Job Details

Data Scientist For Enrollment Management

Reporting to the Vice President for Enrollment Management, the Data Scientist is a member of the Enrollment Management senior leadership team and understands admission and financial aid strategies for undergraduate students and how to harness data, influence, and model admissions decisions, financial aid, enrollment, and student success. The Data Scientist will gather, interpret, monitor and analyze data policies, procedures and outcomes. The Data Scientist will use software engineering, statistics, and machine learning to automate processes and develop solutions to enrollment challenges.

Essential Job Duties:

• Design and conduct complex data analysis using student application data, demographic information, financial aid data, student success data, and other relevant sources.
• Develop and implement sophisticated predictive models to inform recruitment, selection, yield, and financial aid strategies.
• Use data reporting tools available through third parties such as the National Student Clearinghouse and data sharing consortiums to analyze trends and inform strategies throughout the enrollment cycle.
• Create useful data visualizations and reports to effectively communicate complex findings to both highly technical and non-technical audiences.
• Partner with Admissions, Financial Aid, and Marketing teams to translate data insights into actionable strategies.
• Maintain a strong working relationship with Institutional Technology.
• Acquire a deep understanding of relevant aspects of undergraduate admissions at Furman. Develop relationships with key stakeholders across campus, become familiar with data relating to admissions priorities, and stay abreast with national context (including current events, court cases, and academic research)
• Stay up to date on the latest trends and techniques in data science and enrollment management.
• Maintain data security and integrity and ensure compliance with all FERPA regulations.
• Proactively seek and locate data, including outside benchmarks or comparative data, to support or refute proposed decisions. May need to collaborate with other organizations to gather data.
• Drive the collection of new data resources and refinement of existing resources. Research and propose options for the collection and warehousing of new data, particularly data that is new to the admissions ecosystem. In partnership with Institutional Research partners, determine appropriate methodology for data extraction, transformation, storage, and usage. Develop processes for loading and updating data that are efficient and re-usable. Document all data and transformations thoroughly.
• Set the research agenda for the department, working with the senior management team to ensure an on-going commitment to understanding and evaluating our work.
• Collaborate with various research teams including Institutional Research Office.
• Contribute positively to other duties and projects as assigned.

Basic Qualifications:

• Master's degree in data science, math, statistics, computer science, or a related quantitative field.
• Minimum 2 years of experience in a data science role.
• Strong programming skills in data analysis languages.
• The ability to construct large SQL databases and query them.
• Expertise in building useful and complex data visualizations.
• Extensive experience in and strong passion for empirical research and answering hard questions with data.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Data science experience in the education sector.
• Previous experience working in higher education admissions or related field with organizational processes preferred.