Student Success Analyst

Position Job Title: Student Success Analyst

Location: Vancouver, BC (Hybrid)

Reports To: Director, Student Affairs & Services

Primary Purpose:

The Student Success Analyst is a key member of the Student Affairs & Services planning team to oversee and implement multiple research projects and initiatives supporting undergraduate and graduate student success.

The analyst regularly communicates those research results via presentations and written/visual reports to stakeholders across campus, including leadership, administration, and staff in multiple areas, including Student Affairs & Services, Academic Affairs, Faculty, and Registrar’s Office. The analyst focuses on providing actionable information to stakeholders across campus, developing analysis with a focus on providing actionable information on student success initiatives, high-impact activities, best practices, and understanding of the student body to stakeholders. This position requires excellent communication skills to provide appropriate interpretation and analysis of results for multiple stakeholders and partners.

The analyst collaborates closely with Institutional Accountability and the Registrar's Office to ensure data integrity, including data preparation and transformation, writing queries, conducting analyses using descriptive and inferential statistical methods, and preparation of reports.

Specific Responsibilities

To be successful in the Student Success Analyst position, an individual must be committed to developing, maintaining and demonstrating the following:

• Analyze, recommend, and report on university metrics (e.g., retention, placement, graduation rates, engagement, student learning, service streamlining, and learning pathways) for administrative decision-making and strategic planning, often on short timelines.
• Proactively identify opportunities and manage research projects that contribute to data-informed decision-making to support student success across campus.
• Interpret findings and make recommendations on interventions to improve time to degree, persistence, and other student success metrics.
• Leverage student success technology tools to perform research about our student population and provide training support to other campus stakeholders in tool use.
• Exercise considerable independence in developing problem-solving methodologies or strategies and evaluating criteria based on recent trends in student success research.
• Provide analytical and research support for the development and assessment of student success initiatives.
• Perform institutional research, predictive analysis, and reporting on student-success-related topics such as student retention, student learning and institutional outcomes, and student thriving.
• Partner closely with Institutional Accountability to represent student success goals in building routine reports for the campus community, conducting research such as campus-wide surveys and focus groups, and other projects.
• Represent student success goals and objectives to collaborate with Institutional Accountability on projects such as creating scoring models and reports identifying key performance indicators that can be used to track and/or predict student outcomes using advanced statistical techniques.
• Liaise with the Registrar’s Office and IT to extract data, build reports, and ensure consistent data preparation and analysis.
• Assist in transitioning the existing university expertise in modelling and research for undergraduate retention to graduate student persistence, modifying and extending data collection and analysis as appropriate.
• Use statistical software to analyze data from a variety of sources. Keep current on knowledge of statistical software.
• Review current literature in the field of student success; identify opportunities for additional research and share best practices with student success team and other campus partners
• Identify innovative data sources. Gather and organize qualitative and quantitative data. Given an assignment, determine the best method to collect and compile data, and provide analysis.
• Maintain repositories of data and libraries of frequently used information in anticipation of projects that will be conducted under very short timelines.
• Follow the university’s policies and best practices in data collection and management.
• Oversee updating of critical data related to student success in university systems.
• Administer surveys to students and advisors in the institutional survey tool and convert survey results into visualizations or concise summaries
• Conduct focus groups and other research projects to support student success goals.
• Partner with other analysts across campus to support student enrollment data collection, reporting and outreach in alignment with registration cycles each quarter and academic term.
• Information dissemination, reporting, and communication.
• Organize and report research results clearly and effectively in narrative, tabular, graphical, and oral modes, using software such as Tableau or Microsoft Power BI. Design the format and layout of data and reports, charts, tables, and other related documents and graphics in accordance with office graphic design standards.
• Work closely with the Director of Student Affairs & Services to communicate research findings to faculty and staff.
• Prepare and present presentations to a broad array of audiences.
• Develop succinct and user-friendly research briefs intended for a general audience.
• Participate and co-lead student surveys and research-related committees as needed.
• Communicate methodologies and timelines with school liaisons and coordinate follow-up with administrators regarding cyclical reports (e.g., annual reports, board reports, retention reports, campus-wide survey administration, outreach reports, and summary reports for committees such as Academic Planning).

*This job description outlines the key responsibilities for the role and is not meant to be exhaustive. Other responsibilities and tasks may be assigned or may naturally become a part of this role over time.

Position Requirements

Competencies:

• Ability to develop metrics, measurements, templates, and tools for continual improvement tracking and monitoring of key indicators for areas of responsibility that facilitate the process of research within a culture of data-informed decision-making.
• Willingness to learn tools and technologies to support data analysis and visualization.
• Demonstrated attention to detail.
• Ability to work independently and manage projects under tight timelines.
• Ability to adjust work projects as priorities evolve.

Education and Experience:

• Statistical experience in the social sciences or education.
• Demonstrated experience in survey designs.
• Bachelor’s degree minimum.
• Two years of professional experience in data analysis and/or visualization.
• Intermediate knowledge of Excel (including but not limited to VLOOKUP, pivot tables, calculations, basic visualizations, power pivot, and power query).
• Basic knowledge of statistical concepts and applications.
• Experience using data visualization tools such as Tableau or Power BI.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master’s degree.
• Experience conducting applied social/educational research and/or assessment projects.
• 3-5 years of progressively responsible professional full-time experience in higher education or a non-profit organization.
• Experience with data visualization tools and additional knowledge of scripting languages like R, Python, and SQL.

To apply for this role, please submit your resume and cover letter in one PDF file.

We greatly appreciate your time and efforts in applying for the position at UCW, however, please note only successful candidates will be contacted.

University Canada West is strongly committed to equity, diversity and inclusivity within its community and especially welcomes applications from racialized persons / persons of colour, women, Indigenous / Aboriginal People of North America, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ2S+ persons and others who may contribute to the further diversification of ideas.

The University recognizes that applicants may have had obligations outside of work that have negatively impacted their record of achievements (e.g., parental, elder care and/or medical). You are not required to disclose these obligations in the hiring process. If you choose to do so, the University will ensure that these obligations do not negatively impact the assessment of your qualifications for the position.

If you require any accommodations at any point during the application and hiring process, please include this note in your application.