Author: Faidat Bello

Data Liaisons Group: Data Insights

January 16, 2026 by Faidat Bello

During our monthly Data Liaisons Group meeting on September 9, 2024, we invited each member to share recent data wins from their areas; the result of that discussion is posted here. In our November 10, 2025 meeting we asked the question again: how are your areas using data to support students, streamline operations, and provide context about the institution to leadership? The highlights below […]

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More Than Transfer Credits: Predictors of Time- to- Degree at Ball State

December 16, 2025 by Faidat Bello

Reducing the time it takes to earn a degree is a priority for students and universities alike, impacting retention, cost, and student success. Many Ball State students arrive with transfer credit, whether from high school dual-enrollment or another college, hoping those credits will reduce their time of graduation. Does transferring more credits ultimately help students […]

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STEP BY STEP ADMISSIONS DASHBOARD WALKTHROUGH: How to Explore Trends, Track Performance, and Tell Better Data Stories

December 8, 2025 by Faidat Bello

The Admissions Dashboard is a powerful tool for exploring how students move from application to enrollment. It brings together applicant trends, academic preparedness, demographics, geography, and term-to-term comparisons into one interactive experience. This walkthrough is designed to help you navigate the dashboard with confidence. Each slide highlights a different section, explains what you are seeing, […]

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IRDS Research Reports and Briefs

August 25, 2025 by Faidat Bello

The Institutional Research Office at BSU produces research reports on topics of interest to the BSU community and other stakeholders. Most of our research reports are driven by collaboration with BSU staff who have attended the Data Literacy Institute, offered by the Association for Institutional Research in partnership with IRDS (details available here). On this […]

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Supporting Sophomore Success: A Closer Look at Retention Beyond the First Year

July 22, 2025 by Faidat Bello

Although often overshadowed by first-year retention, sophomore retention is a meaningful indicator of student progress. This blog post presents an analysis of second-to-third-year enrollment patterns at Ball State, highlighting factors that support continued enrollment. The analysis includes 7,649 Fall 2020–2022 first-time students who returned for a second year. The project builds on a project initiated by […]

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Recap: Year 3, IRDS and Ball State

June 30, 2025 by Faidat Bello

In our yearly recaps posted Recap: Year 1 and Recap: Year 2, we discussed several of the technological successes of IRDS and BSU. In this year three recap, we add in the relationships we have been building around campus. But first, we did implement two new important data product categories in year three. Workforce Insights In […]

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Data Insights: Explore Our Dashboards

June 16, 2025 by Faidat Bello

At Ball State University, data isn’t just a tool, it’s an integral part of making informed decisions and supporting student success. Our team has been hard at work perfecting the tools that enable us to know and support students through their BSU lifecycle. Today, we are excited to introduce three Tableau dashboard walkthroughs: Admissions, Housing, and High-Impact Practices (HIPs). These visualizations enable […]

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Featured Interview: A Conversation with Cole Heady About Ball State University’s Data Cookbook

April 2, 2025 by Faidat Bello

Accessible, accurate, and reliable data are at the heart of data-informed decision-making. At Ball State University, Data Cookbook plays a crucial role in this process, serving as a central hub for data governance and ensuring consistency across institutional analysis and analytics efforts. It allows departments to work from a unified business glossary, improving decision-support and […]

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Tableau Training: Using the Crosstab Feature for Seamless Data Analysis

March 28, 2025 by Faidat Bello

Tableau is a fantastic data visualization tool. However, sometimes users need to extract numbers and data for further analysis. This is where the Crosstab feature works its magic! Tabular data can be exported from Tableau into an Excel file for further analysis with just a few clicks. Tracking retention rates, analyzing graduation trends, or reviewing […]

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Featured Interview: A Conversation with Drew Miller about Ball State University’s Data Warehouse

March 3, 2025 by Faidat Bello

Accessible, accurate and reliable data is at the heart of data-informed decision-making. At Ball State University, the Data Warehouse serves as the backbone for this, and facilitates one of our goals– supporting student success. We sat with Drew Miller, the Director of Institutional Research, and unpacked what the Data Warehouse does, how it functions, and why […]

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