Light morning refreshments will be available during check-in. Take the opportunity to connect with fellow attendees before Day 1 sessions begin.

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SHOW US YOUR SPIRIT: Show off your style and creativity in your college or university gear for a chance to win a fun prize. 

Bring extra swag to share the spirit with others!

OPENING ACTIVITY: Kick off Day 1 with a fun icebreaker to get everyone involved. 

Betty Lopez, AzAIR President

Doug Walls                                                             Thara Salamone

Labor Market Information Director                            Senior Demographer

Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity            Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity

This keynote will explore Arizona’s evolving population and economic landscape, providing important statewide context for higher education planning and decision making. The session will highlight key demographic and workforce trends shaping communities across the state and offer insight into how these shifts intersect with enrollment patterns, opportunity, and long-term institutional priorities. For institutional research and effectiveness professionals, this broader perspective can help inform data-driven conversations and future planning.

Meredith Abrams, Maricopa Community Colleges

Stephnie Hopple, Maricopa Community Colleges

Adam Lee, AMaricopa Community Colleges

Dustin Maroney, Central Arizona College

The Economic Hardship Index is a tool designed to measure and compare the economic distress of communities. Developed to provide a comprehensive picture beyond simple income, it analyzes six key indicators: unemployment, dependency, education, income, housing, and poverty. While often used for studying how economic conditions affect health outcomes, it can also be used in higher education to both identify students in need of additional support services and measure institutional effectiveness. 

A meal will be provided during this dedicated time for networking.

Ferris Ramadan, Longitudinal Data System Director

Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity

AzAIR Community

The Mix of Metrics Poster Session offers an informal and conversational space to explore innovative work from across our community. This session highlights works in progress, dashboards, research projects, pilot initiatives, and practical campus solutions.

All posters will be displayed together in a shared space during a dedicated session time, creating an energetic and collaborative environment. Presenters will stand by their printed posters and engage attendees in one-on-one and small-group conversations as participants circulate throughout the room. With multiple discussions happening simultaneously, this format encourages dynamic dialogue, meaningful idea exchange, and practical takeaways in a supportive setting. 

Vanshaj Gupta, Arizona State University

Institutions generate countless reports and dashboards across multiple teams, often resulting in an incomplete data story due to disconnected systems, siloed datasets, and inconsistent KPI definitions

This session explores a central question: How do we align our systems and definitions so everyone sees the same story?

Drawing from the experience at ASU Learning Enterprise, this presentation shares how we moved beyond simply building a dashboard to aligning data sources, standardizing KPI logic, and creating a unified foundation for institutional reporting.

Samantha Selby, Arizona State University

Many of those in higher education recognize the importance of a sense of belonging for student success, but might not know how to measure it, put results into action, or scale data collection. Arizona State University has spent years adapting and designing a valid and reliable sense of belonging survey. This session uses ASU as a case study that moves sense of belonging data from conceptualization toward scaling collection, including the development of the survey, findings, and lessons learned for collecting at scale. Participants will leave with an understanding of one approach to measuring sense of belonging, and an example of how to engage stakeholders to scale data collection and integrate the belonging survey and results into their institution. 

Enjoy a hot breakfast at check-in and connect with fellow attendees before Day 2 begins.

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OPENING ACTIVITY:  Kick off Day 2 with a lively icebreaker to get everyone energized. 

Betty Lopez, AzAIR President 

Maria Willis, Arizona State University

Effective enrollment management requires more than static projections built months before registration begins. Institutions increasingly need dynamic, data-informed approaches that integrate admissions pipelines, move-on and progression rates, historical course composition, and real-time enrollment trends to optimize course offerings and resource allocation.

This session presents a practical framework for developing both initial and continuously updated course enrollment projections. Participants will explore how to integrate admissions data (yield rates, student type), student progression metrics (retention, move-on rates), and historical course enrollment behavior (fill rates, majors, modality preferences) to create accurate, responsive forecasts.

The presentation will demonstrate how predictive modeling and dashboard-driven monitoring can support iterative decision-making throughout the active enrollment cycle. Attendees will learn strategies for identifying leading indicators of enrollment shifts, adjusting course capacity in real time, and aligning instructional staffing with evolving demand. Particular attention will be given to cross-functional collaboration among institutional leadership, academic departments, and enrollment management to ensure projections translate into actionable scheduling decisions.

By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

•        Construct a multi-source data model to inform initial course enrollment projections.

•        Incorporate move-on and progression analytics to anticipate downstream course demand.

•        Develop processes for frequent projection updates using live enrollment and registration data.

•        Apply trend analysis to optimize course offerings, reduce bottlenecks, and improve student progression.

•        Align course planning decisions with broader enrollment and retention goals.

This session is designed for institutional research professionals, enrollment managers, academic planners, and data analysts seeking to enhance forecasting precision and improve institutional agility in course scheduling and enrollment optimization.

Fermin Ornelas, Rio Salado College 

This research uses a four certificate programs: Addiction/Substance Abuse Level I, Accounting, Paralegal, and Programming. The longitudinal data set consisted of 535 observations of students. A random forest model was built to predict student retention into the following year. Several models were compared in their performance metrics: accuracy, recall, precision, and F1-Score. The random forest model was selected based on those metrics. Model accuracy achieved was 84% but more importantly false positive and false negative rates were acceptable. A REST API and a front API in STREAMLIT were built for model deployment pilot hosted at Hugging Face. Additional analysis is provided to facilitate interpretation of marginal effects of the variables introduced in the model.

Pallavi Sharma, Arizona State University

Higher education institutions track a variety of operational and business data, yet many struggle to clearly define and translate “North Star” metrics that directly advance institutional effectiveness. The challenge is often not access to data, but rather aligning reporting structures with the measures that most meaningfully influence portfolio performance and learner success. 

This session will explore how a structured metrics framework at ASU Learning Enterprise strengthened the connection between operational reporting and strategic decision-making and evolved the role of its analytics team from passive contributors to strategic partners.

Sandra Lascher, Arizona Community College Success Center

Arizona’s 19 public community colleges operate in diverse environments yet face shared challenges related to workforce alignment, enrollment shifts, leadership transition, and increasing public accountability. The Arizona Community College Success Center serves as a statewide hub that connects institutions through cross-college dialogue, coordinated leadership development, and shared infrastructure designed to strengthen institutional capacity.

This session provides a high-level overview of the Center’s work in aligning colleges around shared priorities and building durable statewide structures that support collaboration and implementation. We will also explore how the Center can work alongside Institutional Research offices to support colleges in responding to growing requests for data literacy across roles, including faculty, staff, and campus leaders.

Participants will be invited into a conversation about what a statewide approach to data literacy could look like in Arizona and how IR leaders can help shape that framework.

Includes distribution of pre-selected boxed lunches.

Ask, Analyze, Act: Transforming Institutional Research with Claude Code

Adwait Sharad More, Arizona State University

Institutional research teams are expected to deliver timely, actionable insights, yet many workflows remain slowed by manual processes and technical complexity.

This session explores how tools like Claude Code can enable IR professionals to move from question to insight faster using natural language to clean data, generate analyses, and create reports without advanced programming skills.

Through practical examples, attendees will see how Claude Code can support common IR tasks such as data exploration, trend identification, and stakeholder-ready summaries. The focus is on augmenting existing workflows to reduce effort and increase productivity.

Attendees will leave with clear, actionable ways to incorporate AI into their daily work and enhance their impact.

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Canvas of Success: The Art of Academic Assessment for Student Success

Charity Adams, Mohave College

Shelly Castaneda, Mohave College

Andrea Wange, Mohave College

In the evolving landscape of education, effective assessment reporting is vital for illuminating student mastery of learning outcomes. This session will explore the enhanced academic course and program assessment processes implemented by an Arizona college, showcasing tools that drive continuous improvement toward student mastery. We will discuss best practices and successful strategies utilized, emphasizing methodologies that enhance assessment processes while fostering transparency and collaboration among faculty and staff. Participants will gain insight into assessment frameworks and tools ensuring alignment between learning outcomes, key assessments, and evidence-based decision-making. By sharing insights and experiences, we aim to inspire attendees to reflect on their own assessment practices, cultivating a culture of continuous improvement that benefits Arizona's diverse student population. Join us as we paint a picture of success through data-informed assessment, reinforcing our collective mission to provide students with quality education. Together, let’s embrace the art of assessment and enhance the educational journey for all learners.

Community College Session: Postsecondary CTE Performance Measures: FY25 Outcomes, FY26 Accountability 

Charles Jarvis, CTE Director of Data & Accountability, Arizona Department of Education

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Tri-U University Discussion

Popcorn and assorted snacks will be available. Enjoy a treat now or pack something for later, and take time to connect with colleagues.

Trevor Hart, Eastern Arizona College

Discover how Microsoft 365 can empower your team to automate data request processes and manage them effectively, from the initial submission to final deliverables and completion to post completion management. This session will cover how to design a user-friendly form for submitting data requests, trigger automated workflows using Power Automate, and manage requests through a SharePoint list from initial submission to post completion management. Attendees will learn how to configure automated dynamic email notifications to keep both requesters and assignees informed throughout the process. This session is valuable for professionals seeking to reduce manual effort, improve transparency, and enhance operational efficiency. By the end, participants will understand how to implement a scalable solution that transforms data request handling into a streamlined experience.

Alecia Radatz, Arizona State University

Wage and earnings data are increasingly used as one way to understand student success after completion, offering valuable insight into how education connects to the labor market. At the same time, wage data come from multiple sources with different strengths, limitations, and definitions, which can make interpretation more complex than it first appears. This session explores how wage outcomes can be used constructively alongside other measures of student success, highlighting what these data do well, where caution is warranted, and how institutional researchers can help stakeholders ask better questions and draw more meaningful conclusions.