University of Dayton

Improving the university experience

The University of Dayton (UD) is a private, Catholic research university and the largest private university in Ohio, serving over 11,000 students. Like all higher education institutions, UD is required to report hundreds of data points each year to various agencies on the demographics of students, outcome measures, financials, and more. This process is cumbersome at any school, as it requires the merging and cleaning of large volumes of data from disparate sources.

“Processing an increasing amount of data from disparate systems was pushing our human and technical capacities beyond their limits,” Jason Reinoehl, Interim Vice President for Enrollment Management and Marketing University of Dayton, says. “Also, we were receiving more and more requests for data analysis from all over the university — enrollment, recruiting, student engagement, housing, and finance — and we needed a faster way to fulfill all of these requests.”

Optimizing processes to better understand student behaviors and outcomes

The University of Dayton needed to quickly process thousands of pieces of student data from different systems across the university, enabling it to recruit, enroll, and retain the students most likely to succeed at the institution. Using Alteryx and Tableau, the University of Dayton was able to quickly blend and analyze data to deliver strategic insights about student behaviors and outcomes, optimize the admissions and enrollment process, and improve retention.

UD has been leveraging Alteryx for years and built a series of workflows to gather the data necessary for regulatory reporting. Hear from Dana Sellers on how Alteryx Designer has been used at UD for reporting and how recent enhancements have been made, with help from HAI Analytics, to further optimize this process, saving additional time and ensuring the accuracy of the data.

The right students, the right place, the right time

Using Alteryx and Tableau gives the University of Dayton a competitive edge in identifying the right students for admission and retaining and graduating those students at increasing rates. Selecting the right students — those who can handle the university’s academic rigor and thrive in its environment of community — from thousands of prospects each year is critical to the university’s success.

The diversity of students and programs continues to increase at the University of Dayton. “We are running parallel systems for dining services, athletics, student activities, housing, and more,” Reinoehl notes. “You can imagine all of the data points that are available and the value of blending data to gain insights to help the university and its students succeed.”

“We are seeing how insights we’ve drawn from the data are making the student experience even better,” asserts Reinoehl.

What’s Next?

“With Alteryx, I can now do analysis of first-year enrollment as well as our annual market analysis so quickly, I have the time to look for new data sources and explore other insights,” explains Reinoehl. By adding different data sources, the workflows he created to analyze student success are now easily adapted to answer other questions related to student performance, housing utilization, financial aid requirements, and, soon, alumni efforts.

“Obtaining quicker insights means we make better decisions to positively impact the future of the university and its students,” says Reinoehl. “From the point of first contact to greater alumni engagement, Alteryx and Tableau are behind some of the most important decisions we make every day that help us meet our goals and follow the university’s mission.”