Analytics 101

The future of higher education is analytics, and the future is now.

The analytics approach uses student data to proactively assess student needs, thereby producing actionable intelligence. Contrast analytics with the more traditional paradigm of reporting. In the latter, an organization uses data to identify results, such as the percentage of students that graduated within three years. In the analytics approach, on the other hand, an organization uses data to discern the opportunities and challenges facing a particular student at a particular time.

Numerous programs around CCD are already utilizing analytics to increase student success and enhance organizational efficiency (whether said programs realize it or not!). For example, the TRIO Student Support Services (SSS) program quantifies ten data markers to create a persistence score that feeds into a triage model of advising. TRIO SSS is also piloting a course predictor analytic that utilizes a student's previous academic performance in specific courses to discern the relative challenge of a particular course or course set in the upcoming semester.

"Know where to find information and how to use it; that is the key to success," notes a data wonk's proverb often attributed to Albert Einstein.

It is certain that higher education is swimming in an Olympic-sized pool of data. We can run report after report after report about demographics, success rates, enrollment, and much more. The siren call of analytics is search these data for variables with high explanatory and predictive power, as deciphered by contemporary social science and statistical methodologies. These data variables shine light on the path to increased student success and organizational efficiency.

Guided by data and research experts at the Higher Learning Commission, the Persistence and Completion Committee (PCC) at CCD is diligently swimming through that Olympic-sized pool of data in search of the most impactful variables of student success. Toward this end, the PCC is carrying out a social scientific inquiry using historical data from Institutional Research; student surveys of new, exiting, and graduating students; a meta-analysis of program level data from across the institution; and a qualitative analysis of anecdotal data accrued through the wisdom and experience of faculty and staff practitioners.

Identifying the impactful data variables at CCD is but the first step. Future directions include determining and implementing the information technology solutions to aggregate the data variables and process the statistical algorithms required by multivariate analyses. Then it will be onto creating intuitive and accessible analytics tools for implementation by faculty and staff practitioners.

The process will be both easier and more difficult than it sounds. Much like the game of chess, it is not that difficult to get down the basics, but the perfection of the craft will take much experimentation and learning as an institution.

The future of higher education is analytics, and the future is now.

Trust and the Leap of Faith

Charcoal clouds to the west lie low on the mountains. An acerbic sun shines harshly on the San Luis Valley, any hint of its warmth whisked quickly away by the winter wind. The highway runs directly from point A to point B, with nothing but the occasional tumbleweed blocking the view of the San Juan, Sangre de Christo and Culebra ranges.

I can see them a mile away, broken-down on the side of the road. Two people with thumbs out, a string of vehicles march past unabated. I pull over.

They come to my window, arms pulled in tight against their body, hands shoved into pockets, woefully under-dressed for the weather. Their truck broke down an hour ago, they say; they just need a ride a few miles up valley; I am the first one that stopped. The margin between subconscious and conscious - the land of biases and survival instincts - automatically takes notes and raises a few red flags.

This much is certain - they are quite cold.

Conversation lowers my guard as we roll together down the highway. A cell phone battery died; a deadbeat friend decided to go bowling in Monte Vista instead of coming to help; a girlfriend had to work until 7:00; a step-brother is living at the family shack and trying to get his life together after a stint in juvenile.

I am directed left onto a dirt road, a mile later right onto a smaller dirt road. "It is just a little further." Then left onto what would pass as a cow path if it weren't for the cattle guard blocking bovine progress. We pass by the middle of nowhere. We are ostensibly heading toward said shack.  "It is just a little further. Just a little further."

I attempt to be discreet with my cell phone at the ready. Not that there is any signal out here.

They are profuse in their gratitude, in a profanity-laced sort of way. It reminds me of some of my roughneck cousins back home; I smile. A spiritual happiness of sorts wells up, like when you realize that the world just might not be as messed up as it sometimes seems. The valley graces me with sanguine alpenglow.

Trust - it is at the core of effective relationships, communities, and organizations.

In The Speed of Trust, Stephen M.R. Covey asserts four key components of trust, from the organizational perspective. 1) Integrity to walk your talk. 2) Intent to pursue straightforward motives based on mutual benefit. 3) Capabilities that inspire confidence to get things done. 4) Results that reveal our track record and follow through.

I add a fifth key component: the leap of faith.

My decision to pick up the young men stranded in the high desert at the height of winter with the sun quickly absconding probably falls under Covey's concept of blind trust (as opposed to smart trust). It involved an unidentifiable risk of the unknown. But I took this leap of faith with great intentionality. Sometimes a leader needs to risk one's sense of self in order to prove that greater ideals still animate our higher potential, regardless of the naysayers (and they are many).

Now I don't advise that you pick up hitchhikers on a daily basis, metaphorical or otherwise. My episode was a moment in time in which the stars aligned to provide me with a test of my own personal integrity to walk the talk. But I do advise that you take smaller leaps of faith frequently to demonstrate the trust that you place in your family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues.

The realist in my office likes to protest: "But Troy - what if they take advantage of you?!?"

Some have and others will. But far more have graciously honored the trust I have offered them. I am certain that exposing my flank engenders reciprocity of trust in the great majority. And I wager that each act of vulnerable trust nudges the great needle of the universe toward a fuller realization of our true potential.

I am as strategic as they come. In fact, my Meyers-Briggs preference is colloquially known as Mastermind. By default, then, I am prone toward smart trust, to weighing the pros and cons of an action, to treat trust as a sort of leadership capital to be expended along the lines of a budget. But we cannot conflate trust with strategy masquerading as trust. We must take the leap of faith - though the naysayers will say "ill-advised" - in order to enliven the true bond of trust.

Commencement and Discontent

I am a commencement banner assistant. On that wonderful evening in May, I march in with the graduates of Community College of Denver. The energy is electric! I hear stories of success from the students. I give high fives to grandmas in the front row as we proceed into the arena. I cheer my lungs out when TRIO graduates walk across the stage. It is hard to be anything but beaming!

Yet, despite my joy, I cannot escape the discontent. It subtly yet darkly seeps into the perimeter of my vision. The empty space surrounding the graduates manifests the void, the 85% of students that start at Community College of Denver yet fail to reach this penultimate moment. Where are they, if not here tonight?

I know that student success takes multiple shapes and forms, and graduation is not the sole marker. Students swirl through higher education as their life ebbs and flows. There are things both within and outside of the control of the student and the institution.

Yet, the void stirs indignation.

I know the minimal graduation rates are not due to lack of effort on behalf of our students, faculty, and staff. I witness many a determined student putting in long hours at school only to work the night shift. I observe faculty bending over backwards to facilitate student learning. And I see staff deploying expansive and intentional support programs.

Yet, the void stirs indignation.

I know that CCD opens doors and takes risks on students even when the road is long and the hill steep. I am wary of completion strategies that limit access. I believe that any time spent in higher education, even if incomplete, benefits the student and society.

Yet, the void stirs indignation.

Therefore, it is time to take our effort to the next level of sophistication.The mission of the Persistence and Completion Committee (PCC) is to assesses CCD-specific data to drive persistence and completion strategies while fostering a collaborative institutional culture and advocating more universally for improved measures of student success.

The PCC is a cross-functional team with a robust five year plan and the guidance of data mentors at the Higher Learning Commission. We are using institutional data, a longitudinal study, program and department level data, and student surveys to identify the key markers of success and most significant barriers to completion.

Our major deliverables include three meta-analysis reports, learning analytics tools, guided college-wide conversations, and publication of findings and successes to a wider audience.

More to come. For our students!

TRIO ROCKS!

TRIO programs emerged out of the civil rights movement and Lyndon Baines Johnson’s War on Poverty. In 1964, the Economic Opportunity Act established an experimental program called Upward Bound. By 1968, the federal government had launched two additional programs, Talent Search and Student Support Services [TRIO SSS]. These three programs were grouped together and the title TRIO was born. The name remains, though TRIO now consists of eight programs, adding Educational Opportunity Center (1972), Training Programs for Federal TRIO programs (1976), Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement (1986), Upward Bound Math and Science (1990), and TRIO Dissemination Partnership (1998).

Currently, there are over 2800 TRIO programs throughout the country that support 790,000 students with college dreams, from the 6th grade through Bachelor’s degree completion. Specifically, TRIO programs work with students overcoming obstacles to education, including limited income, first generation to college, and disability.

Some famous TRIO alumni include:
• Patrick Ewing - Coach, Olympian and Former Professional Basketball Player
• Bernard Harris - First African-American Astronaut to perform a spacewalk
• Gwendolynne Moore - US Congresswoman
• John Quinones - Correspondent for ABC news
• Joe Rogers – Former Lieutenant Governor of Colorado
• Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis – Music Producers
• Franklin Chang-Diaz - First Hispanic Astronaut
• Troy Polamalu - Professional Football Player

Access without support is not opportunity. At Community College of Denver, TRIO SSS supports students through the obstacles while challenging them to high goals. Toward this end, TRIO SSS provides a wide range of services, including comprehensive advising (academic, financial aid and financial literacy, transfer, career and personal); a Summer Bridge program; campus visits throughout the region; social and cultural activities; and academic tutoring. Within these services, the program utilizes data to track student progress and provide intentional guidance. Throughout, TRIO SSS creates a welcoming and personalized home on campus where each student feels valued and safe to grow as a student and career professional.

With our long history of advancing educational opportunity for underrepresented students, TRIO programs fulfill leadership roles at the institutional, state and national level. Throughout the country, TRIO spirals out innovation and best practices for student access and completion.

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Contributor Imane Benjelloun is an alumna of TRIO SSS at both Community College of Denver and University of Colorado Denver. Currently she is professional staff with TRIO SSS at CCD and will soon be a famous alumna of TRIO.

Organic Leadership

Like the Sage on Stage approach to teaching, the Colonel on Horse approach to leadership views everyone else as passive recipients and benefactors of the omniscient and omnipotent one. Even if the Colonel has a good idea of where he or she is going - which is an assumption - everyone else will simply tread the exact same path and end up in the exact same place. Groupthink. Lemmings. Et cetera.

When I work with others, I put forth significant effort to be mindful of judgment. Judgment in and of itself is not necessarily problematic; in fact, it is necessary. Problems arise when we assume that our judgment is descriptive of an objective world, one that appears exactly the same to everyone else. I tend to agree with the postmodernist idea that an objective world may well exist, but we can only know through conditions of its emergence. For example, the wavelength of light that appears as a blue sky can be descriptively measured, but how we understand and make meaning of that appearance emerges through our language, emotions, culture, sensory receptors, and so on. Do we know, then, that the blue sky appears the same to all of us? Who is right?

Such a problematization of objective judgment is a problematization of the Colonel on Horse. Due to the objective and subjective divergences that exist on a team of individuals, it is an inefficient allusion laced with missed opportunity and egoism to have everyone else get in line and follow the leader.

Thus, I prefer the concept of organic leadership: cultivating ecosystems that produce a flourishing and vibrant community, concomitantly guiding diverse emergent energy toward a shared vision of success.

In this direction, I ascribe to three guiding tenets.

1. Create a culture of positivity. Your work environment is a cauldron of inspiration, where each individual realizes the significance and meaning of their contributions to the team's vision of success. Productivity is a corollary of fun and excitement. Be fresh air. Be sunshine. Create a vision to respond to the age-old question: Why does any of this matter?

2. Balance structure with autonomy. Each individual benefits from different levels of guidance and independence, often at different times in different stages of evolution within different responsibilities. Listen attentively to your teammates to find the sweet spot and support right balance. Sometimes you may need to be the Colonel on Horse, but other times you need to simply get out of the way!

3. Pursue open communication built on authentic relationships. Be curious about other people's thoughts and ideas and happenings. In an ecological world, all is interconnected and relational. Communicate honestly yet kindly through both the clear days and the stormy nights.

A Chaos Theory for Career Counseling?

Do career pathways and development arise from a carefully constructed plan that entails research, assessment tools and goal setting, or do career opportunities occur by a series of serendipitous chances from seemingly unrelated events?  These two career development concepts are discussed in a recently published book entitled: A Chaos Theory of Careers: A New Perspective on Working in the 21^st Century (Robert Pryor, Jim Bright). As someone who facilitates the process of career decision making for many of those whom I serve, I have often struggled to reconcile these two ideas.

Personally, I’ve always felt extremely attracted to chaos theory; small changes in a dynamic system at one level will reverberate and amplify in unanticipated ways throughout interconnected levels of the system. The popular cultural idea of  this is captured in the concept of the “butterfly effect” coined by Edward Lorenz, whose wings set in motion a series of events that cascade into major and seemingly unrelated outcomes (like affecting the weather a continent away) .

I also fall under the belief (illusion?) that because scientific research, through sound principles, can illuminate causality between two or more things, it must have equal explanatory power for future causality. Take for instance the weather. Even if we can pull apart, examine and understand everything that led to a particular tornado’s occurrence we cannot predict that under the exact same set of circumstances another tornado would even form.  It’s not a matter of some measurement that might have been missed or some possible unknown “X factor”, it’s simply that a small change in the beginning or initial stages of a system impact later stages in different ways under the same exact conditions. There is no way to completely predict the exact outcome. A set or series of probable outcomes; yes, but an exact outcomes – never.

How does this relate to one’s own career or choice of future career paths? The traditional model of career advising seeks to help one become self-aware through a series of tools and instruments that help delineate one’s preferences, interests and values – a “best fit” model. Understand a person’s interests, values, and preferences, and then seek to match them with an occupation that best relates. We can call this the modernist approach or positivist approach.  The postmodern approach to career advising entails having the advisee construct meaning from past experiences (work, life, family, spirituality) and thereby bring to light a pattern (life theme, map, life meaning, etc) that can then be aligned with a particular career path. In a very tiny nutshell, these two concepts have been the major theories that have propelled the career development ideology for many decades.

The authors of the book propose a new theory that integrates both of these concepts in a way that values both of their contributions. “Open systems thinking” captures the general idea of a chaos theory of careers by arguing that systems have constituent parts contained in a dynamic system where boundaries are ill-defined and impacts from chance encounters, events and circumstances will impact these parts in unknown ways. Looking at your own career development. What unknowns arose that you could not have possibly anticipated and how have your decisions and your pathways diverged from even your best laid plans and goals?  Ultimately, we can incorporate chaos and the unknown into our career planning and we should seek to embrace this - not "factor out" or insulate ourselves from the vagaries of life's chances.

This book was an amazing read simply for the fact that it gave me vindication of sorts for my internal struggles in my role as a career advisor. Can we really ever make a perfect decision about our future careers? Can we account and plan for all possible scenarios and situations that might come about in the future? Yet the tools, instruments and self reflection that a career advisor utilizes with another is able to set one on a new path with new goals and a new vision of what their future life and work could be. However, a new path that is closed to the possibilities and impacts of future circumstances, chance meetings and seemingly new directions could miss the greatest career development possibility of all – a career path or occupational opportunity that one could have never possibly imagined in their wildest dreams.

Helmets

I have on my shiny orange kayak helmet right now. I love wearing helmets! Even as I sit here in front of a computer, putting my thoughts to the page.

Why? Because there are a lot of sharp pointy rocks out in the world! If I am wearing my helmet, it means I am charging ahead, regardless. You do not need to wear a helmet if you live a safe, conservative life and avoid all difficult terrain. But recently, I have been wearing my helmet, and loving it!

You see, I have been preparing for a run at a new position at work over the last few months, a so-called leadership position. At first, I was uncertain if I was even interested in the new terrain, and in any case, a bit hesitant to put myself out there. But I made a choice, spurred on by a mentor: come what may, go for it! Consequently, I have been intensely studying all the book material - the policies, regulations, knowledge, theory, skills and strategies. That comes naturally to me. More of a challenge, I have also put myself out there on the social side - connecting with new people, forging partnerships, presenting at meetings, sharing my energy and vision with the wider world. This terrain is much scarier to me, sharp and pointy.

Here is the strange thing. The the risky terrain, the areas of reservation: my efforts charging ahead in these areas have been exhilarating! Good thing for my helmet. It gave me courage to chance it, protected me from the rocks.

It is too easy to let our fears and perceptions define the boundaries of our possibility. My natural mode has always been to think and observe, to process in my own head, to only share myself within a tight circle. There are strengths to this mode, strengths I still rely on today. But it is now becoming apparent that these natural ways of being can be hijacked by self-doubt, codified and institutionalized over the years into limiting thoughts, and turned into self-inflicted boxes defining our potential.

The core philosophy of my life is: becoming - grounded in our roots and growing toward the light. Here you find my most foundational assumption; if we all have this opportunity and realize enough to take it, then we as an interconnected whole evolve ever closer to goodness and truth, a just and joyous world. 

I still do not know if I will be selected for this particular position that I am applying for, and in a way, it does not really matter. Far greater a reward the process has already granted. I have taken a new leap in my journey of becoming, and ascended beyond certain self-conceived limitations. Now, from this new vantage point, I see even higher mountains to climb.