Data Strategist (Equity Initiatives)

City Colleges of Chicago (CCC), the largest community college system in Illinois, is made up of seven colleges and five satellite sites, providing more than 70,000 students each year access to a quality, affordable education.

CCC is committed to becoming a “student-ready” and equity institution that is designed for all students to thrive.  “Championing Equity” is our plan to build the infrastructure and momentum to ultimately close equity gaps within CCC. The project’s objectives and activities include developing the systems, strategies, and tools needed to achieve unprecedented and equitable student outcomes, and accelerate the closing of CCC’s equity gaps.

Its major activities include creating new dashboards to better define, monitor, and assess equity data across the district; building a cross-college cohort of continuous improvement experts, or “Equity Partners;” and enacting strategies to achieve equity through an innovative microgrant program.

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE

Reporting to the District Director of Equity Initiatives and working in close collaboration with the District Decision Support team, the Data Strategist (Equity Initiatives) builds district capacity for rapidly harnessing and monitoring data for new insights on challenges and promising practices that advance equity goals.  

The position provides equity-focused data analysis, monitoring metrics from various data sources, developing and facilitating the tracking of leading performance indicators, and supporting district and colleges in the strategic use of data to advance CCC’s goals of dismantling structural racism and eliminating educational inequities at CCC. 

ESSENTIAL DUTIES

• Provides data and analytic support: conducts strategic data analysis, identifies insights and implications from institutional data and makes strategic recommendations to executive and senior staff at both the college and district-level, with a particular focus on inequities within colleges and across the district; develops, in collaboration with stakeholders across the district, data displays, that clearly communicate complex analyses to multiple audiences, including executive and senior staff.
• Facilitates the development and use of metrics to support equity initiatives:  works in partnership with the District Director of Equity, the District Director of Strategy, and the Decision Support Team to identify leading indicators; measures progress to goals set in college equity plans; uses operational data in real time to develop and execute action plans focused on improving institutional practices, policies, procedures and, ultimately, equitable student success.
• Works cross-functionally across the organization: maintains cross-functional visibility across all departments to help push equity-focused initiatives forward and surface critical issues; provides ongoing oversight and support to management and decision making to ensure that measures are being used to effectively manage operations and effect institutional change.
• Develops and refines institutional data capacity through data use: supports development of district/college-wide data collection, analysis and dissemination of policies and practices; trains researchers and staff to make meaningful data connections, with a particular focus on connecting data to institutional equity goals.
• Develops and refines institutional data and equity capacity through knowledge sharing: facilitates regular reviews with district/college team; synthesizes and shares key insights across projects; develops, maintains, and trains teams on infrastructure (such as SharePoint) to support knowledge management. 
• Develops and refines institutional data capacity through capacity building: helps staff use data in real-time, leads data capacity building trainings on data literacy and using data to surface and overcome institutional inequities; supports the development of tools, templates, and reports that address the needs of building data and equity capacity across CCC; provides support to the implementation, maintenance, and adoption of CCC business intelligence tools.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in a quantitative discipline such as statistics, business, mathematics, economics, public policy; or a related field of study.
• Master’s degree is preferred.
• Three years of relevant experience in research or data analysis, with demonstrated experience in quantitative and qualitative research methods and statistics.
• Experience using data to identify and address issues related to equity in the field of higher education preferred, but not required.
• A combination of education and experience may be taken into consideration based on the applicant’s credentials provided the minimum degree requirement is met.
• High level of proficiency in the use of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook).
• Moderate to high level of proficiency with SQL programming or data querying.
• Experience with Power BI, Tableau, or other data visualization tools preferred.
• Experience with statistical analysis software (e.g., SAS, R, STATA) highly desirable.
• Experience in quantitative statistical analysis highly desirable.
• Experience using SQL Server a plus.
• Excellent project planning and management skills.   
• Strong communication skills. 
• Ability to work within a culturally diverse environment.  
• Ability to cultivate and maintain strategic partnerships with key stakeholders. 

Chicago residency is required for all full-time employees within 6 months of hire.

We are an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer.  Thank you for your interest in City College of Chicago!

The intent of this job description is to provide a general description of the duties and responsibilities of this position.  It is not intended to be an exhaustive set of the duties and responsibilities, nor all of the necessary qualifications to perform the work.