Practice area

Student success is an operations problem before it is a technology problem.

I help institutions and the vendors who serve them turn retention strategy into systems that actually run — the workflows, data and adoption work that sits between a good plan and a measurable outcome.

Seventeen years inside a public research university, then four years building platforms on the vendor side. I have sat in both chairs.

Student success as overcoming challenges — a 2013 working board A mind map with “student success is overcoming challenges” at the centre. Four branches: Sources, internal and external — lack of motivation, entitlement, ignorance, complexity. Consequences, what it costs the student — stigma, hopelessness, debt, belief in inability. Solutions, what actually moves it — set goals, work the plan, expert resources, relationships. Impacts, where it shows up — academic progress, academic interest, unbalanced priorities. Sources lack of motivation entitlement ignorance complexity Solutions set goals work the plan expert resources relationships Consequences stigma hopelessness debt belief in inability Impacts academic progress academic interest unbalanced priorities Student success is overcoming challenges a working board, 2013 — redrawn
Four questions I still start with, from a whiteboard thirteen years ago. Note where the solutions sit: none of them is a piece of software.

  • 4

    enterprise student-success and CRM platforms directed — programs, budgets, contracts, configuration and adoption

  • 283

    stakeholder groups served across historically siloed units

  • 17

    years at Texas Tech, ending as Senior Director for Student Success & Retention

How I work with institutions

Four systems, one student A student information system, a CRM, a success platform and advising records each hold a partial record of the same student, keyed on a different identifier — an R number, an email address, a vendor id, a name and date of birth. Identity resolution reconciles them into one record, which is what assignment logic needs before it can put a student in front of the right advisor. The 283 stakeholder groups across the institution all read from that resolved record. SILOED SYSTEMS SIS keyed on R number CRM keyed on email Success platform keyed on vendor id Advising records keyed on name + DOB Identity resolution who a student is One student one record Assignment advisor, support 283 stakeholder groups read from the resolved record Nobody budgets for the middle box. Every rollout that fails, fails there.
Four systems is not the problem. Four answers to “who is this student” is the problem — and no amount of platform selection fixes it downstream.

  • Retention diagnostics

    Where students actually fall out, what your data can and cannot tell you, and which interventions are worth the staff time. I built the dashboards for reenrollment, faculty alerts and predictive signals — and learned which ones people actually opened.

  • Selection & implementation

    Choosing, configuring and actually landing the platforms that carry advising, engagement and case management — including the adoption work most rollouts skip. I have run these implementations and I have been the customer vendors had to satisfy.

  • Integration & data plumbing

    The unglamorous middle: getting your SIS, CRM and success platform to agree about who a student is. Identity resolution, assignment logic, and the transformations nobody budgeted for.

Track record

  1. 2014 – 2022

    A university-wide retention initiative, from infancy

    Coordinated the Provost’s Task Force on Student Success & Retention across four working groups — interventions, assessment, advising, and the analysis and technology ecosystem. Texas Tech subsequently reached record highs in retention and graduation, with senior leadership attributing a direct contribution to the work.

  2. 2020 – 2022

    The engine I built during a hiring freeze

    A pandemic hiring freeze left the department without a programmer, so I taught myself PHP and MySQL and built the advisor assignment engine myself: Banner data cleaned and transformed through stored procedures, driving automated assignment of students to advisors and support staff in the success platform. Deliberately vendor-agnostic — it would survive a platform change with only a schema mapping.

  3. 2006 – 2022

    AXIS — an advising CRM, and its open-source life

    Sixteen years stewarding an advising management system through the institutional version and an open-source release. Alongside it: enterprise implementations of a student success collaborative platform, a retention platform, and a visual schedule builder — each with the leadership, end-user and vendor coordination that decides whether a rollout takes.

  4. 2016

    A regional symposium, convened

    Brought regional leadership, faculty, enrollment and student affairs teams together in Lubbock, with the state Commissioner of Higher Education among the keynotes. Institutions were asked to send mixed teams — executives, analysts, front-line advisors — on the theory that innovation needs deliberate hierarchical disruption to happen at all.

I have been the buyer vendors had to convince, and the builder shipping the roadmap.

That is an unusual pair, and it is most of what I bring. I know which vendor promises survive contact with an advising office, because I made some of them survive and watched others fail.

“His years of experience of supporting students in new and innovative ways challenged Starfish and made us a better company and in turn made Texas Tech's students be the ultimate beneficiary.”
Brian Mikesell · VP Solutions Consulting, Stellic — former vendor

Higher education is one branch.

The same work runs through enterprise SaaS platforms, governance and compliance systems, and AI-orchestrated delivery.

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