Institutional Assessment and Research

IAR Insights, Cal State Monterey Bay, Institutional Assessment & Research, csumb.edu/iar, Volume 18, Fall 2025

 

Preliminary Retention and Graduation Dashboard Enhancements

As our campus continues to focus on our “Year of Retention” along with our key priorities for Supporting Holistic Student Success through our “Making Waves, Transforming Futures” Strategic Plan, Institutional Assessment and Research (IAR) is excited to share enhancements to the Preliminary Retention and Graduation (Non-Census) dashboard in Campus Data Warehouse. The dashboard provides preliminary retention tracking on a daily basis as students register for the upcoming enrollment term, enabling up-to-date monitoring of our students along their academic journey.

Preliminary Retention and Graduation (Non-Census) dashboard enhancements include:

  • Usability improvements to make dashboard interactions faster and more intuitive
  • Automatically updating dashboard controls that help you quickly find the most relevant enrollment term retention data (i.e. Spring or Fall retention of Fall cohorts)
  • New Key Performance Indicator (KPI) trend and heat map visualizations with historical comparisons for prior five terms for each metric
  • A new Not Retained and Not Graduated page that enables deeper analysis into students that have not been retained nor graduated by major, student origin, demographics, preparation at matriculation, and last school attended
  • A new Multilevel Crosstab page that enables multi-dimensional analysis of retention and graduation metrics by academics, demographics, California residency, admissions and registration classifications, preparation at entry, last school attended, athletics and student support program participation, and many more

Retention

In response to feedback from our Data User Advisory Group (DUAG), we enhanced the preliminary retention tracking into a new Retention page that consolidates Spring and Fall retention tracking into one dashboard page that automatically updates based on the registration term in progress. As students are enrolling for the upcoming Spring or Fall term, the page will automatically switch to the applicable term.

Additional years have been added for each tracking metric so that the most recent cohort can be compared with the prior five cohorts. New key performance indicator (KPI) visualizations also show the change for the most recent cohort versus the prior cohort, and heat map coloring on the table indicates the intensity for each metric across the historical trend. Customizable filtering allows users to filter to a specific college or major and also to various demographic and student groups.

The new Retention page of the Preliminary Retention and Graduation (Non-Census) dashboard automatically updates to select the relevant registration term based on the upcoming term students are registering for. KPI and table visualizations provide the most recent cohort's retention rate in comparison with the prior five cohort years for that metric.

Available metrics visualized on the page include Fall to Spring or Fall to Fall retention metrics with cohort tracking:

  • Up to year four for First-Time Freshmen
  • Up to year two for Upper Division Transfers
  • Up to year three for Masters Students
  • Up to year one for Credentials Students

Not Retained and Not Graduated

A new Not Retained and Not Graduated page of the dashboard provides a profile of the students from each cohort that are not registered for the upcoming enrollment term. On-dashboard controls allow users to select Cohort Type, Enrollment Term, and the Cohort Metric visualized on the page. You may also filter to a specific college or major and also to various demographic and student groups.

Dashboard users may set a threshold for the “Not Retained and Not Graduated %” metric to highlight groups of students from the cohort with higher percentages not retained and not graduated for the upcoming enrolment term. 

Not Retained and Not Graduated data visualizations group students from the selected cohort by:

  • College and Major
  • Student Origin: Residence Location
  • Underrepresented Minority (URM) and Race / Ethnicity
  • Age at Matriculation
  • First Generation
  • Gender
  • Received Pell Aid
  • Preparation at Matriculation
  • Last School Attended
The new Not Retained and Not Graduated page of the Preliminary Retention and Graduation (Non-Census) dashboard provides the Fall to Fall or Fall to Spring Not Retained and Not Graduated data for selected cohorts to identify groups of students that have higher counts or percentages that are not retained and not graduated for the upcoming enrollment term.

 

Multilevel Crosstab

The new Multilevel Crosstab page includes user experience design improvements including:

  • Simplified Group Breakdown controls that enable rapid searching for the fields you need
  • Table layouts that change based on Group Breakdown selections, which eliminates extra empty columns and provides subtotals for your selected Group Breakdowns
  • Heat map coloring shows intensity for each metric across your selected Group Breakdowns

The new Multilevel Crosstab dashboard page on the Preliminary Retention and Graduation (Non-Census) enables multi-dimensional analysis of preliminary retention and graduation metrics by up to four Group Breakdown selections.
Over 100 Group Breakdowns are available, including options in the following categories:

  • Academic Taxonomy
  • Admissions Classifications
  • California Residency
  • Credentials
  • Demographics
  • EOP
  • Financial Aid
  • Last School Attended
  • Preparation
  • Registration Classifications
  • Student Attribute
  • Student Group
  • U.S. Military

Access the Preliminary Retention and Graduation (Non-Census) Dashboard

Access to the newly enhanced Preliminary Retention and Graduation (Non-Census) dashboard is available to any employees that have completed required Information Security & Privacy Rights Training and completed the Alternate Data Access Request process.

Find the dashboard in Campus Data Warehouse (Amazon Quick Suite):

  1. Search for the dashboard “Preliminary Retention and Graduation (Non-Census)”
  2. Find it on the Navigation and Help dashboard under the “Retention and Graduation” topic
  3. Navigate through Shared folders > Dashboards > Retention and Graduation > Preliminary Retention and Graduation (Non-Census)

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Our DUAG workshops continue to be a critical pillar of our data user support. DUAG members provide crucial feedback that helps guide our development of new dashboards, enhancements, and bug fixes. Members also receive first updates on newly available and updated content to share back with their campus departments.