Lone Star College (LSC) is a public community college located in Houston, Texas. LSC has six campuses with an enrollment over 90,000 students, 16,000 students enrolled at the Lone Star College Montgomery (LSC-M) campus.
At AACRAO SEM 2018, Michael Chavez, Vice President of Student Success; Brian Mullen, Executive Director; and Dr. Rebecca Riley, President, shared their experience creating data teams to review data and target student populations to meet needs within the student body.
Data team structure and process
Members of the original Data Team consisted of the VP of Student Success, Dean of Enrollment Services, Academic Dean, Director of Learning Center, Faculty Counselor, Director of Student Success, and Analyst. LSC-M wanted the Data Team to be small in size, with the core members branching off to create additional Data Teams. Each Data Team had a unique focus. Tools that the Data Team used were Power BI as a Dashboard, PeopleSoft as their student information system, and Civitas to predict persistence. Once the target populations and segments were identified, LSC-M would ‘Nudge’ that student population. LSC-M used various forms of mobile application push notifications (MyLoneStar Portal Ads, Social Media Marketing, Google Ads, text, email, and phone) to communicate with the target population.
The process that the Data Team followed was identify an idea/vision, then meet, gather data, commit to the campaign, develop a Nudge intervention, implement the campaign, analyze the campaign, and document the campaign.
Example campaigns
The first campaign was ‘What’s Your Excuse’:
- The student population for the What’s Your Excuse campaign was a total of 1,000 students that had high GPA’s and lived within a 15 mile radius. Each student was awarded financial aid, enrolled fall term but did not register for spring term.
- Within 3 days of the campaign 228 students registered, which equaled a yield rate of 22.6%.
- The financial impact was a total of $904,000.
- The expense of the ad was $238, which was $1.05 per student.
The second campaign was ‘Finish Strong’:
- The student population for the Finish Strong campaign was a total of 306 students that were struggling with math.
- Within 3 days of the campaign 26 students requested tutoring.
- The financial impact was a total of $140,000.
- The expense of the ad was $0.06.
The third campaign was ‘English for Nursing’:
- The student population for the English for Nursing campaign was a total of 142 nursing students that had not registered for ENGL 1301.
- Within 3 days of the campaign 9 students registered for the course, within 14 days of the campaign the course was at full capacity.
- The expense of the ad was $57.
The overall impact during the last two years were enrollment increased 11%, FAFSA increased 18% with financial aid awards increasing by 48%, and students that enrolled in 15 or more credits increased 30%.
By Mickey Reynolds, Consultant, AACRAO Consulting