Staff Excellence: External Data Analytics

Multiple times each year, Purdue University’s status as a first-class academic institution is cemented in rankings released by agencies across the globe. But behind the scenes, the process of vetting and interpreting the data necessary to compile the rankings and size them up against those of peer universities falls to one team — External Data Analytics. 

“We are ensuring that the university is putting out the best available data to the public, to the rankings agencies and to those who are evaluating us,” says David Robledo, executive director of External Data Analytics. “Our mission is to understand Purdue’s position relative to our peers — where we are improving, where we need to improve. Quantitatively, those insights may inform actions by the senior executives.”

Led by Robledo and housed in the Office of the President, the team comprises three senior data analysts, one senior contact management specialist and a handful of student employees. The team works closely with university leadership to manage the entire process of examining, benchmarking and sharing academic rankings established by top agencies like Times Higher Education, U.S. News & World Report and Quacquarelli Symonds.

External Data Analytics staff members are charged with various rankings management tasks like submitting data surveys, sifting through rankings results, teasing out the university’s strengths and weaknesses, and partnering with Purdue Brand Studio to share the news across campus and beyond.

As individuals, they’re highly inquisitive, information-savvy employees who strive to elevate the quality of data and facts distributed by the university. As a team, this group is a powerhouse that uses its extensive, wide-ranging knowledge of Purdue to understand and improve the processes associated with managing the university’s data.

“What I think makes my group successful is that we’ve been able to hire people who have had Purdue experience in a diverse set of backgrounds,” Robledo says. “We have a breadth of Purdue data knowledge, and we draw on that almost daily. The topics that we analyze are also fairly broad, so having that experience on the team has been incredibly helpful.”

When comparing Purdue’s performance to that of peer universities, External Data Analytics often looks toward the Association of American Universities (AAU), which includes 71 distinguished public and private research universities, including Purdue, whose membership dates back to 1958.

Member institutions are evaluated on four key performance indicators: federally funded research expenditures, highly prestigious awards, citations and books.

External Data Analytics works closely with the Provost’s Office, Libraries, and the Office of Research to ensure the AAU has a highly accurate picture of Purdue. While Purdue leaders foster an environment where faculty can thrive and be successful, External Data Analytics is laser-focused on improving the accuracy and consistency of data that goes out the door.

“We have a mandate to inspect anything that goes out that affects those performance indicators to ensure they’re counted correctly,” Robledo says. “We’re challenging the status quo, building improvement strategies and putting our best foot forward.”

Additionally, these staff members’ work extends beyond rankings management and benchmarking. When Purdue President Mung Chiang asked the team for a historical list of the university’s national medal winners, Robledo and his staff sprung to work but eventually struggled to identify alumni and former faculty award recipients. After a few weeks of efforts manually compiling a list of winners, the team sought out a more proactive approach for future requests, eager to create a method that could produce the same answer in a fraction of the time. The result was a set of scripts that gather information from governing societies’ websites and automatically cross-reference it with other sources to identify Purdue connections. Photographs honoring Purdue’s National Medal winners have since been displayed on the national medals wall outside the president’s office.

“I’m particularly proud of what we’re doing in the highly prestigious awards tracking space, but the work’s not entirely done,” Robledo says. “We’re also partnering with the Faculty Recognition Office to aid them in recording and managing these awards as they are earned by our faculty.”

No matter the task at hand, this team of highly skilled, innovative employees will always deliver, often with a plan to streamline the exact same task in the future. They’re quick, accurate, and always mindful of how their work impacts the university and its key stakeholders. Further, they continually pave the way for university leaders to assess the data behind Purdue’s position and performance on a national and global scale, knowing they’ve done their job correctly when there isn’t a single stone in their path left to turn.