So like many campuses in the United
States, over the past several years we've
had some challenges with enrollment.
Because I serve an underserved
population, student success for us starts
with getting the students enrolled in
college. Our approach to this
challenge? We decided to democratize our
data, so that every single employee had
the same student success data at their
fingertips so that
all of us can focus on the ultimate goal
of student success. So why did we do this?
And how does data democratization
support student success? Well this is
what we found. It focuses attention on
institutional goals because the
campus-wide dashboard that we use has
Student Success data on it. Everybody who
uses it and looks at it is immediately
focused on institutional goals. It lowers
the walls of silos. Now that we're all
looking at the same data, at the same
time, every day we have something to
discuss. We have something to talk about.
We have something in common. That didn't
happen before we started looking at the
same data every day. It concretizes
information. I can talk 'til I'm blue in
the face about how we need to do X, Y, or
Z but once we put it in graphic form on
the dashboard -- there are their many graphs -- people
start to really realize something is
happening with X, Y, or Z and we need to
make changes.
It supports organizational learning.
Again, we've been given
something in common to look at every day
and talk about every day and ask
questions about student success on our
campus. We are learning together how to
make our students successful by looking
at the same data all the time every day.
It increases transparency. There was a
time when only I or my cabinet or
someone in IR or maybe the deans had
access to all the Student Success data.
No more. I have access all the way down
to my groundskeepers. We all have access.
There is complete transparency -- role
appropriate transparency, because some
people have more access to drill down
than others-- but there's complete
transparency at some level of data on
our campus. And lastly and to me the most
important thing is that it enables data
supported decision-making at every level
of the institution. So not only am I and
my cabinet members making data-supported
decisions, everyone is able to now make
data supported decisions because they
have the data at their
fingertips. An example of this in action:
We have immediate faculty outreach to
students who are potentially returning
students who are eligible to enroll but
not enrolled, to newly admitted students,
and to applicants. No more waiting for an
approval. No more waiting for someone
who's probably inundated with another
project in the IR office to give you a
report. You log on, you drill down if
you're a faculty member, and if you have
applicants, newly admitted students, or
non-returning students who you want to
return, you can immediately reach out to
that student. No more waiting for
third-party report. A success
indicator that we've had is this past fall
for the first time in several years we
increased the size of our freshman class,
and we increased it by fifty percent. I'd
like to acknowledge of my team like
Captain Picard all I do is say 'make it
is here
Dr. Ahmed El Haggan, and our data guru
Prasad Dodonna. They're the ones in the
engine room making it happen. Thank you.