In this session, participants will explore CavConnection's design, review assessment data, and examine how ongoing student feedback has been intentionally used to shape and refine the program to better meet students' needs and expectations. CavConnection is a student-centered, one-day orientation program at Johnson County Community College, designed to support students during the critical first semester, when decisions about persistence often begin. Grounded in research from the Center for Community College Student Engagement (CCCSE) and aligned with NCCBP priorities, the program intentionally focuses on belonging, early engagement, and meaningful peer connection as drivers of student success.

Since its launch in Fall 2022, CavConnection, an optional experience, has seen a 400% increase in participation, serving more than 400 students in Fall 2025 alone. Participants consistently report increased confidence, preparedness, and connection to campus, with satisfaction ratings above 4.6/5. Student feedback highlights the program's impact on belonging, with one participant sharing, “I met so many people in my major and felt like I wasn't alone starting college."

This presentation will cover how Ozarks Tech has built a Power BI app to support data informed decision making across the institution. It will cover building the app as well as how we've used audiences to create role-based access to relevant data.

The best resource we have about how our students are doing is our faculty. They are on the ground with our students face-to-face multiple times a week. Usually by the time of Midterm deficiencies, there is not much time left for students to change course. Many warning signs are clear by four weeks into the semester. Jefferson College has begun tracking faculty concerns about student performance after the first quarter of the semester. The goal is to get timely feedback efficiently and across the whole campus to help students finish the semester strong and continue their education in subsequent terms. After small pilots and some statistical analysis demonstrating its impact, our college rolled out a new initiative called 1st Quarter Feedback. We are now a few years into deploying this effort college-wide. In coordination with our IT team to create a user-friendly reporting tool for our faculty, our IR team to analyze the results and track retention, and all of our faculty who are experts on student achievement, we have deployed the 1st Quarter Feedback initiative across our institution. Join us as we trace our journey from dream to deployment.

Miami Dade College (MDC) is developing its new strategic plan, MDC 2030, through an accelerated, data driven, and AI enabled process that is on track to finish in less than half the time of the previous planning cycle. The effort began with a comprehensive environmental scan that synthesized demographic, economic, workforce, and competitive intelligence to frame early goal area discussions. A structured Board of Trustees survey captured insights on long term opportunities, threats, and institutional direction, while a representative Strategic Planning Coordinating Committee (SPCC) and topical workgroups translated these inputs into draft goals and priorities. KPIs aligned with these discussions are emerging.

To broaden engagement, MDC hosted five town hall sessions across campuses, inviting students, faculty, and administrators to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and risks. Collegewide surveys of internal constituents and community partners on goals and priorities further expanded the dataset. At every stage—Board survey, SPCC workgroup priority setting, risk response discussions, town hall feedback, and collegewide surveys—AI agent prompting was used to help summarize thousands of open-ended comments within hours rather than weeks.

This rapid synthesis created a continuous feedback loop that allowed MDC to maintain momentum, refine priorities, and begin developing measurable KPIs while stakeholder engagement was still active. The integration of data analytics, structured engagement, and AI supported qualitative analysis has enabled MDC to accelerate planning without sacrificing rigor, inclusiveness, or transparency. This session presents a replicable model for modernizing strategic planning through data and AI.

This session will guide participants through a practical exploration of how academic rigor can be measured and connected to student success. It examines an assessment project at Valley Forge Military College that matched a Course Rigor Score against student success metrics to discover how to improve student learning. The project emerged from a faculty debate between the need for accountability within the military education model and the desire to ease students into college life at a two-year transfer institution. The findings showed that the debate was largely unnecessary: student success, measured by average GPA in a given semester, directly correlated with the level of course rigor. This presentation will share the project's methodology, results, and institutional impact, offering practical insights for colleges seeking to measure, enhance, and align rigor with student outcomes.

Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College (NEO) completed its first year participating in the National Community College Benchmarking Project. As a small, rural, two-year institution, NEO faces many challenges in building a comprehensive data strategy. Limited staffing, competing priorities, and decentralized data systems can make institutional research difficult to advance.

This session will share the honest experience of using the Benchmarking Project as a catalyst for strengthening data-informed decision-making. Learn how NEO leveraged its first year of participation as an entry point into a more mature institutional research approach.

Many accreditation narratives rely on descriptions of process rather than evidence of impact. This session presents a disciplined approach to using NCCBP benchmarks and associated data as quality institutional evidence by sifting it through a framework of existence, use, and effectiveness. The framework asks three progressively demanding questions: does the practice exist, is it being used, and is there evidence it works? Data becomes most powerful when institutions move beyond reporting participation in benchmarking and demonstrate how results inform decisions and whether those decisions produce improvement. The presenters walk through this progression as a method for transforming benchmark data into layered evidence that first informs the institution about its own operations, then provides external audiences with the insight to evaluate performance. The session addresses selecting metrics aligned to HLC criteria, contextualizing comparative data, and avoiding the trap of numbers without narrative or narrative without numbers. Small-group discussions will give attendees the opportunity to review their own NCCBP data use against the framework, identify areas of thin evidence, and exchange strategies with peers. Participants will leave with a sharper method for making data they already collect do the evidentiary work accreditation demands

SUNY Onondaga Community College (SUNY OCC) initiated the 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) in 2024 as a strategic execution framework while simultaneously aligning with their new institutional strategic plan and KPIs. Faced with the challenge of advancing ambitious goals while strengthening a culture of transparency and accountability, SUNY OCC intentionally aligned planning, performance management, and organizational culture. This session explores this holistic approach where participants will learn how integrating clearly defined, measurable goals, collaborative planning processes, and a culture of engagement can drive organizational effectiveness and outcomes. The session highlights 4DX for translating strategy into action and for fostering engagement and shared responsibility. Presenters will share SUNY OCC and other higher education institutions case study illustrating how these practices were intentionally aligned to support institutional priorities, accreditation expectations, and campus-wide engagement. Attendees will leave with practical insights that can be adapted to their own institutional and organizational contexts.

Community colleges are at an inflection point. AI has the potential to transform how institutions serve students, allocate resources, and make decisions - but only for colleges whose data is ready to power it. ZogoTech was founded with community colleges at the center - and the reason why might surprise you. In this session, we'll share the personal story behind why we're so committed to community colleges, cut through the AI hype, and focus on what actually matters: getting your data AI-ready. You'll hear directly from data leaders at Johnson County Community College and City Colleges of Chicago - two institutions already doing this work - on what's driving their decisions, what they've learned, and what they'd do differently. And because the best insights won't only come from the front of the room - we're opening the floor for your questions, skepticism, and experience. Where does AI feel like an opportunity, and where does it feel like a risk?

You'll leave with:

- A clear picture of what AI-ready data actually looks like
- A practical framework for assessing where your institution stands today
- Real strategies from peer institutions you can act on immediately