Today’s colleges and universities have to work harder than ever to engage the current generation of students. At The George Washington University (GW), administrators have funneled their efforts through multiple data silos. These massive collections of data are managed by Informatica, Corp.

Jelena Roljevic, assistant VP of Business Intelligence at The George Washington University, spoke to John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during Informatica World 2016. She said GW’s data governance has progressed to a “tactical level.” In order to promote student engagement with on-campus events, the university has been measuring interest based on clicks and social media.

Roljevic estimated that the average GW student brings six devices to campus. She mentioned cell phones, computers, tablets, and gaming platforms as potential data generators.

How digital footprints affect admission

Most incoming students are “digitally native,” explained Roljevic. This shift has changed not just the University’s approach to retention and student success, but also GW’s admission experience. Like most higher education institutions, GW looks at how engaged perspective students are during their recruitment and application process. This process goes down the IP address level; that’s how important digital footprints have become.

“It would take a couple of days to discuss” the full intricacies of “recruiting and attracting students,” Roljevic remarked. Nevertheless, she concluded that GW looks at the “full profile” of students to predict if he or she will be a “good fit.”

Roljevic emphasized that if data was important enough to be on GW’s dashboard, it should be further analyzed. Data governance has been operating through business intelligence for about three and half years. Roljevic said the system is now “fully agile,” but she continued, stating GW’s “offices need more data.” GW’s many campuses “live in discovery mode,” she concluded.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Informatica World 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE