Case Study: Des Moines Area Community College achieves faster insights and improved student success with SAS

Des Moines Area Community College uses analytics to help students succeed

Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC), led by Provost Joe DeHart, faced fragmented student data across campuses and systems that hampered efforts to improve enrollment, retention and graduation. The college needed a way to aggregate, connect and distribute data so staff could identify at-risk students, make better placement decisions and move beyond overreliance on entrance exams.

DMACC implemented SAS Analytics, SAS Visual Analytics and SAS Data Management to integrate data, speed reporting and enable predictive modeling that adds affective and demographic factors to placement decisions. The result: reports that once took weeks now run in minutes, staff across the college securely access data, targeted interventions (college-readiness classes, online refreshers and advising) better support students, and DMACC has built a data-driven culture that improves student success and long-term outcomes.

Des Moines Area Community College

Joe DeHart

Executive Director of Institutional Effectiveness, Assistant to the President