computer support. Five decisions that are supported are considered: scheduling classes, faculty assignments, graduate admissions, expense accounting, and clerical personnel classification. It is concluded that institutional researchers need to understand departmental operating cycles better and need to provide support for systems designed by departments that now have direct access to raw data and no longer depend on institutional research reports for basic information. 9 references. (Author/SW)