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2020 Strategic Plan Goal 5 Outcomes
Use technology to ensure improvement and attainment of service excellence to the community.
Data Collection and Analysis Powers Informed Decision Making
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With FNU’s structure of shared governance, all faculty, staff, and the committees on which they serve are empowered and expected to make informed decisions. Accordingly, FNU has made information gathering and accessibility a priority.
“Several years ago we included in our strategic plan our intent to be a data-driven university,” said FNU Executive Vice President for Finance and Facilities Michael Steinmetz, CPA, CMA, CSCA. “That objective led us to clean up our data and exposed the need to have a good reporting interface that could easily be accessed by all university employees.”
In March 2019, FNU selected Sisense to be that reporting interface. The analytics software shares data in easy-to-digest visual formats that can be accessed by FNU faculty and staff members. The software enables the creation and download of charts and graphs for presentations and reports, but more importantly, it is an essential tool in helping the university track its progress towards its strategic plan goals.
“It is graphically appealing and simple to interact with,” said FNU Senior Grants Management Officer April Tabor. “It makes the process of viewing the demographics of our student body quick and effortless.”
“Having the Sisense dashboards has really transformed my ability to share retention data with the rest of the community,” said FNU Director of Student Retention & Records Abby McCarthy. “Using our previous methods it would often take weeks to identify, collect, and clean the data I was looking for. Now I have more information at my fingertips and can turn around data requests in significantly
Abby McCarthy less time. Being able to find and use the data in real-time allows me and my team to make data-driven decisions and create more meaningful retention initiatives.”
The data has helped FNU identify the points in their program at which students are most likely to withdraw or falter, which degree paths have the highest retention rates, and which retention methods are most effective. The data is equally effective at identifying successes and opportunities for improvement in a number of areas across the university, including recruitment, enrollment, diversity, and fundraising.
Decisions that might have been made via anecdotal information in the past are now driven by data that is constantly being updated and monitored.
“The software is a data analytics tool that Marc Weitlauf is used to combine multiple data sources and create interactive dashboards that can be shared with multiple users via the web,” said FNU Enterprise Systems Manager Chris Coots. “The data and dashboards can also be accessed from any mobile device.”
All FNU employees, students, and external constituents have access to view the University Statistics Dashboard. Additionally, all employees have access to view the following dashboards via the FNU’s Assessment and Data Reporting page:
• Term Stats at a Glance
• Trends by Academic Year
• Trends by Calendar Year
• Diversity Stats
• End of Program Student Learning
Outcome (EPSLO)
A “dashboard team” of three employees who manage the various university data dashboards. The team is overseen by Director of Institutional Assessment Marilyn Lyons and includes Coots and Reporting Data Administrator Debi Mincks. The team has created more than 40 dashboards to assist a variety of university departments, including but not limited to: accounting, admissions, clinical credentialing, clinical outreach, marketing, and retention.
Lyons said that the best features of the system are its graphic displays, the ability to combine data from multiple systems across the university, the use of filters to drill down within data, and to study trend analysis.
“You can change the filters and time periods within the dashboard on your own,” Steinmetz said. “Playing with the data creates new awareness, like turning the lights on in a room. We are making decisions based on data rather than anecdotal information. This is the tool we needed.”
Michael Steinmetz
True to the university’s dedication to making informed, datadriven decisions, FNU began the SIS search by determining the primary needs and purposes of the system.
“We created a rating template based on each department’s needs and wants to help narrow the search down further,” Steinmetz said.
By the beginning of 2021, FNU had narrowed its search to four choices.
“Hopefully, we will select the new SIS by fall 2021 and implementation will start in the Winter term,” said Director of IT Marc Weitlauf. “It should take 18 to 24 months to fully implement whichever SIS we choose.”
New Student Management System to be Selected in 2021
FNU is committed to putting students’ needs first. This has included being at the forefront of distance learning and the technology required to run all courses and communications with an emphasis on efficiency and ease of use. The next step in that process is FNU’s search for a new student information system.
“We’re looking for a cloud-based integrated solution to provide service excellence to students while helping to streamline administrative processes,” said FNU Executive Vice President for Finance and Facilities Michael Steinmetz, CPA, CMA, CSCA.
A student information system (SIS) is used to store and track all student data needed for university personnel to manage campus operations. While there are different systems, in general, SIS platforms will often track information such as grades, admissions information, and financial aid. They also incorporate a portal via which students can obtain information that is of importance to them, such as accessing their grades, tracking assignments, or communicating with faculty.
FNU began exploring different SIS options, intent on finding a tool that would help streamline communication between staff and faculty members across multiple departments. Additionally, the system will be expected to provide the ability to track prospective students through the admissions process.
