Michael Slattery.pdf - Slattery| 1 Michael Slattery Dr. Han...

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Michael Slattery
Dr. Han Reichtgelt
ISM 6930: Data Visualizations
December 3, 2020
Research on the University of South Florida’s Graduate Certificate Programs
Introduction:
As a means of leveraging institutional resources under the recent consolidation of USF’s three
campuses, the administrative oversight of USF’s graduate certificates has been transitioned from the
Innovative Education office to the Office of Graduate Studies. In its new administrative responsibilities,
Graduate Studies will be taking on the processing of both admissions and completions for all 115 of
USF’s existing graduate certificate programs. However, due to the office’s previous removal from these
administrative processes, research must be conducted to determine both institutional trends as a whole
and specific to each graduate certificate program offered, assessing both efficiencies and deficiencies
with the aim of making improvements in future processing wherever necessary. Therefore, the purpose
of this research project is to provide an in-depth analysis of all relevant activity observed by USF’s
graduate certificate programs.
The following three research questions have been formulated to assess USF’s graduate certificates
based on admissions, active enrollment, and completions.
• What has the historical admissions activity been for USF’s graduate certificate programs?
• What is the make-up of the USF’s actively enrolled graduate certificate student population?
• What has the completion activity been like among USF’s graduate certificate programs?

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Methodology:
The data used for this research project were pulled directly from USF’s primary student information
system, Banner, by way of the SAP reporting function currently used by USF for operational data-driven
purposes. This data may be considered a “snapshot” of that which is currently reflected in Banner and
can be easily redrawn term-to-term. The following are the specific reports utilized for the purposes of
researching USF’s active Graduate Certificates:
•
Graduate: Application Detail Report
•
Graduate Certificate: General Data
•
Graduate Certificate: Count of Awarded Certificates
•
Graduate Certificate: Time to Completion
Most of these reports were crafted between USF’s Office of Decision Support (who oversees the SAP
reporting space) and Innovative Education as a means of periodically tracking activity. However, the
Graduate: Application Detail Report was created in coordination with Graduate Admissions for tracking
daily admissions activity by applications received. This report was initially generated and calibrated to
target all non-degree (ND) applicants over the past five academic years (Fall 2015 - Summer 2020). Once
generated, the Graduate: Application Detail Report did require some additional culling. For instance,
undergraduate certificates and graduate pathways programs also conduct admissions processing using
the ND student type, so those needed to be removed. There is also a glitch in Banner SIS that generates
duplicate application records (sometimes as many as 10 to 20) for graduate certificate applicants
generating multiple records with the same student, graduate certificate program, and term listed in
each row; therefore, the data were subsequently de-duplicated on the basis of these three data points
(using the U_ID primary key for the student data point). Additionally, an “AYR” (Academic Year) column