What is your specific role in OPAIR? Tell me about your job.
I came over to OPAIR about three years ago, and I came here first as a reporting analyst, mainly working with internal and external data reporting. There are several departments within OPAIR, including reporting, data science, and the data management team, and I was on the reporting team at first. Then I moved over to the data science team after approximately a year. I mainly worked on enrollment, retention, and prediction modeling. I’ve worked to develop models to predict enrollment counts for the University. That’s the main task I’m doing here.
What does your day-to-day generally look like?
On a regular day, I’m writing code, using SQL and Python, pulling data from databases, or loading data to databases. Then, I analyze it. Currently, we are working on weekly enrollment data. We pull data from various sources, merge them, clean them, and save the data back to the database. Then we use Power BI to create weekly enrollment reports for other departments to use.
Can you share a little bit about your personal and professional background and how you came to work with OPAIR?
So, before OPAIR, I was in The Graduate School in similar roles for two years, working on graduate student enrollment and application data. The work involves merging old data warehouse data with LionPath new data system. Then I found a similar position posted for OPAIR. I felt that job could give me more exposure to data analytics and coding. I applied for the job and got the offer. Before I worked for The Graduate School, I was a database specialist for some years, mainly maintaining web operations, developing web applications, creating databases, and managing databases, in the e Department of Ecosystem Science and Management.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
I like OPAIR especially because I enjoy dealing with the University’s data. We have various kinds of data, such as student data, and human resource data, and my team analyzes this data for the University leadership and other stakeholders. They use our data to assess the school’s status for enrollment or employment, and I find this process to be very interesting. I do like OPAIR, the people are nice here and it’s always nice to see everyone over Zoom meetings. It’s a pleasant environment to work in.
Are there any specific projects in your department that you’re especially excited about right now?
Right now, we are mainly focused on weekly enrollment data processing, modeling predictions, and examining student retention. That’s my main focus currently. We analyze student counts weekly, so we get to see the changes from week to week in enrollment. We’re not only focusing on the numbers from University Park; we see the campus data from all of Penn State’s campuses, so there are a lot of numbers to analyze in terms of enrollment.
What do you find to be the most rewarding part of your job? How did Penn State help make that happen?
Improving my craft on a daily basis is a very rewarding experience, but even more than that, the people and the relationships are a great part of the job. I like building relationships with my colleagues, and I’m very happy with all my teammates here at OPAIR. I do my best to contribute to both my team and OPAIR, and it is very rewarding to see everyone come together.
Penn State really is very generous and has a good environment for people to work in. Especially being a minority, you need to be wary of workplace environments, but Penn State is very diverse and has fostered a great environment to work in; people here are from everywhere. Penn State greatly encourages professional development and learning; there’s always some kind of training available to further yourself and your career.