Decision Support

Benefit from the Data Warehouse > Industry Leadership

Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence in Higher Education is relatively a young industry, but one that has been growing in recent years. With the volatile state of funding for many Higher Education Institutions, more and more Institutions are starting to see the value that integrated, standardized, clean and easy to access data has in terms of providing the end users an opportunity to solve their business problems.  Complex questions like cost studies, immunization analysis, and other mandated reports can now be done in a simpler and faster way.

The University of Illinois Data Warehousing Team is no different in the realization and motivation to have the best asset for the user community.  We are not only committed to operating within best practices on our field, but we are also engaged in extending knowledge of national trends by participating in national organizations, assisting in the development of industry standards and communicating with peers at other Higher Education Institutions.

Professional Involvement
In an effort to meet or exceed national standards by improving staff expertise and knowledge, Decision Support is a member of The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI), EDUCAUSE, and the Higher Education Data Warehousing Forum (HEDW). Specifically:

  • We actively participate in the TDWI activities, including attending annual conferences, representing Higher Education at the Executive Steering Team, and participating as Faculty in the national Conference in San Diego.  For the past few years, we have also lobbied to have a new track designed specifically for Higher Education in their National Conference. 
  • We actively monitor and often participate on discussions in the EDUCAUSE Decision Support list serv (LISTSERV@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU), attend annual conferences, and special training sessions.  We have also contributed to the inventory survey.
  • We have been attendees, presenters, planning committee members and most recently, we hosted the 3rd Annual HEDW Forum.  That event was held on April 2-4 and brought together 160 Data Warehousing, IT and Institutional Reporting professionals from over 70 Higher Education Institutions across the country. 

Visits and Interviews from other Universities
In an effort to contribute to the growth of the Higher Education Data Warehousing industry, Decision Support has shared many of the practices, policies and procedures (including the design, budget and management of our effort) with several Higher Education Institutions.  We have collaborated with:

    • Notre Dame
    • Michigan State
    • University of Washington
    • Harvard (via consulting contract)
    • University of Georgia System
    • University of Miami at Ohio
    • University of Indiana
    • Iowa State