9:00 a.m. - 9:50 a.m.

WELCOME & MORNING KEYNOTE

10:00 a.m. - 10:50 a.m.

Post-Graduation Success: Exploring the UA’s Graduating Senior Survey Data

Catalina Room

Success For Every Student

This session is intended to serve as an introduction for individuals who may be interested in learning more about the University of Arizona Graduating Senior Survey, and how we leverage the data to inform the academic student success goals such as HIPS participation, graduation, and post-graduation outcomes. The first half of this session will review the Graduating Senior Survey methodology and logistics including information about its administration, the questions, updates on our new supplemental sources (National Student Clearinghouse and LiveAlumni), how we are strategizing to meet the ASG that seeks to have a 90% positive career outcomes rate within 6 months of graduation, and opportunities to partner to support data collection and reporting. We will also view a walkthrough of the public facing dashboard (career.arizona.edu/outcomes) as well as the internal dashboard in UAnalytics, available for UA faculty and staff. The second half of the session will dive more deeply into our findings, and how we use the survey data to inform changes that can improve graduation rates and post-graduation outcomes including obtaining employment and acceptance into programs of continuing education. We will discuss the career related experiences, behaviors, and key professionals who make an impact on students’ post-graduation outcomes, and how we have used those insights to inform further inquiry on timely graduation. Attendees will learn about how to access the data for their own student populations as well as how to use the data to inform their own lines of inquiry.

From Dashboards to Dialogue: Facilitating Collaborative Meaning-Making with Data Interpretation Sessions

Rincon Room

Data Storytelling

University Analytics & Institutional Research offers a robust suite of high quality, interactive dashboards that provide faculty, staff, and leaders with access to institutional data. Yet having dashboards is only the beginning—teams still need structured ways to interpret that information together, build shared understanding, and translate insights into action. This session will demonstrate a collaborative approach to data exploration and meaning making using data placemats as the anchor for facilitating collaborative data interpretation sessions. While the abundance of the data in dashboards is vital, it can also be a challenge to compare across indicators when the data come and go with a single click. In this session, participants will experience a live demonstration of how placemat based analysis can complement existing dashboards by focusing groups on specific data, and then exploring those data through critical questioning, contextual reflection, and shared meaning making. Participants will also have time to design their own data placements focusing on data relevant to their roles.

Institutional Insights with Academic Analytics

Santa Rita Room

Faculty Data Focus

Join us for an overview of Academic Analytics and the suite of tools available to the University of Arizona to support data-driven decision-making. We’ll explore an aggregative benchmarking platform that compiles publications, citations, funding, awards, and now patents/clinical trials, with tools like benchmarking, research insight, and analysis on demand that let institutions visualize research strengths, collaboration patterns, and peer comparisons.

UAccess Analytics Fundamentals

Kachina Room

The Building Blocks

New to UAccess Analytics or looking to refresh your skills? Join UAIR for a hands-on session to practice essential UAccess Analytics skills. From creating simple reports to customizing existing ones, this is your chance to make sure you've got a handle on the fundamentals.

Attendees are expected to bring their laptops in order to get hands-on experience.

Empowering Tucson Festival of Books with U of A Enterprise GIS Data

Tucson Room

Custom Solutions

For the 2026 Tucson Festival of Books event, the U of A Enterprise GIS modernized the event’s mapping system across all areas from operational planning and setup, to situational awareness for safety operations, to public information delivered via print resources, native apps, and an embeddable web map. All these resources and applications were powered by a single authoritative data source, the U of A Enterprise Geodatabase.

Utilizing this single source of truth streamlined workflows, increased accuracy, improved efficiency, and will enhance user experience and navigation through more integrated functionality and enhanced cartography.

This presentation will review the baseline / prior state, ETL workflows, organizational process enhancements, community collaborations, illustration of how GIS data empowers all digital resources used in the event, and a roadmap for future enhancements.

11:00 a.m. - 11:50 a.m.

From Data Fundamentals to Impact Analysis: Learning from C-STAR Projects 

Catalina Room

Success For Every Student

Many student programs collect great data, but are limited in their capacity for analysis, interpretation, and communicating findings. This session will review fundamental processes and procedures to prepare your data for strategic use of institutional data from UAIR.  From cleaning and norming program rosters, to matching participant information with data in the UAccess Analytics platform, this session will prime participants to better manage their datasets and access existing institutional data to understand what works and for whom.

C-STAR (Completion Strategies Tested for Acceleration & Refinement) is a partnership between HSI Initiatives, Assessment & Research, and Societal Impacts supporting four projects in AY 2026 with data analysis expertise. We will use the C-STAR initiative as a case study of how such programs can take existing local data and prepare it for institutional outcomes assessment.  

From Conversations to Outcomes: Telling the Story of Industry Engagement

Rincon Room

Data Storytelling

As industry partnerships grow across the University, questions about scale, momentum, and impact become more frequent—but are not always easy to answer. This session explores how industry engagement takes shape over time, how it is captured across institutional systems, and how that information can be framed into clear, meaningful stories for leadership, faculty, partners, and the public. Using real examples, the session emphasizes shared definitions, visibility, and storytelling, highlighting how data can support understanding, alignment, and trust without relying on perfect systems or tools.

Leveraging Faculty Data Management to Institutional Impact: Building an Integrated Faculty Data Ecosystem

Santa Rita Room

Faculty Data Focus

Since 2020, the University of Arizona Faculty Affairs unit has developed a robust portfolio of faculty-focused data reports and initiatives to better understand faculty trends, experiences, equity, workload, retention, and impact. This session highlights how a coordinated approach to institutional faculty data has informed decision-making, policy development, and strategic planning across the university. Participants will gain an overview of how disparate faculty data sources were harmonized, how faculty governance and administrative stakeholders were engaged throughout the process, and how this data-informed approach to faculty affairs has supported nationally recognized awards, major initiatives, institutional change, and long-term planning for a healthier and more equitable faculty work environment. This presentation is ideal for institutional researchers, data professionals, faculty affairs leaders, and campus partners interested in building integrated, mission-aligned faculty data ecosystems that advance equity, engagement, and institutional effectiveness.
 

Office Hours 101: Your Guide to Campus Data Support

Kachina Room

The Building Blocks

This session will provide an introductory overview of our department’s Office Hours resource, designed to support campus partners with data-related questions and projects. The presentation will outline what Office Hours is, how it functions as a collaborative support model, highlight successful initiatives that originated through the resource, address frequently asked questions across data domains, and conclude with open Q&A. The session is geared toward newer campus staff and anyone seeking to better understand how to engage with Office Hours effectively.

Developing Custom Data Management Tools in Support of the Law School Bar Exam Success Office

Tucson Room

Custom Solutions

Bar Exam success data tracking is labor-intensive, limited to analyzing data in two-dimensional planes using only a spreadsheet. There is a need for improved management of data that will help law schools determine predictors of bar exam performance and successfully identify study or preparation methodologies for targeted interventions. We have created a platform prototype to improve data tracking, data analysis, and report generation that is marketable to other law schools and can be generalized for use in other disciplines.

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

LUNCH 

1:00 p.m. - 1:50 p.m.

Beyond Usage Counts: Contextualizing Institutional Data to Understand Military-connected Students’ Experience, Belonging, and Success

Catalina Room

Success For Every Student

Military-connected students navigate higher education at the intersection of federal benefits, institutional policy, academic transition, and identity shift. While many institutions report utilization rates for Veterans Education and Transition Services (VETS) centers, far fewer integrate usage metrics with student voice to understand how and why these services influence student success.

This session presents a mixed-methods case study from the University of Arizona’s 2025 Military-Connected Student Experience Study. By combining survey findings, institutional data, and qualitative analysis of student narratives, we demonstrate how institutional data can be contextualized to move beyond descriptive reporting toward actionable, strategic insight.

Participants will examine how disaggregated survey data revealed meaningful differences between veterans, active-duty students, and dependents; how patterns of service frequency and engagement aligned with academic transition needs; and how qualitative themes—such as navigating GI Bill processes, cultivating belonging, and building trust with staff—illuminated why certain services produced outsized impact. We also explore identified barriers to access, including awareness gaps and time constraints, and discuss how these findings informed targeted outreach and operational improvements.

This session offers a replicable framework for campus partners seeking to leverage institutional data strategically to strengthen transition support, persistence, and long-term student success for specialized populations. Attendees will leave with practical strategies for integrating quantitative and qualitative data, contextualizing operational metrics, and translating findings into compelling narratives that guide decision-making, resource allocation, and cross-campus collaboration.

Strategic Data Storytelling at the University of Arizona

Rincon Room

Data Storytelling

Data alone doesn’t drive change, but how we communicate it can. This session explores how higher education professionals can turn institutional data into compelling, audience-focused narratives that inform decision-making, enhance engagement, and support data literacy. Attendees will learn practical frameworks and tools (the UAIR Design System, branded communication templates, and real-world infographic examples) that bridge the gap between data insight and campus understanding. We’ll also examine the emerging role of AI in crafting effective messaging. Whether you're in institutional research, communications, or administration, you'll leave with strategies to elevate your data storytelling and tailor your message to your specific campus data culture. This session empowers attendees to make data communication a purposeful, impactful practice when supporting campus-wide decision-making.

The MENTOR Institute: Using A Data Driven Approach to Understanding and Improving Mentoring Culture

Santa Rita Room

Faculty Data Focus

Since 2023, the University of Arizona has implemented a university-wide mentoring training initiative designed to meet emerging NIH and NSF requirements while strengthening mentoring culture across campus. The MENTOR Institute launched a two-level training model and a robust assessment process to better understand mentoring practices, the implementation of developmental networks, and participant learning outcomes. This session highlights how a coordinated, data informed approach to mentoring professional development for faculty, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate students led to positive outcomes. Participants will gain an overview of how pre and post training surveys were contextualized and interpreted to identify patterns. Through this analysis three key themes emerged: (a) developmental mentoring networks, or a "mentor universe,"(b) the importance of collaboratively creating mentoring agreements for alignment and accountability, and (c) interweaving a humanistic model of mentoring as a philosophical foundation. The presentation will demonstrate how increases in foundational mentoring knowledge (from 69.8% to 89% agreement) and high perceived competency gains (93%) clarified the role of developmental networks and helped align mentoring expectations across academic units. These analyses also provided insight into how relational cultural mentoring principles—mutuality, authenticity, reciprocity, and connectedness—were being perceived. This session is ideal for institutional researchers, assessment professionals, mentoring program leaders, and campus partners interested in using integrated, mission aligned data to strengthen mentoring ecosystems. Attendees will see how contextualized assessment data can guide institutional decision making, enhance mentoring effectiveness, and support more connected and sustainable mentoring environments, and specifically how this data has informed the initiatives of the MENTOR Institute within the Office of Faculty Affairs.

Custom Tools to Simplify Your Work in Analytics and Visualizer

Kachina Room

The Building Blocks

Spending too much time pulling different reports in UAccess Analytics? Wondering how to organize your data without jumping between multiple folders? This presentation will show users how to build custom dashboards in Analytics and Visualizer. Participants will learn how to combine data from multiple subject areas, create connected analyses, and build basic dashboards that streamline reporting. We’ll compare Analytics and Visualizer, highlighting how to choose the right tool for the specific needs of a college, unit, or program. By the end of the session, attendees will leave with practical strategies to save time, improve reporting, and turn data into tools that truly support decision-making.

Tracking the Seemingly Untrackable: Faculty Load at the Academic Unit Level

Tucson Room

Custom Solutions

As the University shifted to a direct admission model, the Eller College of Management realized it needed a better data-driven solution for forecasting faculty load within the college, one that would provide a holistic top-level view in addition to the more traditional unit-based assessments.  Over the course of several years, a new system was developed that integrated key data points from the data warehouse with locally-maintained information regarding teaching assignments, load agreements and other credit-hour based information.  This presentation will describe the key needs that were identified, and showcase the software tool that was developed to help manage the process.

Federal Work Study Reporting 

Sabino Room

Dashboard Behind the Scenes

Underutilization of Federal Work Study (FWS) funding leaves millions of dollars in potential student support unused each year, driven in part by limited institutional visibility into key FWS data. This session presents a collaborative initiative between UAIR and the Office of Undergraduate Education to improve transparency around FWS eligibility, remaining balances, positions held, and other attributes that may affect student participation. Representatives from the Office of Scholarships & Financial Aid (OSSA), Human Resources, and the Undergraduate Research Alliance will join the session to provide broader context on FWS program processes, operations, and policy guidelines.
The presentation will outline the request intake process, requirements gathering, and the coordinated work between UAIR's student and workforce data teams to develop a centralized dashboard that brings together datasets from systems that traditionally operate separately. This integration offers a rare unified view of student and administrative workforce data, enabling more informed decision‑making and greater alignment of institutional resources. Attendees will learn how a cross‑functional data design approach can strengthen student success efforts, enhance operational efficiency, and help institutions fully leverage available FWS funding.

2:00 p.m. - 2:50 p.m.

Undergraduate Research as a Data Case Study: Building a Comprehensive Student Engagement Ecosystem

Catalina Room

Success For Every Student

Undergraduate research (UR) is one of the most powerful high‑impact practices on campus. UR touches nearly every part of the institution: recruitment, advising, academic departments, financial aid, student employment, experiential learning, assessment, and alumni relations. Because participation occurs through decentralized pathways—courses, programs, labs, jobs, and informal faculty mentorship—it remains challenging to build a comprehensive data ecosystem capable of tracking participation across these varied modalities and measuring the impact of these transformative experiences. 

This presentation uses UR as a case study to illustrate a broader, campus-wide opportunity to strengthen our data ecosystem so that we can more accurately measure student participation in high-impact co-curricular practices from the first point of outreach through graduation and beyond. By examining the current UR data landscape in the context of the full lifecycle of a student’s engagement, we highlight key areas where measurement systems can be built or improved. In doing so, we identify measurement gaps that also affect internships, service learning, student employment, and other types of experiential learning, and we offer recommendations for strengthening our current system into an expanded data infrastructure that better serves our campus community.

Student Engagement Uncovered: A Department’s Playbook for Using Visualizer

Rincon Room

Data Storytelling

Although it seems intuitive that student engagement during the undergraduate experience boosts retention and graduation rates, how do we actually measure it, why does it matter, and how can we view the data from an evidence based lens? By intentionally tracking student touchpoints in Visualizer such as clubs, events, scholarships, and research, colleges can uncover patterns of involvement and identify correlations with retention and graduation outcomes. By utilizing Visualizer, we can create real-time continuous engagement data that links back to Analytics and a location for your college to view.

This presentation introduces a practical model for quantifying engagement, identifying gaps in offerings, and targeting outreach to less-engaged students; all through using Visualizer dashboards and linking them back to college shared folders/dashboards in Analytics. We will share how this engagement-tracking approach has been implemented in our honors college and in Visualizer/Analytics, highlighting key insights and strategies that can be adapted to different institutional contexts.  

The session will demonstrate how engagement data can be transformed into actionable intelligence, helping colleges align resources more effectively, close equity gaps, and strengthen university-wide retention and graduation initiatives- all through utilizing the new platform of Visualizer. Participants will learn how impactful Visualizer is, how it can benefit their college, and link it all back to Analytics. This session will go over examples that departments can utilize, and not feel fearful of using Visualizer!

Data Visualization Fundamentals

Kachina Room

The Building Blocks

Want to make the most of your UAccess Analytics reports? This session will offer a crash course in effective visualization, then walk you through putting some together in UAccess Analytics. Explore the different visualizations at your fingertips alongside ways to customize them and tell your data's story. 

Open Recreation: The Tools We Use to Understand and Share Our Data

Tucson Room

Custom Solutions

This session talks through the development and use of Campus Recreation facility visit swipe data. We’ll discuss building the initial data points captured from our source system, RecTrac, and follow the progression of tools built to organize and share that data. From sending emails with numbers to PivotTables to Shiny dashboards, we’ll discuss the advantages and drawbacks we experienced as we developed our reporting tools. The session closes with a loosely structured discussion on the role of generative AI in the practice of data analysis, and whether it’s now worth learning some of these specialized tools.

The ideal audience probably includes administrative staff who use reports and are seeking enhancements to those reports and analysts thinking about how to expand their skillset. Those with strong opinions about programming fonts are of course welcome but may find the material a bit elementary.

Exploring the Planning Trend Summary Dashboard

Sabino Room

Dashboard Behind the Scenes

UAIR and the Office of Budget and Planning will present an overview of the Planning Trend Summary dashboard—why it was created, how the data is sourced and structured, and the most effective ways to use it for budgeting and forecasting.
We will address common questions and misconceptions about when and how to use the Trend Report, demonstrate best‑practice use cases, and highlight situations where the tool should not be used. The session will also show how the Trend Summary can be leveraged in conjunction with the University’s planning system, Anaplan, to support more accurate and aligned budget decisions.
Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of the dashboard’s purpose, its limitations, and how it fits within the broader planning ecosystem.

3:00 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.

Fireside Chat: Data Strategy and Artificial Intelligence

David Ebert | Chief AI and Data Science Officer

Cisco Ramos | Executive Director, UAIR

Yes. The Institutional Data Summit is a University of Arizona event, hosted by university employees, for university employees and is free for all U of A employees. 

Any and all U of A employees are welcome to attend the Institutional Data Summit. Our hope is that this event serves as a learning experience for members of the university workforce, as well as a great professional development opportunity for data enthusiasts on campus. 

You can join us at the Student Union Memorial Center, Main Ballroom for this year's 2026 Institutional Data Summit. The Student Union is at 1303 E. University Blvd and details about the building and surrounding area are on this campus map. 

The closest parking to the Student Union is the 2nd St. Garage, 1390 E. 2nd St. Both the Tyndall Avenue and Cherry Avenue Garages are about a 10-minute walk from the Student Union. Parking will not be validated. 

No. Registration will be closing prior to April 21st, 2026. Day-of registration will not be an option so please make sure that you and your team are registered for this event in advance. 

Registration for the 2026 Institutional Data Summit will close the week prior to the event OR when we meet the event attendance limit; whichever comes first. 

Yes. This day-long event will include accommodations for both breakfast and lunch, as well as stationed refreshments throughout the day.

Breakfast – Continental Buffet

• Seasonal Fruit Salad (V,VE,GF)
• Assorted Individual Yogurts (V,GF) with Granola (V)
• Bakery Basket to Include Danish Pastries, Croissants, and Muffins (V), Sweet Butter, Honey and Preserves (V,GF)
• Wildcat Regular and Decaffeinated Coffees
• Tazo Teas with Hot Water
• Iced Water

Lunch – TBD

Current menu selection subject to change.  

V = Vegetarian ; VE = Vegan ; GF = Gluten Free 

Yes. All session presentations will be recorded and made available post-event. Be sure to stay up-to-date with the Institutional Data Summit event page on the UAIR website in order to access recordings once the event is completed. 

Yes. The 2026 Institutional Data Summit will be a photographed event. The photographer will limit the amount of candid photos taken and focus their attention on event speakers and set-up. However, there is a chance that attendees will be photographed in the process.

If you have any questions or concerns about waiving your Photographic Recording rights, please contact University of Arizona at 520-621-8747 or at brand@arizona.edu

You can reach out to Ashley Hurand, Director, UAIR for any and all data summit related questions not answered in the FAQs at mclaren@arizona.edu.