As interim CIO at Valdosta State University in Georgia,Brian A. Haugabrook must ensure that the school's IT systems meet the needs of faculty, staff and 12,000-plus students. But he says an effective IT operation must do more than keep computers and networks running. It must also help the university fulfill its mission by giving officials a way to reach out to students at risk of failing. To do that, Haugabrook deployed analytics tools that allow faculty and staff members to determine which students need extra help and then coordinate that support. Less than two years into the project, the tools are yielding results. Here, Haugabrook talks about how VSU's IT department is helping to improve graduation rates.

The university is using BI tools to improve student retention and success. How did this strategy come about?

The initial discussion started with the Complete College America initiative. We started Complete College Georgia in 2011. The goal is to graduate more students over the next six years. In that plan, the first critical goal is analytics -- having more data-driven decisions, having a better understanding of who your students are, the needs of your students. Our student support area, our advising, those are the areas key to student success. So we didn't focus on administrative reports; we focused on everything key to faculty, advisers and support services, to give them the information they need so they could tell which students were at risk. That's how we planned it out from the beginning.

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