Postsecondary Data for Action Network Spotlight: How the University of Northern Iowa Uses Data to Strengthen Student Retention and Success

Colleges and universities often point to retention and graduation rates as key measures of success. However, improving student outcomes requires looking beyond aggregate metrics at disaggregated data to better understand how different groups of students are experiencing college, where barriers may exist, and what supports can help more students persist and complete their credentials. In Fall 2025, IHEP and the Association for Institutional Research launched the Postsecondary Data for Action Network, a collaborative learning community that helps institutions leverage data insights to advance student success efforts. The University of Northern Iowa (UNI), a regional public university and network participant, is using data to better understand the challenges students face and identify opportunities to improve retention and completion. From refining student success risk models to addressing financial barriers, UNI is focused on translating data into action.

IHEP spoke with Dr. Kristin Moser, Director of Institutional Effectiveness & Planning at UNI, about how the university leverages disaggregated data to refine its retention strategies to improve student success and completion rates. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

IHEP: What values drive UNI’s student success and retention efforts?

Dr. Moser: At UNI, our work is grounded in our mission to create a welcoming, supportive, and affordable educational environment with access for all. As Iowa’s regional public university, we serve many first-generation students, students from low-income backgrounds, and students from rural communities where access to resources can be limited. We strive to make sure these students have the support they need to earn a degree and achieve their goals.

Many of our graduates stay in Iowa after college, so college completion matters not just for individual students, but for communities across the state. It’s important that students graduate with manageable debt and enter careers where they can contribute locally. Data plays a critical role in helping us align our efforts with students’ personal and professional goals.

IHEP: How has looking more closely at your data helped UNI identify new opportunities to improve student success?

Dr. Moser: UNI already has a relatively strong retention rate, with a rolling average around 83 percent. But to keep improving, we can’t just look at that overall number. We must dig deeper into the data to understand where students may be encountering barriers.

For example, when we disaggregated the retention data by student characteristics, we identified retention concerns at the intersection of unmet need and lower high school GPA. With this knowledge, we modified our retention interventions to address this concern. This included adding extended orientation programming, success coaching, and additional need-based grant funding. Because teams across campus—including enrollment management, financial aid, institutional research, and our university foundation—were already working together, we were able to respond quickly. Foundation partners helped establish retention scholarships and completion awards to help students overcome financial barriers and stay on track to graduate. This kind of cross-campus collaboration has become more embedded into our approach. Data helps surface challenges, but it’s the coordination across teams that allows us to act on what we learn.

IHEP: How has UNI continued to refine its use of data to better support student success?

Dr. Moser: Our approach has evolved as we have learned more about what drives student success. Building a strong data culture is not about collecting as much information as possible. It’s about identifying the right information that helps you better understand students’ experiences and make informed decisions.

Our student success risk model is one example. We have refined the model over time to look at factors that have a measurable impact on retention and degree completion. More recently, we’ve incorporated economic indicators, including unmet financial need, after recognizing how financial aid barriers affect persistence. This has helped us identify students who may need additional financial support.

We also administer an early-semester connection survey during students’ first fall term to understand how they are adjusting. It asks about their transition to college, including whether someone on campus has positively influenced their experience. Our staff send handwritten postcards thanking employees recognized by students, and the responses help identify students who may benefit from additional outreach.

IHEP: What advice would you give other institutions working to strengthen their data culture?

Dr. Moser: Most institutions have access to a lot of data. The next step is asking the right questions to better understand what is happening with students. For example, instead of looking only at an overall retention rate, ask: Who are we losing? When are students leaving? What barriers might they be experiencing? What conversations do we need to have as faculty and staff, and which campus partners need to be involved to address those challenges?

It is also important to create opportunities for people across the institution to collaborate and connect data to student experiences. The numbers in our spreadsheets and reports represent real students. Keeping that perspective helps us make decisions that strengthen student success.