News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Tennessee Tech’s Board of Trustees will now be able to see information important to the university in one digital dashboard.
Executive Director of Strategic Planning Dewayne Wright said that most of this data will have 10 years of history, making trends easy to track. Wright said the board has been interested in metrics and a way to access it in one place.
“This is all data that the university has collected over the years, the problem was it was not in a single, easily accessible location for the board members,” Wright said. “It was strewn about a large number of annual reports.”
Wright said there are more than 100 data points across nine different categories important to Tech. For example, student success, enrollment, athletics and financials.
“A board member would have to… One, know where to look and two, have the time to be able to go through each of those reports and go to each of the different offices,” Wright said. “There are more than 100 data points that are in the boards data dashboard and so, this is really a time saver for them.”
He said this will not replace more detailed data reports but will provide a gateway into deeper discussions with university administrators. Something Tech calls a high altitude view of the university.
“When we talk about that, we’re talking about not being so far into the weeds,” Wright said. “For example, the university keeps data for the graduation rate at the university level, but also at the departmental level. We’re able to see if the English Department’s graduation rate is at this level… What this dashboard does is keeps things at the university level.”
Wright said work on this project began in December 2018 and faced some delays due to COVID travel restrictions. He said this dashboard will continue to be updated as data and annual reports are given.
