Serving more than 68,000 students, the University of Central Florida is leveraging DataKind Edvise to make its student success efforts more proactive, data-driven, and scalable. By giving Academic Success Coaches timely, personalized insights about each student’s needs, Edvise is helping UCF strengthen engagement, streamline workflows, and continue building on its momentum toward higher retention and on-time graduation.
Introduction
The University of Central Florida (UCF), a public university based in Orlando, Florida, serves more than 68,000 students across multiple campuses and offers over 245 degree programs. As one of the nation’s largest universities and a designated R1 research institution, UCF is widely recognized for its commitment to innovation and impact.
Recently, UCF earned Florida’s Preeminence Program designation – surpassing a 60% four-year graduation rate, a 14-point increase over the past four years. This milestone reflects the university’s ongoing investment in student success strategies that combine data, technology, and human connection to help more students graduate on time.
As institutions nationwide look for scalable, data-informed ways to improve outcomes, UCF stands out as a model for how aligning analytics with mission can drive meaningful, measurable impact.
The Challenge
UCF’s size, diversity, and program breadth mean student needs and pathways vary widely. Academic Success Coaches – who provide holistic, one-on-one guidance – play a critical role in helping students navigate obstacles and stay on track.
At UCF, Academic Success Coaches are the institution’s advising professionals; several years ago, UCF transformed all of its traditional Advisors into Academic Success Coaches and now operates the largest Academic Success Coaching model in the nation. This distinction matters because, at many institutions, “coaches” and “advisors” are separate roles – whereas at UCF, Academic Success Coaches carry the full advising function.
But with limited time and thousands of students to support, UCF’s leadership recognized the need for a smarter way to deliver holistic student support that’s individualized to each student.
“The question we’re always asking is: How can we make our data faster and easier to consume for our Academic Success Coaches?” said Andre Watts, Director of Enterprise Analytics Strategy, UCF.
To enhance its ability to deliver holistic support that’s individualized for each student, UCF turned to DataKind Edvise.
Why Edvise
Edvise was designed to help institutions like UCF transform existing student data into actionable insights – without costly system overhauls or complex integrations. Using data from UCF’s existing systems, Edvise builds and trains predictive models tailored to the university’s unique context.
“Our goal in partnering with DataKind is to have data that helps Academic Success Coaches have data-informed conversations with students about their progress toward an on-time degree,” explained Tyler Walsh, Director of the Center for Higher Education Innovation, UCF. “We want to be able to put actionable data that’s personalized to each student in front of Coaches so they can help students make the right decisions on how to reach their academic and career goals.”
By using its own institutional data, UCF ensures that insights are grounded in the realities of its students and programs – not generic benchmarks. This customization allows for greater precision, helping Coaches identify not only which students may need help, but when interventions will be most effective.
How They’re Using Edvise
UCF’s Academic Success Coaching model provides holistic support that extends beyond traditional advising – focusing on academic success and personal well-being with an eye toward career and professional development. Integrating Edvise into this model allows UCF to amplify that impact.
For each student, Edvise generates an individualized support score and surfaces the specific factors contributing to their forecast need. Coaches receive these insights through internal dashboards and reports, helping them prioritize outreach and tailor conversations accordingly.
“The interface is pretty much seamless,” said Watts. “It gives Coaches more information to make better, more informed decisions about how to support each student.”
Rather than replacing existing systems or processes, Edvise strengthens them – making UCF’s data more actionable, and Coaching more intentional.
Early Impact
From the start, UCF’s team praised the collaboration with DataKind as both technically strong and mission-aligned.
“What stood out to me was how thoughtful the DataKind team was – not just about the data models, but about workflows, calendars, and systems,” noted Walsh. “Their team brought a kindness and curiosity to every conversation. It felt less like a technical project and more like a shared effort to make things better for the students and staff we serve.”
The result: Edvise is helping reduce the time Coaches spend searching for insights and increasing student engagement in Coaching sessions, allowing more students to stay connected, supported, and on track toward graduation.
With over 68,000 students, UCF’s implementation of Edvise offers a compelling case study in how large institutions can operationalize predictive analytics at scale. The insights generated are not only helping individual students but also informing broader institutional strategies, such as resource allocation, program design, and student support services.
UCF’s experience demonstrates how data-driven tools like Edvise can enhance decision-making and improve outcomes across a wide and diverse student population.
Looking Ahead
UCF’s first full assessment of Edvise’s impact will come in Spring 2026, when the university analyzes how its predictive insights are contributing to on-time graduation rates among first-time-in-college students. Building on early momentum, UCF is already exploring additional use cases for Edvise – such as identifying transfer students who may benefit from targeted outreach.
At a university as large and complex as UCF, even small improvements in student success can translate into thousands more graduates each year. Edvise’s ability to deliver personalized insights at scale means that institutions don’t have to choose between precision and reach – they can have both.
For DataKind, UCF’s partnership underscores the scalability of Edvise: demonstrating how even the large and successful institutions can use their own data to deliver more personalized, proactive support with assistance of Edvise.
Together, UCF and DataKind are charting a path for what’s possible when human expertise and data science and AI come together to empower student success.
A Model for What’s Possible
At UCF, Edvise is helping Academic Success Coaches turn data into action – allowing them to deliver data-informed, individualized support to each student.
Interested in exploring how Edvise could support student success at your institution? Connect with us!
DataKind Edvise was made possible with support from a Google.org grant and fellowship. Learn more.
Images above courtesy of the University of Central Florida.
Join the DataKind movement.
- Interested in sponsoring a project? Partner with us.
- Interested in subscribing to our newsletter? Sign up.
- Interested in supporting our work? Donate here.
