From Questions to Change: Celebrating 10 Years of Data Fellows
Some of the most important questions facing higher education rarely have simple answers.
Why do some students graduate while others leave before earning a degree? What factors contribute to persistent opportunity gaps? How do students navigate their academic journeys, changing majors, transferring to colleges, or finding their path to graduation? And how can universities use data not simply to measure outcomes, but to improve them?
For the past decade, ֦ƵState University, Long Beach's Data Fellows program has created a space where faculty, staff, and administrators come together to explore questions like these. As the program celebrates its 10th anniversary, it stands as one of the university's longest-running professional learning communities dedicated to understanding student success through institutional data.
Launched in 2015 as part of the university's broader efforts to improve student outcomes, Data Fellows was designed to bring together employees from across campus who shared a common goal: using data to better understand the student experience and inform institutional decision-making.
From the beginning, the program was intentionally collaborative.
"I remember one of the original goals of the program was to bring people across the university together to learn how to interact with data and use it to better understand institutional problems we were facing like persistent opportunity gaps, high attrition rates, and low four-year graduation rates," said Lizzet Rojas, who participated in Data Fellows during the 2015-16 academic year as part of the College of Business team.
At the time, Rojas worked with institutional reports related to retention and graduation. Data Fellows offered something different.
"I was excited to move away from mere reporting to actual use of institutional data to see how we could improve retention and graduation, particularly among our traditionally marginalized students," she said.
That shift—from reporting data to using data to solve problems—became a defining characteristic of the program.
Over the past decade, Data Fellows has grown from 36 participants across 14 teams in its inaugural 2015-16 cohort to, at its largest, 78 fellows across 19 interdisciplinary teams, representing colleges and units from throughout the university. After eight years, the program grew to more than 430 faculty, staff, administrators, and students participating across eight cohorts. Today, the program continues to convene approximately 50 participants annually, reflecting a sustained campus commitment to data-informed decision-making.
"When we launched the Data Fellows program, our vision was never simply to improve access to data—it was to transform how our institution thinks about student success,” shared Vice Provost for Academic Planning Dhushy Sathianathan. “By building a shared understanding of our challenges, fostering collective ownership of institutional data, and empowering faculty and staff to turn insights into action, Data Fellows has become a catalyst for meaningful institutional change."
Over the years, teams have examined a wide range of institutional questions—from graduation and retention rates to academic warning, Black student success, scholarship equity, Long Beach College Promise outcomes, study abroad participation, graduate student success, Canvas engagement, foundational STEM courses, artificial intelligence, and degree pathways for nontraditional students. While every project begins with data, each is designed with a common purpose: informing decisions that improve student success.
What distinguishes Data Fellows from many professional development opportunities is its ability to break down institutional silos.
"What made Data Fellows unique is that it brought people out of their silos and brought them into a common space where they were able to step away from day-to-day operations to look at the big picture," Rojas said. "Data Fellows intentionally brought people holding different roles across the institution and allowed them to collaborate and learn from each other."
Those collaborations often reveal perspectives that would otherwise remain disconnected. Rojas recalls working on a College of Liberal Arts project examining major migration alongside faculty members, advisors, researchers, and administrators.
"What really stood out was not so much the data and research skills we brought, but rather the diverse range of insights that we all brought given our different roles and the learning that resulted because of that," she said. "One of the most important members we had was the academic advisor, who was able to look at the data we were presenting and tell the stories behind these data points."
Like many programs across campus, Data Fellows evolved over time.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced the program to pause before returning in a virtual format. Subsequent iterations experimented with new structures, including multi-year projects that attempted to blend quantitative and qualitative research. While not every change produced the desired results, those years ultimately helped clarify the program's direction.
A significant turning point came in 2022 when new co-directors Seiji Steimetz and Mary Anne Rose helped guide the program into a new chapter.
“We hit the ground running in Fall 2022, diving straight into the second year of the program’s two-year project cycle,” Rose said. “When Seiji and I stepped into our roles as Co-Directors for the Data Fellows Program, it felt like a classic full-circle moment. Years earlier, we had teamed up in the College of Liberal Arts: he as the undergraduate advisor for the Economics BA, and I as a college staff advisor. Reconnecting to lead this initiative together wasn’t just a professional privilege; it was genuinely fun.”
The redesign wasn't simply about changing the format. It also narrowed the program's focus. Rather than asking participants to become experts in every data system on campus, the planning team centered the curriculum around practical skills—including data literacy, institutional dashboards, pivot tables, data storytelling, visualization, and combining data sources—that participants could immediately apply in their own departments.
By 2023, the planning team had redesigned the experience around data literacy, institutional data analysis, Excel-based research skills, and data storytelling. Sessions became fully in-person again, and a new curriculum emphasized practical tools participants could immediately apply in their work.
Few people have witnessed that evolution as closely as Rachel Rivas.
Rivas first encountered Data Fellows in 2020 while interviewing for an analyst position at ֦Ƶ. She remembers learning about the program before she even accepted the job.
"I looked at the Data Fellows website and saw that it was basically a data analyst training program specific to higher education student success," she recalled. "I thought, if I take this job and do this Data Fellows thing, maybe I can be a real data analyst."
She joined a Data Fellows project examining academic warning rates among transfer students in the College of Business, learning how to work with institutional datasets and conduct statistical analyses. Eventually, she moved from participant to planning team member, helping redesign the curriculum and shape the future direction of the program.
Together, the planning team established four pillars that continue to guide Data Fellows today: deepening shared understanding of higher education challenges, fostering a culture of ownership of data, empowering faculty and staff to use institutional data to promote student success, and facilitating interactions that can lead to institutional change.
“There is nothing better than seeing things click into practice,” Rose said. “This past year, we had a team from the College of Health and Human Services (CHHS) that examined how Long Beach Unified (LBUSD) high school pathways aligned with majors in CHHS. The team found that completing College and Career Readiness pathways in high school made an impact on ֦Ƶ degree completion. While this finding might seem expected, it was very cool to see aggregate data over five years and [over]1,300 students support the statement that these students were more likely to graduate from ֦Ƶ within four years.”
Similar projects have examined thousands of student records to better understand everything from transfer student success and major migration to graduate education, allowing campus units to make decisions grounded in evidence rather than assumptions.
Beyond the projects themselves, the program has become a training ground for data literacy across campus. Fellows spend the academic year learning how to access institutional data, ask meaningful research questions, analyze trends, and communicate findings through annual poster symposiums attended by roughly 100 campus leaders, faculty, staff, and students each year.
For Rivas, the program's value extends far beyond technical skills.
"Data Fellows has been an important part of my time here at ֦Ƶ and the value of this program is intangible," she said. "It's the reason I took the job, and it's how I learned to be a Data Analyst."
The program's impact can also be seen in the careers it has influenced. Rojas credits Data Fellows with helping shape a professional journey that took her from institutional research roles at ֦Ƶ to graduate study at UCLA, where she is now pursuing a doctorate in Social Research Methodology.
"My involvement with Data Fellows sparked my curiosity around how to leverage institutional data to understand and address system problems we were facing," she said. "The training I received in Data Fellows gave me the foundation and curiosity I needed to continue going deeper into how to do and facilitate this work."
As Data Fellows enters its second decade, the questions facing higher education continue to evolve. Yet the program's purpose remains remarkably consistent with its original vision: bringing people together to better understand the institution, its students, and the challenges they face.
"Over time, the program has grown into a collaborative space where faculty and staff deepen their understanding of institutional priorities, take ownership of data-informed decision-making, and work together to create lasting, positive change for our students,” Vice Provost Sathianathan said. “That shared commitment remains at the heart of the program."
In recent years, the program has stabilized around 10 interdisciplinary teams each year, representing academic colleges as well as Academic Affairs and Student Affairs. Its planning team now provides biweekly workshops, project coaching, institutional data support, and an annual symposium, creating a professional learning community that extends far beyond individual research projects.
Looking back, Rojas believes the greatest value of Data Fellows was never any single project or presentation.
"It wasn't so much a particular project or final deliverable," she said. "It was the act of being in the thick of this work together, being committed to engaging in the process and trying to learn from each other, and finally, to being committed to follow it up with action."
Ten years later, that spirit of curiosity, collaboration, and action continues to define Data Fellows and the questions that will shape its next decade.
