Press Releases

Washington, DC  

ResearchEd, with support from Axim Collaborative, is proud to announce the participating institutions and Advisory Council members for its Institutional Data Capacity Project. Together, we are creating a multi-year initiative to strengthen colleges’ ability to leverage data to advance student success and institutional effectiveness.

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Participating institutions will contribute practice-based insights to inform the development of tailored data tools and resources for each unique campus context that will also be shared broadly with the field:

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• Iḷisaġvik College
   

• University of South Carolina Beaufort
   

• United Tribes Technical College 

The selected institutions reflect diverse institutional contexts and priority student populations.  All three institutions are rural-serving, and all enroll high populations of transfer students, adult learners, first-generation students, and students with those and other characteristics that have been historically underserved. Participating institutions will each receive a $45,000 grant from ResearchEd to support their participation. Through this project, our vision is to co-create data analysis tools that anchor institutional conversations about effectiveness in the student experience and provide insights that inform decision-making and the strategic prioritization of evidence-based interventions.  

As part of this body of work, ResearchEd has also convened a cross-sector Advisory Council to provide strategic guidance and field expertise. Advisory Council members bring deep experience in institutional research, data governance, student success, and postsecondary policy across institutional, regional, and national contexts. Working alongside participating institutions, the Council will help surface lessons from on-the-ground practice and connect institutional insights to broader field priorities—ensuring that project outputs are both institutionally relevant and field-wide in impact.

Advisory Council members include:

• Jaimie Gua, Program Officer Student Success Research Team,  The American Indian Higher Education Consortium 

• Julia Cunningham, Program Officer, ECMC Foundation

• Dr. Leonard Taylor, Jr., Associate Professor and Director of the National Survey of Student Engagement, Indiana University- Bloomington

• Dr. Linda García, Executive Director of the Center for Community College Student Engagement, The University of Texas at Austin

• Nicole Ifill, Deputy Director for Data, Gates Foundation

• Dr. Paul Martinez, Data Scientist, University of Denver

• Stephanie R. Miller, Vice President of Data and Impact, Axim Collaborative
   

“The goal of this work is not just better data, but better decisions,” said Rachel Rush-Marlowe, Founder and Executive Director of ResearchEd. “By partnering closely with institutions and drawing on the expertise of our Advisory Council, we’re developing tools that support the ways data is actually used on campuses, and we’re building what institutions need to strengthen their capacity over time.”

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This initiative builds on ResearchEd’s longstanding work supporting institutions and intermediaries in using longitudinal data to advance student success and equity. Project findings, tools, and resources will be shared publicly to maximize impact across the field.

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