Data Analytics for Engineering Student Success and College Operations

As resource constraints have driven calls for more transparency and accountability in higher education, high demand disciplines like engineering are using data sets to justify decisions and shape strategic planning goals. However, engineering is also well-poised to employ data in visual and useful ways to analyze and synthesize years of data and trends. Serving a large undergraduate engineering student body across multiple campuses and encompassing multiple engineering disciplines, the Penn State University’s College of Engineering can gain insights into the student population, faculty, and departments’ needs. The college Data Analytics Team has become proficient at displaying data for decision makers and has become a resource and model for others in the university. Although each academic college has unique datasets that require their own dashboard builds, the Data Analytics Team’s Power BI operations and products are deployable templates in a variety of contexts.