Speaker: Ryan Baker

Ryan Baker is Associate Professor of Cognitive Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. He earned his Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Baker was previously Assistant Professor of Psychology and the Learning Sciences at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and served as the first technical director of the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center DataShop, the largest public repository for data on the interaction between learners and educational software. He is currently serving as the founding president of the International Educational Data Mining Society, and as associate editor of the Journal of Educational Data Mining. His research combines educational data mining and quantitative field observation methods to better understand how students respond to educational software, and how these responses impact their learning.

He studies these issues within intelligent tutors, simulations, multi-user virtual environments, and educational games.

Speaker: Nathan Fuerst

Nathan Fuerst was appointed Director of Admissions at the University of Connecticut in August 2011.

Nathan came to UConn from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he served in various roles in admissions over ten years, including Associate Director of Admissions. Nathan has extensive experience in enrollment analysis, data management, recruitment strategies, and system implementations.

During his time at UConn, nearly every enrollment record has been broken, including the largest class, most academically qualified class and the most diverse class in the University’s history. Nathan has been successful in moving the admission operation forward through introducing paperless application review, content management systems, and utilizing predictive modeling to optimize enrollment.

Nathan earned his BA as well as his MBA from the University of Nebraska.

Speaker: Jessica Greene

In her current role as Director of Institutional Research and University Reporting at Boston College, Jess manages campus-wide quantitative and qualitative assessment efforts, compliance responsibilities, and Data Warehouse/Dart Mart projects. Jess earned her bachelor's degree in Economics from the College of the Holy Cross and her Ph.D. in Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation from Boston College.

Speaker: Ravindra Harve

Ravi Harve is Boston College’s Manager for the Data Warehouse and Architecture. Ravi’s responsibility at BC has been implementing Cognos and DataStage solutions for BC’s Data Warehouse/Dart Mart as well as other departmental applications. Ravi started using BI tools in 1998 beginning with Business Objects 4.0. Since then, he has been working with various BI tools, most recently with MicroStrategy and Cognos. In addition to various ETL tools, Ravi has knowledge about ETL architecture and has been using DataStage at BC. Ravi has held a wide variety of Data Warehouse and BI positions, and has worked on projects for various retail organizations and has served as a consultant for Boston University.

Speaker: Dan Riehs

Dan earned his bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Boston College in 2006. He started in the office of Institutional Research as a web applications developer, and has since held positions as a BI developer and business analyst. He currently serves as the Lead Business Intelligence/Business Analyst for BC’s Data Warehouse/Dart Mart.

Speaker: Juliane Schneider

Juliane Schneider graduated from Drexel University with Masters Degrees in Library Science and in Information Systems. She has worked in startups, as an insurance librarian on Wall Street, at NYU Medical Center Library, EBSCO Publishing and is now Metadata Librarian at Countway Library, Harvard Medical School. She started off as an indexer/cataloger, but over the years has moved into ontology development, linked open data, development of automated subject heading extraction tools and improving discovery through mapping taxonomies.

Speaker: Neena Verma

Dr. Neena Verma has been the Director of Institutional Research at the University of Massachusetts President’s Office for over six years now. She has worked in various higher education institutions (both 2- and 4¬year Publics) across MA and the nation for over a decade, transitioning swiftly to more challenging and diverse positions over the years, including administration, research, and part-time faculty positions. As such, she has a thorough understanding of the issues of public higher education in the US, and MA in particular – both within and outside the classroom. Having worked closely (as a direct report) with three different College Presidents in the community college setting over the years, she has gradually developed an innate understanding of the inner workings of higher education institutions, including their invaluable missions, their challenges, their unique students, and their admirable ingenuity in doing more and more with less and less. Her work as College Research and Planning Analyst at Irvine Valley College, CA earned her the Administrator’s Award for Excellence in 2004. She recently completed Harvard University’s certificate program in Performance Assessment in Higher Education.