2019 Integrating Analytics Forum

There is no charge for the tour. However, if you sign up on the registration page and do not attend, you will be assessed a “no show” fee of $35. Walking shoes and casual dress are encouraged. 

Presenter(s):

Lindsay Wayt, NACUBO

Susan Johnston, NACUBO

Presenter(s):

Keith McIntosh, University of Richmond

Jonathan Gagliardi, CUNY Herbert H. Lehman College

Colleges and universities are facing challenges on many fronts—from shifting student demographics to concerns about affordability and from public questions about the value of a degree to a more complex financial environment. One tool institutions have to help them navigate these challenges is access to data. However, simply having access to data isn’t enough to allow institutions to make data-informed decisions. Campuses need a successful analytics program in place to transform data into meaningful, actional information. And success requires collaborative efforts. In this session, you will hear perspectives from business, institutional research, and IT leaders about a new statement, Analytics Can Save Higher Education. Really., a collaborative initiative from AIR, EDUCAUSE, and NACUBO.

Presenter(s):

Gina Johnson, National Center for Higher Education Management Systems

Michael Urmeneta, New York Institute of Technology Main Campus - Old Westbury

Betsy Reinitz, EDUCAUSE

Data literacy is an important factor in the development of a data-informed culture. But what does data literacy mean? Who at the institution needs to be data literate? And how can institutions ensure their employees are data literate? This session will present an overview of the concept of data literacy in higher education settings. The presenters will share examples of how institutions can tackle the hiring for and development of data literacy along with resources to help attendees develop data literacy at their own campuses. This session will highlight the importance of collaboration and will discuss how business and finance professionals can partner with institutional research and effectiveness (IR/IE) and information technology (IT) colleagues to develop data literacy across their institutions.

Presenter(s):

Richard Sluder, Middle Tennessee State University

Brian Hinote, Middle Tennessee State University

This session will explore the most significant elements of an institution’s analytics portfolio, with spotlights on technology and personnel; how to identify, track, and leverage key performance indicators to solve campus problems or issues; and how to design the most effective communication plans for distributing data. There are many challenges associated with designing and implementing a thoughtful and systematic analytics portfolio, most notably those associated with facilitating a data-informed culture with trust, collaboration, and access to quality data. We will explore these challenges and ways to overcome them and describe the analytics tools that we use in our work.

Whether your campus is just beginning its analytics journey or it has already begun to leverage this critical asset to improve performance on strategic objectives, this session will help you set actionable goals for analytics efforts. This session will offer a deeper dive into the six principles outlined in the AIR, EDUCAUSE, and NACUBO joint statement. Participants in this interactive session will walk away with a roadmap for collaborating across the institution to integrate the use of analytics for advancing your college or university’s mission.

Presenter(s):

Anthony Pember, Grant Thornton LLP

Michael Urmeneta, New York Institute of Technology Main Campus - Old Westbury

Susan Rider, Johnson County Community College

Dylan Baker, University of Maryland

Matt Unterman, Grant Thornton LLP

This panel discussion will examine how cost/revenue modeling and analytics can support mission achievement and financial performance. The panelists will focus on ways their institutions (which vary in type, size, and location) use data and analytics to support decision making. By outlining the approaches they used at their campuses, lessons learned, and various decision-making focal points, the panelists will offer insight into: (1) How each campus approached analytics, in particular cost and revenue analytics, (2) What type of information analytics has provided, (3) How reports and dashboards have supported and enhanced decision making, and (4) How their approaches to analytics have resulted in mission and financial performance improvements.

Presenter(s):

Lindsay Wayt, NACUBO

Richard Staisloff, rpkGROUP

David Raney,

One of NACUBO’s strategic priorities is: Lead higher education’s integration of analytics to achieve institutional strategic goals. To understand member needs around analytics, NACUBO recently conducted a survey to identify the current uses of and challenges to integrating analytics. This session will examine the findings from that survey and highlight the cultural and capacity-related challenges business officers encounter as they work to employ analytics at their institutions. Finally, we will share best practices for navigating these challenges and moving from data analysis to strategic decision making.

Presenter(s):

Susan Cooper, Emory University

Jamie Smith, Emory University

Tiffany Ennis-Henry, Emory University

Emory University’s centralized Analytics and Reporting team has consistently met the enterprise-wide financial, sponsored, and operational reporting needs and is strategically shifting to a predictive analytics approach to support leadership decision making. However, the university operates under a decentralized Responsibility Centered Management business model, and schools and units have many unique operational reporting needs. Resource constraints prevented the analytics team from growing, so they innovated to meet campus needs by creating the Emory Analytics Training program. Learn how committing to a training program is not only best practice but can also support your decision-making strategies and increase the capacity of your team without stretching your resources.

Presenter(s):

Brian Haugabrook, Valdosta State University

The successful use of analytics has the power to reshape higher education. Evidence from the hundreds of institutions utilizing analytics to some degree has demonstrated that data and analytics can support institutions in providing early interventions to at-risk students, connecting students to appropriate campus resources, and making mission-focused decisions about resource allocations. Campus leaders, including business officers, play a key role in leveraging the power of analytics. Leaders have the critical responsibility of understanding, communicating, and acting on the “why” behind the data.  This session will address how we translate numbers into decisions.

Presenter(s):

Abhay Joshi, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Jeffrey Earley, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

In response to the changing funding environment, Virginia Tech adopted a data-informed approach to academic budgeting. You will hear about the challenges, successes, and failures experienced while we transitioned our academic budgeting process from incremental to performance-based. Having an adequate data support system was an essential component to managing the change process. These changes have created collaborative opportunities for using more advanced causal and predictive analytics and for moving our focus from What now? to What’s next and why?

Presenter(s):

Rebecca Winn, Emory University

Jamie Harrell, Emory University

This session chronicles the lessons Goizueta Business School learned about growing their capabilities and maturity for Business Intelligence and Data Analytics. Institutions in the early stages of creating their data architecture or have not yet embarked on their journey can learn from the failures and successes they experienced along the way. This session will chronicle the school’s journey of starting from a completely decentralized model and building everything on their own, through an attempt to utilize central business intelligence systems exclusively, to ultimately finding the sweet spot in a hybrid centralized/decentralized data analytics model. The session will also showcase several dashboards the school built to support leaders in making critical decisions.

Presenter(s):

Sandra Hudgens, Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology-Okmulgee

Jim Smith, Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology-Okmulgee

Michelle Canan, Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology-Okmulgee

Bill Path, Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology-Okmulgee

Nick Wallace, BKD CPAs and Advisors

Like many higher education institutions, Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology must navigate financial pressures (e.g., reduced state appropriations, shrinking number of traditional college students in the state, increasing costs of salaries and benefits) while meeting student needs. This means resource allocation decisions are critical. In this session, you will hear how OSUIT used data from multiple sources across campus to calculate and compare contribution margins for classes. Creating user-friendly dashboards facilitated the communication of complex information and empowered staff to make short- and long-term objectives; analytics continue to enable financial and operational improvements.

Presenter(s):

Patrick Wamsley, Medical University of South Carolina

Romayne Botti, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick Campus

With ever-growing demands for accountability, business officers are increasingly faced with critical resource allocation decisions. National databases contain a wealth of data to help guide resource allocation decisions that assist in driving institutional effectiveness. This session examines how national databases, such as IPEDS and the Campus Benchmarking Initiative, can provide essential data through application of peer data analysis. The speakers will offer examples of how benchmarking served as a foundation for reflection, prompted questions, and encouraged the use of internal data and analytics for strategic planning and decision making.

Presenter(s):

Guilbert Brown, Millersville University of Pennsylvania

Christopher Steuer, Millersville University of Pennsylvania

Establishing an energy management system supported by analytics requires institutions to make many decisions and balance competing investments. How can we balance short-term investment with long-term savings? Should software be built in-house or purchased? How do our efforts relate to our mission? Learn about how Millersville University navigated these questions. Presenters will also showcase the institution’s 15,000 square foot zero energy building (which has 350 energy meters offering real-time dashboard data) and how their analytics-enabled energy management plan reduces costs, empowers staff, and offers students opportunities for hands-on learning.

Presenter(s):

J. Michael Gower, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick Campus

Randy Roberson, NACUBO

Having a clear and effective data governance strategy is critical for institutions that want to leverage the power of analytics for decision-making. However, creating and maintaining a quality data governance strategy is not easy. Come to this roundtable with questions you have about getting started with data governance on your campus, ready to talk about some challenges you’ve faced on your data governance journey, and/or some success stories and advice you’d like to share with your colleagues.

Presenter(s):

Betsy Reinitz, EDUCAUSE

Charles Tegen, Clemson University

Having a clear and effective data governance strategy is critical for institutions that want to leverage the power of analytics for decision-making. However, creating and maintaining a quality data governance strategy is not easy. Come to this roundtable with questions you have about getting started with data governance on your campus, ready to talk about some challenges you’ve faced on your data governance journey, and/or some success stories and advice you’d like to share with your colleagues.

Presenter(s):

John O'Brien, EDUCAUSE

Ethical concerns related to innovations in technology are hardly new. Today, however, the hype around educational technology innovation often masks nuanced, powerful, and sometimes grave ethical entanglements. With weekly headlines about the ethical ramifications of emerging technologies and the appearance of privacy near the very top of the EDUCAUSE Top 10 IT Issues for 2019, concerns about digital ethics are likely to intensify. In this plenary session, EDUCAUSE president and CEO John O’Brien will make the case for excitement, caution, and hope in this exceedingly challenging landscape—with higher education potentially leading the way.

Presenter(s):

Lindsay Wayt, NACUBO

Randy Roberson, NACUBO

The economic model of a college or university and its financial sustainability are the results of decisions made about its mission, structure, strengths, and resources—the products of all the organization’s activities and functions and inputs and outputs. As institutions consider their economic models, data analytics can help you ask the right questions and arrive at answers that support decision making and institutional planning. In this hands-on session, you will use a case study to consider how analytics can support financial sustainability.

Presenter(s):

Resche Hines, Stetson University

Jillian Kinzie, Indiana University

Angela Henderson, Stetson University

Many colleges and universities have data from students about their experience, including national results from surveys like the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), but too few deploy this information to inform decision making, understand the impact these data have on the bottom line, and/or harness these data in an analytics portfolio. This session will encourage institutions to use NSSE results to monitor and document effectiveness, understand the impact on fiscal sustainability, and make data-informed decisions. We will share an example of how one institution is working towards these endeavors using visually immersive and interactive data displays.

Presenter(s):

David Slavsky, Loyola University Chicago

Tony Vavarutsos, Loyola University Chicago

It is axiomatic that the business model of higher education is changing rapidly, creating the need to find new ways for institutions to fulfill their mission of scholarship and service while maintaining financial health. A few years ago, Loyola’s senior administration set out to develop a more robust and program-specific tool to allow more detailed and immediate analyses of the university’s academic programs. A cooperative venture among Academic Affairs, Information Technology Services, and the Finance Division resulted in the Business Intelligence tool presented in this session. This product not only represents a significant step in Loyola’s transition to a more data-informed culture, but also has become essential for monitoring the financial viability of various programs and has become an important decision support tool for chairs, deans, and senior administrators.

Presenter(s):

Paul Hammond, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick Campus

J. Michael Gower, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick Campus

With over 40,000 students, 20 million square feet of buildings across 2,677 acres, and a span across six cities and municipalities, Rutgers University–New Brunswick (RU-NB) is one of the largest, most complex universities in the country. Students attend courses in classroom buildings, live in residence halls, and use student support services spread across four distinct geographic campuses, which are bisected by a state highway and a major river, making transportation a challenge. This presentation will outline how RU-NB has been using analytics to transform its course scheduling process, reduce course-related travel, and help students progress toward their degrees.

Presenter(s):

Lorelle Espinosa, American Council On Education

Students of color, low-income students, and those first in their family to attend college face a multitude of barriers when it comes to college enrollment and completion. Findings from the American Council on Education project, "Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education," confirm a cause for concern. Yet as sobering as such data can be, they offer opportunities for change, reasons to practice shared and equity-minded leadership, and benchmarks to measure transformation. This session will provide an overview of the ACE data, and will highlight the important role that college and university leaders, including business officers, have in using data to make decisions that strengthen mission-critical efforts for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Presenter(s):

Marsha Smith, Olivet Nazarene University

Henry DeVries, Ellucian

With the combined pressures of decreasing enrollment and increased scrutiny around the value of a degree, colleges and universities need to develop a culture of data-informed decision making. This move from legacy operational reporting to a contemporary analytics solution is more of a marathon than a sprint. In this session, you will learn what prompted one campus to begin the analytics journey, how they navigated the initial step of defining an institutional vision, and how they communicated that vision across the campus. You will also learn how they identified stakeholders’ analytics needs, developed data governance activities, established performance metrics, and built the necessary infrastructure to travel their analytics journey.

Presenter(s):

Jim Hundrieser, NACUBO

We all are in search of the right tool, the right data, and using analytics better. Data can help us understand where to focus our efforts to maximize our results. Many of us have numerous data sets to pull from, but few of us are considering which questions to ask, what data to draw from, and how to use this information to inform our decision making. This session will look at some ways analyzing current institutional data or free secondary data can help institutions find opportunities to grow enrollments, revenues, or net revenues and allow for stronger budget planning.  

Presenter(s):

James Blackburn, Georgia State University

Miti Mehta, Georgia State University

Jacqeuiline Frasier, Georgia State University

Millions of students who begin college each year will drop out without earning a credential, and financial barriers are one reason many students may not complete their degree. Early identification and proactive interventions can help institutions in their efforts to increase student success. Over the past two years, Georgia State University has designed and enhanced a data-driven model that categorizes students into packaging groups to reduce the risk of finance-related drops. This model includes prescriptive analytics that guide their teams; students in at-risk packaging groups receive a variety of interventions to reduce their financial risks. This session will describe the algorithms used in the creation of the risk model and how the model was used to enhance workflow.

Presenter(s):

Amanda Moske, University of North Dakota Main Campus

Sydney Leo, BDO USA LLP

Many organizations have attempted to measure the value colleges and universities create. Various stakeholders, including government agencies, foundations, policymakers, and the public, call for these metrics. Further accelerating this demand in higher education is the rapid growth of BIG data, artificial intelligence, data analytics, and visualization technology. Despite the enthusiasm for metrics, many organizations have only been able to use limited metrics, which often don’t measure the real success of an institution in achieving its mission. This session will cover building a value measurement framework, address key analytics that create both actionable insight and foresight, and discuss how using this framework for leadership and external constituents will demonstrate a return on mission investment.

Presenter(s):

Baron Wolf, University of Kentucky

Tricia Coakley, University of Kentucky

This presentation will explore ways to use analytics, business intelligence, and competitive intelligence to create innovation within an institution’s research infrastructure that will assist staff and researchers in driving growth and success. The presenters will discuss their journey, which began with a project to provide senior leadership with the data necessary to make decisions related to investment, strategic priorities, and funding decisions. This session will focus on central support for analytics, identify ways tools can be successfully used and implemented, and explore how this work created a self-service culture for the presenters’ colleges and departments. They will explore the high-level administrative process of this project and share accounts from a unit staff member who uses data to make strategic decisions.

Presenter(s):

Lindsay Wayt, NACUBO

Gina Johnson, National Center for Higher Education Management Systems

Betsy Reinitz, EDUCAUSE

Robinson Neidhardt, Association for Institutional Research

The AIR, EDUCAUSE, and NACUBO Joint Statement on Analytics serves as a call to action for the use of analytics at colleges and universities, and the six principles within the statement provide institutions with a foundation for where to begin. The ideas and principles from the Joint Statement have been woven throughout forum sessions, and in this session, you will have the opportunity to recognize the institutional success stories you’ve learned from (including your own), set goals for new ways of leveraging analytics at your campus, and share questions that will guide the work of higher education associations in supporting your efforts.