Data Strategist

Since 1911,
City Colleges of Chicago has been connecting students from across Chicago’s neighborhoods to economic opportunity. By offering a quality education at an unprecedented value, City Colleges provides our students and alumni with a pathway to upward mobility. City Colleges of Chicago is the city’s most accessible higher education engine of socioeconomic mobility and racial equity—empowering its students to take part in building a stronger and more just city.

As Illinois’ largest community college system, City Colleges is comprised of seven colleges and five satellite sites across Chicago.

Reporting to the Vice Chancellor-Strategy & Planning, the Data Strategist (District Office) works to institutionalize a continuous improvement and performance-based culture at City Colleges of Chicago, and to ensure fact-based accountability at program, employee, and system-levels. Supports the District Office and colleges in their use of data to inform strategy by providing data analysis, monitoring metrics from various data sources, and tracking of leading performance indicators.

The Data Strategist works with District Office leadership to translate district-wide initiatives and KPI performance into institutional improvement; and works with college leadership to use district-wide data and initiatives to improve student supports and increase achievement, with the specific goal of closing the equity gaps in the CCC’s Four-Year Outcome Measure by 2032. Performs related duties as required.

• Conducts strategic data analyses, identifies insights and implications from institutional data, and makes recommendations for action to executive and senior staff to improve student achievement. Analyses range from basic summary descriptive tables to more complex modelling, including regression.
• Develops data dashboards and visualizations in PowerPoint, Excel and Tableau that clearly communicate complex analyses to multiple audiences, including executive and senior staff to inform institutional improvement efforts related to the strategic plan.
• Provides reports to and facilitates conversations with departments across the District to monitor progress towards key performance indicators, such as reporting and analysis of admissions trends.
• Responds to ad hoc data request from CCC staff and external stakeholders regarding student and college performance using CCC’s data warehouse (Open Book); requests range from student‑level data for outreach to evaluations of new programs launched at CCC.
• Provides data validation for external compliance reporting and external research projects as needed. Confirms enrollment numbers reporting to the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB) align with enrollment in CCC’s data warehouse.

• Assists college and District staff across departments to access timely and accurate data by creating reports in PowerPoint, Excel, Tableau or CCC’s data warehouse.
• Leads training to improve data literacy and the use of CCC data tools and/or reports to inform practice and strategy. Training may range from how to use the data warehouse to using Excel to manipulate student‑level data.
• Supports the implementation, maintenance, and adoption of CCC business intelligence tools (e.g. data warehouse, Tableau) in collaboration with the Office of Information Technology (OIT).
• Performs related duties as required.

Reports To:

Executive Director of Districtwide Strategic Initiatives

Direct Supervision:
None

• A Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in a quantitative discipline such as statistics, business, mathematics, economics, public policy, social sciences; or a related field of study. Master’s degree is preferred.
• Three years of relevant experience in research, data analysis, education policy, or higher education
• A combination of education and experience may be taken into consideration based on the applicant’s credentials provided the Bachelor’s degree requirement is met
• Ability to cultivate and maintain strategic partnerships with key stakeholders
• High level of proficiency in the use of…