Utah State Magazine Excerpt: The Data's In — Meaning Points to Success

This is an excerpt from Utah State Magazine's Summer 2022 edition, out now, with the theme "Persistence." The full article is available on the magazine's website, utahstatemagazine.usu.edu.

When you were in college, did you go to a football game? Live on campus in a residence hall? How about meet with an advisor?

These are some of the aggregate data points analyzed by the Center of Student Analytics at Utah State University.

“We knew that if we wanted to get to the heart of student success, what prohibits student success and what supports it, we needed a more complete picture,” says Robert Wagner, USU’s executive vice president of USU and former vice president of Academics and Instructional Services (AIS). “Being able to consider a student’s entire experience is crucial. We want to examine the activities that can help us measure improvement with student success.”

So the Center for Student Analytics was formed in AIS to dive in and try to answer questions formed by the Student Achievement Collaborative — a multidisciplinary group of faculty and staff members working to break down barriers with data-driven initiatives. When all these data points are added up and analyzed they reveal an underlying concept that seems to be the biggest indicator of student persistence: a meaningful experience.

“The data showed early on that more engagement with faculty leads to greater persistence,” Wagner explains.

Continue reading at Utah State Magazine.