Quantifying Student Success Factors

Background

The Student Academic Success Center (SASC) at Carnegie Mellon University plays a vital role in supporting students who are struggling academically. Through individual counseling, regular check-ins, personalized study plans, and teaching effective studying strategies, SASC helps students get back on track toward academic success. Despite their significant impact, SASC operates with limited resources and needed a way to quantify their effectiveness to advocate for additional support from the university administration.

Details

The SUDS team collaborated with SASC to develop data-driven solutions that would help demonstrate the center’s impact on student outcomes. By analyzing historical student data and SASC intervention records, the team created comprehensive dashboards and visualizations that clearly illustrated the positive effects of SASC’s programs.

Deliverables

• Impact Analysis Dashboard: Interactive visualizations showing the academic performance improvements of students who participated in SASC programs compared to similar students who did not

• Intervention Effectiveness Models: Statistical models quantifying which specific SASC interventions had the strongest correlation with student success

• Resource Allocation Tool: A data-driven tool to help SASC staff identify which students might benefit most from specific interventions, optimizing the use of limited resources

• Executive Summary Report: A concise, data-backed report for university administration highlighting SASC’s impact and the potential return on investment from additional resources

Outcomes

The project provided SASC with compelling evidence of their program’s effectiveness, strengthening their position when advocating for additional resources. The dashboards and tools developed by the SUDS team also helped SASC staff make more informed decisions about how to allocate their time and resources to maximize student success. By translating SASC’s important work into quantifiable metrics, the project helped bridge the gap between student support services and administrative decision-making.