The Institute’s director, Dr. Michael Rappa, will serve on a 15-member expert panel that will help EDUCAUSE define the opportunities, challenges and approaches that will inform and educate college and university leaders about the value analytics brings to higher education. According to EDUCAUSE’s President and CEO, Dr. Diana Oblinger, analytics will be a critical tool for analyzing, predicting, and making decisions in areas such as instruction, research, and operations. With constant questions about cost, affordability, accountability and productivity, higher education will need to assemble data and know how to use it to decipher trends and make decisions. Although conversations about analytics are increasingly common, there are few common definitions and perhaps even fewer realistic expectations for how we migrate from where we are to where we need to be. The expert panel will help EDUCAUSE define the opportunity, establish common terms, identify the skills and competencies our institutions will need, and identify barriers that must be addressed. The recommendations of the panel, which is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will help define future EDUCAUSE programs.