Cherise Hall
Vice Provost for Enrollment Management, Purdue University
Data Unlocks a University’s Doors
As 2020 unfolded, and it became clearer that COVID-19 was less dangerous for younger people, Purdue University’s President, former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, asked the school to develop a system for opening its doors safely, as well as a system of data-driven triggers for knowing when the situation became unsafe and closing would be required. The university’s Vice Provost Cherise Hall was tapped to lead the data effort.
Frustrated with federal and state COVID data, which focused on case numbers rather than a more nuanced approach for tracking hospitalizations and outcomes across different risk groups, Hall quickly realized there was no playbook for safely opening a school in the fall of 2020, let alone a major university. She leaned in, building on Purdue’s robust student data lake, to create a world-class system capable of tracking exposures and focusing public health measures on high-risk groups.
We can do that In-House
In mid-2020, trackers began to emerge across the country to show where COVID cases, deaths, and hospitalizations were arising at the state and local level. Seeking a Purdue-specific picture of the pandemic, Hall turned to the university’s Institutional Data Analytics and Assessment team (IDA+A), made up of data scientists, data analysts, and data engineers with access to an extensive data lake.
“In April of 2020, our lead data scientist, Ian Pytlarz, was looking at the red, yellow, and green COVID trackers, and said, “I think we could do this ourselves at Purdue, because we know more about our students than anybody else does.” We knew when our students were in classes because we had their class schedules. We knew what residence hall they lived in. We knew if they lived in a fraternity or sorority. We knew if they’re dining together because of their ID cards and meal swipes…We knew who was together when…and we had Wi-Fi data on our campus so that if students were studying together for three hours in a building, we knew that, too. We had all this information on every student, and we were able to combine it into a single database that was up and running in August when the fall semester started.”
We also were able to create our own COVID testing service on campus. We made sure that all of our testing and vaccinations were free to students, faculty and staff. We started internally through our animal disease and diagnostic lab (they received a certification to do COVID testing). Before too long, we realized we needed to do testing on a larger scale. We worked with outside vendors to receive COVID test data directly into our data lake, and that gave us every data point we could possibly want, almost at a moment’s notice. The IDA+A team built the system so that we had reports as soon as a test came through, updated in minutes.
“We used these reports every morning and met with our President and Purdue leadership around the table. We discussed any outbreaks and, for example, made a decision to quarantine a house or, if needed, to separate an affected student group from the rest of the population. We could make these immediate decisions about all areas on campus, including residence halls and dining halls. Not surprisingly, we found COVID spread the most among roommates who were living, sleeping, and dining together, so that’s where we focused our efforts.”
Eventually, we could almost instantly pinpoint where any COVID outbreak was happening and address it at the source. We were able to be so efficient because we had the necessary staff and software in place – the baseline data. Because we had combined all of the student information into a single platform, we had a starting point, and our team understood everything about our students, the university and how the pieces fit together. I think that made a huge difference. From April 2020, and for six to eight months, we worked seven days a week. It was a huge, on-call effort, and a really positive collaboration. The IDA+A team was instrumental in keeping Purdue’s campus open during the pandemic.
Measuring Spread AND Severity
During this period, Purdue used widespread testing to integrate data and pinpoint clusters of cases In turn, the university used that information to provide very localized quarantine and isolation measures. These measures enabled Purdue to reduce spread to high-risk groups and also allowed it to keep in-person learning open for most students.
The university created three different types of dashboards: a medical dashboard for its physicians’ team; executive dashboards for leadership at the university; and a public dashboard. The team also developed an innovative “Severity Index” to help gauge risk.
“It worked well because Purdue operates like a self-contained city. With student ID cards, housing information, and course schedules, we were able to identify close contacts easily. Other universities could replicate this, but they would need a data lake in place and staff who understood the data.”
Our medical professionals created a Severity Index, with a scale of 1 through 5, so that we could really understand what was happening with the virus on campus. That became really important for our messaging to the Purdue community and their families. Even though our caseload might be high, 95% of them were at a Level 2 or below on the Severity Index, which meant they had mild symptoms. Very few of our students got really sick. So even though we might have had thousands of cases, only a small number were severe. That changed the conversation and became an important point that not everybody had looked at, especially early on in the pandemic. The Severity Index was also an important tool to ensure that we were mindful of hospitalization rates and how our population was impacting the local hospitals.
“We met every morning, seven days a week, and opened every meeting with data from our executive dashboards to talk about the trends we were seeing. The dashboards drove our decisions and our conversations. This was really helpful because a lot of people came to the table with their opinions or anecdotes or rumors they had heard. You can imagine, when you’re looking at a city of 50,000 people, there were plenty of rumors, but the data told us what was really happening, and so that is where we started every day, and that’s where we remained focused. Our decisions were fact-based and data-driven.”
Using the data helped Hall and her team work through tough decisions around quarantines and masking, and to explain those decisions to university leadership, parents, and teachers.
For example, our data told us that our masking policy was working and so, when we got into debates around masking, we could look at the data and show where the outbreaks were and were not happening. We saw no outbreaks in the classroom, where every single person was required to wear a mask, no exceptions—a compelling argument for wearing masks. Again, people always have opinions, but when you focus on data, it diminishes the gray areas.
Hall emphasized that the system worked because of the data Purdue already had in place and because of the trust they engendered based on the privacy built into their system. Hall and her team worked diligently with medical professionals, parents, and teachers to build buy-in and trust for the system. Only those with HIPAA certifications on campus could access reports the system generated. Physicians on staff were able to use the testing results data to instantly find outbreaks occurring on campus.
“We worked hard to be thoughtful about privacy and we made sure to communicate that clearly and often. For example, if a student was studying in a building on campus with their best friend for three hours, and we found out that one of them had COVID, we shared that individual’s name and information only with the healthcare professionals. Nobody else knew. I myself didn’t have access to that information.”
“Through our data governance board, we were very clear about how we were going to use the data and about the constraints around the data. Some of the students raised concerns about faculty using these data to monitor attendance, and because of the rules we had in place, we were able to address those concerns for our students.”
The Golden Ticket
Like other employers and cities and states across America, Purdue wrestled with decisions on incentives and mandates for public health measures. It settled on mandatory in-class masking, mandatory testing and, for exposed and COVID-positive students, mandatory quarantine and isolation. But school leaders opted to use incentives instead of mandates for vaccinations.
“We did require testing when students came back to campus for the fall semester. When everybody comes to campus at once, you have this petri dish of 40,000 students moving in, and we had to make sure they had all tested – that gave us a baseline. We also conducted random surveillance testing throughout the semester and that was data-driven by the trends we were seeing. If students were called to do surveillance testing — and if they didn’t do it – there were consequences with the Dean of Students and a disciplinary process around students who refused to test or refused to follow isolation and quarantine protocol. We had isolation housing in a separate location on campus so students could continue receiving meals and temporarily attend classes online.”
Our overall goal was to achieve a good vaccination percentage without making it a requirement, so we incentivized it. We offered what we called the Golden Ticket. Students who were vaccinated could put their names in a hat to earn free tuition. Using this incentive, we were able to attain a very high vaccination rate. It’s interesting when you look at the data on timing; nearly all proofs of vaccination were turned in within days of the Golden Ticket deadline. Incentives – especially something as valuable as tuition – really do work.
Protect Purdue
The decision to open Purdue in fall of 2020 came from the top, and the president and provost provided support for a large-scale safety campaign that became known as Protect Purdue. Their leadership was decisive in pressing the team to find a way to open, but also focused on having the data needed to determine when and how to close campus if students and faculty weren’t protected.
Purdue President Mitch Daniels and Provost Jay Akridge felt strongly that we had an obligation to teach our students in person, and we were charged with making our campus as safe as it could be. Some faculty did not want to – or were not able to – return to campus for the fall semester. We understood that everyone had a unique situation and we worked through those on an individual basis. It was important to lay out expectations, but also to make sure we weren’t discriminating based on somebody’s health situation.
“President Daniels recorded a number of videos to provide updates to the Purdue community and talk about any issues or concerns, always from a data perspective, with a priority on safety. He spoke of key points that students and parents needed to hear. We also had a lot of communication directly with students and parents about the many details we had in place to Protect Purdue and keep everyone safe. We received a lot of positive feedback about how much they appreciated being kept informed. We also received feedback from prospective students that the way we handled the COVID pandemic was one reason they applied to Purdue the following year.”