Next Wednesday, our office will be hosting our second annual Data Literacy Session—a chance to step back and reflect on how far we’ve come in making data more accessible, usable, and impactful across campus. The session entitled “Facts Decoded II: Exploring our University’s Data” will build upon last year’s session focused on unlocking the stories in our data. This year, we hope to add more chapters.
Since the last blog post, a lot has happened behind the scenes in Institutional Research and Planning. One of the most exciting developments is the launch of our IR data lake—though I’ll be the first to admit, it’s still more of a basin right now. But it’s deep enough to hold over a decade of student, course, section, instructor assignment, and employee data in a flatter, more efficient format than Banner’s 1500+ tables.
And yes—there are benefits. This structure has made it faster and more intuitive to power our reporting workflows, especially in PowerBI. With cleaner joins and fewer transformations needed, the data lake is helping us shift from reactive reports to proactive insights. It’s also the backbone for how we’re aligning SQL for the heavy lifting, Excel for quick checks, and PowerBI for final delivery—each tool playing to its strength.
To keep us aligned, we’ve started documenting what data lives where and how it flows. We are starting small with an Excel document that “documents” each of our nightly processes and what it places where. It’s a small but important step toward ensuring we’re all pulling from the same “source of truth.”
This also dovetails with the launch of a new Data Governance initiative on campus (#whereismydata), which was proposed by our CIO after her visit to Arizona State. The goal is to better formalize where data lives—not just in IR, but across the institution—and ensure we’re managing it strategically, governing it properly, documenting it seriously, and in the end, are all using it consistently and correctly.
On a personal note, I was honored to receive one of the university’s Distinguished Service Awards this spring, marking 28 years at Marshall, and to be invited back as a mentor in the John Marshall Leadership Fellows program, a program I proudly completed just last year as one of the fellows. It’s been rewarding to give back and help cultivate the next generation of campus leaders, and I can assure you that my mentee is going to be an incredible leader!
Hope to see you at the session next week. Let’s keep telling better stories—with better data.
Brian M. Morgan
Chief Data Officer, Marshall University