CONFERENCE PROGRAM
COMPANY OVERVIEW
Founded in 2002, Rapid Insight Inc. has been committed to the mission of simplifying data analytics. We have over 150 customers in 45 states. The vast majority of our customers are higher education institutions.
The higher education domain expertise of Rapid Insight has been acquired over time and is what enables us to provide such excellent advice and support to our customers. Whether we are helping them to identify the best data variables for effectively predicting retention or coaching them on the best way to analyze their applicant pool to forecast yield, our expertise has become invaluable. Our analytic expertise is profound and is built from the knowledge that a good BI environment provides for the ever changing questions and “what if” scenarios.
Our customers’ analytic expertise covers a wide range. We have seen our customers create standard and repetitive reports for their institutions and governments, and automate them to make their lives easier. Our biggest excitement comes from watching the many ways that our customers have pushed our products to help them gain deeper insight into their organizations. Our customers drive our success.
Product development efforts draw from our customer experiences and they have driven our product evolution. We have placed a very high value on customer satisfaction that has resulted in a base that contributes to our webinars, presents at educational conferences and contributes to our case studies. Our customers help to grow our business.
While Rapid Insight has been focused on simplifying data analytics, the focus on our customers has had the largest impact. We place a great deal of effort on ensuring a quick and effective deployment of our products and then we back them up with readily accessible support and analytic experts.
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SPEAKER PROFILES
SESSION SPEAKERS
Bill Anderson CIO; Saint Michael’s College Bill started at Saint Michael’s College as an instructor, teaching in the Departments of Business Administration and Computer Science beginning in 1974. Since then, he’s served in most faculty leadership positions before assuming his current role as CIO in 2002. He has an extensive background in software development and technology management, successfully developing and selling three software businesses over the years. Bill earned his degrees from Dartmouth College, the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, and the University of Chicago.
Kenneth Browne Kutztown University of Pennsylvania Since joining the Enrollment Management and Student Affairs Division at Kutztown University in fall 2015, Ken has worked diligently to change the operational structure of the Office of Admissions. One year ago, when Kutztown University obtained Rapid Insight, he collaborated with Natalie Snow, Director of Institutional Research, to develop a diverse range of predictive models which could be used to generate in- depth reports. These reports have been instrumental in guiding how the university interacts with both prospective and current students. Ken also supports the Office of Admission in a number of capacities, including disseminating enrollment information, generating reports, managing the University’s CRM (Hobson’s Radius), and finding new ways to improve processes.
Michael Clements University of Maine - Augusta Michael is a Senior Research and Programmer Analyst at the University of Maine at Augusta. Specializing in data retrieval and reports for the past 26+ years, Michael has supported various functional areas, such as, Admissions, Registrar, Student Financial Services, TRIO, senior management, and has collaborated with the University of Maine System campus-wide initiatives.
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Jeffrey Collis Enrollment Management Data Manager, University of North Carolina - Greensboro Jeffrey has worked at UNCG for nearly 10 years, analyzing data in multiple campus offices. Since the arrival of Vice Chancellor of Enrollment Management, Dr. Bryan Terry, Jeffrey has served the needs of EM from admissions, to financial aid, to registrar’s office, to multiple student service and success areas.
Dan Grazynski Research Analyst; Fairfield University Dan graduated Fairfield University with a BS in Mathematics. He then worked in the “for profit” world at Subway World Headquarters (sandwich shop) as a statistician. Dan was involved in all aspects of the business; marketing, operations, finance, etc. creating a series of what he called excel application reports. Dan then accepted a position at his alma mater, Fairfield University, as a Research Analyst in the Institutional Research Department.
Jennifer Green, Ph.D. Associate VP for Enrollment Management & Student Success; Longwood University Jennifer began her career in student activities with a focus on fraternity and sorority life, student organizations, commuter and volunteer services. In 2005 she began working in information technology and assessment in both student affairs and institutional research and assessment. This experienced propelled her to begin working with the business intelligence efforts in a newly established office of Enrollment Management at Old Dominion University. In 2012, Jennifer became the Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management & Student Success at Longwood University. Jennifer received her Bachelor’s in Marketing and Master’s in Educational Leadership from the University of Arizona. She earned her Doctorate in Higher Education from Old Dominion University.
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Michael Johnson, Ph. D. Data Scientist; St. Charles Health System Mike recently joined the data analysis team at St. Charles Health. Before that, he was the Director of IR at Dickinson College and an avid RI Analytics user for eight years. Mike started his career as an Army officer; the last three years as the chief of the institutional research and analysis branch at the U.S. Military Academy. He earned a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Central Florida, a Master’s in Operations Research from the Naval Postgraduate School and a B.S in Mathematics from Central Washington University.
John Keyser Assistant Dean for Administration and Decision Support; Stetson Law. John grew up in the Northern Neck of Virginia and earned a B.S. and M.S. degree from Virginia Tech in Sociology with concentrations in Criminology and Quantitative Methods. He taught in and coordinated the Criminal Justice program and was the Assistant Director of the Center for Community Research at Roanoke College, President of BKW Research Group, Associate Dean for Administration at Washington and Lee University School of Law, and Senior Analyst at nTelos Corporation before accepting his current position at Stetson Law. In his current capacity, John oversees Institutional Research/Decision Support, and various administrative functions.
Michael Laracy CEO; Rapid Insight Inc. Mike received his Bachelor's Degree in Economics and Finance from Catholic University and his Master's in Economics from Rutgers University. He started his career as an econometric analyst with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia where he worked directly under the Director of Economic Research providing statistical research and preparing economic forecasts. After leaving the Federal Reserve, Mike worked for MCI in their database intelligence group and as a Senior Consultant at NCR/Teradata before becoming an independent consultant. Mike founded Rapid Insight Inc.
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Rachael MacDonald Yale University Office of Development Rachel currently works in the Prospect Research department of the Development Office at Yale University. She has been there for about a year, and divides her time between researching individual prospects and trying to identify new prospects using data analytics. Prior to her time in the fundraising world, she was a doctoral candidate in astrophysics, where she studied stars and black holes. Before that, her first career was as a reference librarian at a community college in the Seattle area. In addition to data science-y topics, her interests include bookbinding and medieval history.
Leslie McCormick University of Maine - Augusta Leslie is a Senior Research Analyst at the University of Maine at Augusta. Specializing in data organization, coordination, collection, validation and analysis in support of IR, enrollment management, outcomes assessment and accreditation. For the past 27+ years, Leslie has held positions at UMA spanning College Offices, Student Services, the President’s Office, Student Accounts, Financial Aid and Institutional Research and Planning.
Calvin Piston, Ph.D. Dean of Institutional Effectiveness; Professor of Mathematics; John Brown U. Cal has just finished his 35th (out of 36) year at John Brown University where he has served as professor of mathematics, Chair of Division of Natural Science, Associate Dean of Faculty Development and (currently, since 2008) Dean of Institutional Effectiveness. He began using RI in 2012 and uses Veera and Analytics for numerous reports and analysis for academics, enrollment and financial aid, university advancement, and student development. Cal earned his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Arkansas and his MA and BA in Mathematics from the University of California, Davis. Other interests include bike riding, enjoyment of grandchildren and serving at church.
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SESSION SPEAKERS Deepti Pradhan, Ph.D. Senior Research Analyst; Yale University Office of Development Deepti holds a Ph.D. in Bio-organic Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India. After spending the better part of her life immersed in chemistry, biochemistry and cell biology, including 13 years on the faculty of the Yale School of Medicine, Deepti moved to the Yale Office of Development. Since 2010 she has been using her skills in data analysis to enhance donor support for Yale University. Deepti founded the Tilde Café, an independent not-for-profit science café, in 2008. In her spare time, she immerses herself in science, enhancing science awareness, music, cycling, reading and helping to boost public education in Branford via the Branford Education Foundation.
Matthew Rehbein Lipscomb University Matt Rehbein is entering his seventh year as Director of Institutional Research at Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN. As an office of one, Matt is a "one-stop shop" for academic performance, benchmarking, external compliance, and survey data for his institution. Prior to his work in IR, Matt served for nine years as a missionary in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Matt has a master's degree in Biblical Studies from Lipscomb and a master's degree in Psychology (specialization in I/O Psychology) from Northcentral University. t
Mary Jane Russell Director of Business Intelligence & Associate CIO; Saint Michael's College Mary Jane began her career as a Certified Public Accountant with KPMG, managing audits of tax-exempt clients in the higher education, health care, and other tax- exempt sectors. Before joining Saint Michael’s, Mary Jane also served as the Assistant Director of a scientific research organization. Despite the left-brained slant of her early career, her current professional interests include the use of data visualization as well as visual and design thinking approaches to inspire creative uses of data, technology, and systems – with the intention of improving both individual productivity and overall institutional effectiveness. She holds a Master of Science in Administration (MIS), and a BS in Business Administration (Accounting).
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Jere Turner, Ph.D. Director of Institutional Research; Manchester Community College. Dr. Turner earned his doctoral degree in Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation from Boston College, and a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Northeastern University. His research interests have been the application of Item Response Theory using Rasch modeling for performance assessment. Jere teaches statistics and has been instrumental in the development of an applied statistics course at his institution. He has over 30 years’ experience teaching at a community college level.
Bharathwaj Vijayakumar Operations Research Analyst, Rowan University Vijay was born and raised in India; he came to the United States in 2008. He earned his MS in Industrial Engineering at Wright State University, Ohio. Vijay’s industrial engineering background and work experience has enabled him to help organizations streamline processes, strategically deploy resources, increase results, and save money. At Rowan University, he has developed predictive models and dashboards, with the help of Veera, to successfully assist with student recruitment, scholarship determinations, and retention probabilities. Outside of work, Vijay is an accomplished filmmaker and photographer.
John Whitehouse Gettysburg College John Whitehouse has over 30 years of professional experience in the Information Technology industry. He started his career in the corporate world working for both EDS and HP, where he was responsible for program and project management, guided technical direction, and performed hands-on application development using various technologies. John is currently the Data and Software Architect at Gettysburg College, driving their effort to enhance reporting capabilities and implementing predictive analytics. In addition to his role at Gettysburg College, John is an Adjunct Instructor at Penn State Harrisburg and Elizabethtown College teaching courses in Java Programming, Relational Databases, and Business Intelligence. In his spare time he enjoys travel, 80’s New Wave Music and a good chili dog.
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Teresa Wonnell Director of Student Affairs Assessment and Analysis, Johns Hopkins University Teresa has been coaxing data to play nice at Johns Hopkins for the last eight years. An institutional researcher by training, she works with admissions data, financial aid data, enrollment data, survey data, and many other varieties. As shown by her title, which is a new one, she is also dipping a toe into the world of assessment.
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CONFERENCE AGENDA
Monday, June 26th 2nd Floor Main Conference Hall Function Rooms Boardroom
8:00 – 8:25 Registration Check-in CONFERENCE OPEN 8:25 – 8:30 Michael Laracy • CEO, Rapid Insight Inc.
Retaining and Graduating Non-Traditional Students 8:30 – 9:10 Calvin Piston • John Brown University
USE CASE BLITZ PRESENTATIONS
Identifying Bottleneck Courses in a Major Bharathwaj “Vijay” Vijayakumar • Rowan University
9:20 – 10:00 Monthly Report of Student Attrition Teresa Wonnell • John Hopkins University OFFICE
HOURS SACSCOC Reaffirmation of Accreditation Matt Rehbein • Lipscomb University
Cultivating Your Own Institutional Research Metrics 2.0 10:10 – 10:50 Dan Grazynski • Fairfield University
PANEL DISCUSSION 11:00 – 11:40 Next Steps – Driving Decisions With Analyses Baldwin • Green • Rehbein • Vijayakumar • Wonnell
BUFFET LUNCH 11:40 - 12:50 Topical Tables • World of Change Presentation
Is A Liberal Arts Degree Still Worth the Price? 12:50 – 1:30 Mary Jane Russell & Bill Anderson • Saint Michael’s College
Maximizing the Impact of Scholarships on Yield 1:40 – 2:20 Kenneth Browne • Kutztown University of Pennsylvania OFFICE HOURS Why Should I Use Your Model 2:30 – 3:10 Michael Johnson, Ph.D. • St. Charles Health System
PANEL DISCUSSION 3:20 – 4:00 Data Ethics – Security, Utility, Privacy Collis • Johnson • Pradhan • Turner • Whitehouse
AFTER-HOURS RECEPTION • Peaks Island Lobster Bake
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CONFERENCE AGENDA
2nd Floor Main Conference Hall th Tuesday, June 27 Function Rooms Boardroom
8:00 – 8:30 Check-in
Anticipating Post-Graduate Success 8:30 – 9:10 John Keyser • Stetson University School of Law
USE CASE BLITZ PRESENTATIONS
Matching Names: Automating the Process So It Doesn't Drive You Crazy Rachel MacDonald • Yale University Office of Development 9:20 – 10:00
Dynamic Point-in-Time Comparisons OFFICE Michael Clements/Leslie McCormick • University of Maine at Augusta HOURS
Drop Out Outreach and Return Projections 10:10 – 10:50 Jeffrey Collis • University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Product Updates and Feedback Forum 11:00 – 11:40 Michael Laracy • Rapid Insight Inc.
11:40 – 12:00 CONFERENCE CLOSE
“GRAB & GO” LUNCH 12:00 – 1:00 OPEN HANDS-ON LAB
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CONFERENCE LOCATIONS
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SESSION DESCRIPTIONS
Is A Liberal Arts Degree Still Worth the Price? Mary Jane Russell, Bill Anderson • Saint Michael’s College The Gallup-Purdue Index surveys alumni from colleges and universities across the nation. Mary Jane Russell and Bill Anderson will discuss how Saint Michael's College collaborated with Gallup to objectively assess the value of a Liberal Arts education and to compare their graduates’ outcomes to those of other competing institutions. They used Rapid Insight Analytics and Veera to further mine this data – learning more about the impact of certain campus programs on alumni engagement, well-being and alumni attachment.
USE CASE BLITZ PRESENTATION: Identifying Bottleneck Courses in a Major Bharathwaj Vijayakumar • Rowan University
USE CASE BLITZ PRESENTATION: Monthly Student Attrition Report Teresa Wonnell • Johns Hopkins University
USE CASE BLITZ PRESENTATION: SACSCOC Reaffirmation of Accreditation Matthew Rehbein • Lipscomb University Participants will learn how to use Veera to produce reports that can assist in demonstrating compliance with SACSCOC Core Requirement 2.8 (percentage of course hours taught by full-time faculty) and SACSCOC Comprehensive Standard 3.5.4 (percentage of course hours taught by faculty with terminal degree).
Retaining and Graduating Non-Traditional Students Calvin Piston • John Brown University This session will offer an overview of the predictive models and their results targeting the retention of non- traditional students (including online learners). This includes models developed for before matriculation, end of first week incorporating data (including some text analysis) from orientation seminar survey, after first midterms (including predicted GPA vs. MT GPA), beginning of the second semester, and continuation from semester to semester until graduation.
PANEL DISCUSSION: Data Ethics – Security, Utility, Privacy Collis • Johnson • Pradhan • Turner • Whitehouse
PANEL DISCUSSION: Next Steps – Driving Decisions With Analyses Baldwin • Green • Rehbein • Vijayakumar • Wonnell
Cultivating Your Own Institutional Research Metrics 2.0 Dan Grazynski • Fairfield University Dan wasn’t satisfied with the available admissions measures, so he decided to create his own. His homegrown IR Score removes clutter from reports and has proven to be a significant contributor to a predictive model anticipating student success. This session will recount the development of the IR Score, demonstrate how it’s been incorporated into a variety of reports and discuss its contribution to the University’s predictive modeling efforts.
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SESSION DESCRIPTIONS
Why Should I Use Your Model Michael Johnson, Ph.D. • St. Charles Health System There are many “canned” predictive models for higher education and healthcare. If you pay a consultant or your system has a built-in model, there’s a good chance you’ll get a model created in a cookie-cutter fashion. It’s not uncommon for vendor or consultant to use data from other institutions to create the base model and then apply the factors to your population (i.e. students, patients, etc., depending on your industry). What if your population is different, or changing, or you have data elements that don’t align perfectly with their canned model? In every instance I’ve experienced, the model YOU create using YOUR data from YOUR population will outperform any model created by an outside source (unless of course they too are using Rapid Insight and your data). This presentation will show several examples where this is the case, and is applicable to many industries, not just healthcare and higher education.
Product Updates and Feedback Forum Michael Laracy • Rapid Insight Inc. A presentation reviewing recent company offerings, a discussion of near- and long-term improvements and an opportunity for users to provide feedback on their own development priorities.
Anticipating Post-Graduate Success John Keyser, Ph.D. • Stetson University School of Law This presentation will explore how Rapid Insight software can be used to identify students who are in jeopardy of not passing post-graduate exams, such as the Bar exam for lawyers. By identifying these students early, they can be directed to programs and curricular options that will improve their chance of passing. While this presentation will focus on the bar exam, the approach applies to most post-graduate exams.
Drop Out Outreach and Return Projections Jeffrey Collis • University of North Carolina at Greensboro Explore the methods being used at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro to identify students who’ve dropped out that are likely candidates to return and completion – including making use of survey data to help students return, weekly student withdrawal notifications, and proactive programming that assist in preventing withdrawals in the first place.
Maximizing the Impact of Scholarships on Yield Kenneth Browne • Kutztown University Kutztown University first implemented Rapid Insight Veera and Analytics at the close of June 2016. Since then, KU has conducted a complete review of all institutional scholarships and their effect on yield. This presentation will review the approach to the analysis, how the specific recommendations for change were developed, the projected effect on yield and, most importantly, how we got the University to start TALKING about predictive analytics!
USE CASE BLITZ PRESENTATION: Matching Names: Automating the Process So It Doesn't Drive You Crazy Rachel MacDonald • Yale University Office of Development Matching lists of names can be troublesome when you have to account for nicknames, variable spellings, or differing name order. We’ve created Veera jobs that test as many versions of a name as possible, score the results, and then return the best matches. Although there are false positives, they are relatively easy to find and remove, and the process is still faster (and less likely to drive you crazy) than checking each name manually.
USE CASE BLITZ PRESENTATION: Dynamic Point-in-Time Comparisons Michael Clements/Leslie McCormick • University of Maine at Augusta
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SESSION DESCRIPTIONS
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PRODUCT PROFILES
Rapid Insight Veera is a Windows-based desktop application that allows users of any skill level to produce ad hoc analyses, output files, graphic reports and online dashboards quickly and easily. It can be used alone or in conjunction with Rapid Insight Analytics (our predictive modeling software). Business Intelligence Veera accesses data where it resides. Users may incorporate Software any number and any type of structured data file or table into a process using an intuitive, drag-and-drop, icon-based process builder.
Reports can be produced in a variety of formats, including PDF, Rich Text, Microsoft Word and Excel. Report may become online dashboard by choosing the HTML output option. Graphically depict your data by adding one or more charts to the process. Choose from several available styles, such as Pie, Bar, Scatter, and Radar. Then give the chart the desired look by creating and applying a user-designed chart style.
The program’s built-in scheduling feature may be used to update periodically a report using the latest data. Reports may be individually configured to email themselves automatically to a custom list of recipients.
Data records may be output in any format accessible as an input source – either as a new file, our appended to an existing one.
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Analytics is a desktop application that runs on any Windows™-based machine. The historical information it uses to develop its models can come from most any data source or format– including Excel, Oracle, SQL Server, Access and csv. There aren’t any mandatory fields or restrictive naming Predictive Modeling conventions these sources need to conform to. The program Software never puts data sources at risk; actions taken in Analytics stay in Analytics. It can be used alone or in conjunction with Rapid Insight Veera (our business intelligence software).
Users don’t need to be statisticians or programmers. Rather, users of any skill level are guided through an understandable, highly-automated, predictive modeling process using prompts and color cues. Users are never trapped at any stage or forced to accept the choices made on their behalf.
Select any binary or continuous variable found in the dataset and Analytics will build a model to predict its likelihood in future records. Analytics performs two layers of statistical analyses. At the “Automated Mining” stage, variables are individually tested for their statistical relationship to the model target (or “Y-variable”). When a relationship is found, it can be viewed graphically and the tests results examined in detail.
At the “modeling” stage, these same variables undergo regressive analysis to measure their inter-relationships. Those identified by Analytics as most statistically meaningful become part of the final predictive model. Users may produce as many models as they wish, as often as they wish.
The resulting models may then be used to derive probability scores for each record in data requiring predictive analysis. This is done using either Analytics’ own “Scoring” module or Veera’s “Import model” feature.
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