Data Insider

Category: Featured

  • Supporting Sophomore Success: A Closer Look at Retention Beyond the First Year
    July 22, 2025 by

    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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  • Data Insights: Explore Our Dashboards
    June 16, 2025 by

    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

    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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  • Data Liaisons Group: Data Wins
    October 14, 2024 by

    During our monthly Data Liaisons Group meeting on September 9, 2024, we invited each member to share recent data wins from their areas. This was an excellent discussion and we had the opportunity to hear from several colleagues about how they use data to support students, streamline operations, and provide necessary context about the institution […]

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  • Data Governance at Ball State

    Data Governance at Ball State
    February 23, 2024 by

    Universities rely on information, but it’s not enough to just have vast amounts of data. We need a strategy for using data wisely, and that’s where data governance comes in.  We’re deliberate about finding effective ways to manage our data at Ball State, and in this post we share an inside look at some of […]

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  • Meet IRDS New Directors
    March 2, 2023 by

    Meet Alex Kluber. Alex has been with IRDS and Ball State for a little over three years and now has the role of Director of Institutional Research. Background He grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, studying Physics for his bachelor’s degree at UC Davis, then Chemistry for his master’s degree at Rice University. He […]

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  • Literature Review – Factors Affecting Student Success
    February 23, 2023 by

    Literature Review Synthesized from Ernest Kwakye’s Annotated Bibliography by Alison Winiarski   Student success in university settings can be conceptualized through student performance, such as a student’s GPA, and retention. The following details variables that have been found to impact both constructs in hopes to understand how data can be used to improve student success. […]

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  • Data Warehouse Development at Ball State
    January 30, 2023 by

    “Data-informed decision-making” is becoming an increasingly common maxim in higher education. Indeed, one of higher ed’s most prominent news outlets, The Chronicle of Higher Education, includes a dedicated “Data” section devoted to analysis and commentary on trends. One of the primary challenges in the field of Institutional Research is keeping up with the evolving ways […]

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