University of North Texas 
About The DAIR Team
The Data, Analytics, and Institutional Research (DAIR) team is made up of professionals with a wide range of experience in higher education settings. Our team has professional credentials and degrees geared towards helping the institution improve through data informed decision making. The team is responsible for a wide-array of projects. See the image below for a representative sample of what DAIR team members do.
Data, Analytics, and Institutional Research
Basic Overview of Functional Areas and Responsibilities
Institutional Research
- Source of Official Data
- Strategic UNT Studies
- Retention Analysis
- Academic Analysis
- Conversion of traditional
- IR reporting to dashboards
- National Survey Data
- Accrediation Support
- Program Review Support
- Critical Ad-Hoc Requests
- Grant Data Support
Data Governance
- Data Governance Bodies
- Data Management Tools
- Insights Training
- BDN Training
- SME Engagement
- External Data Management
- UAT and QA Liaison
Data Modeling
- Data Model Management
- Data Validation
- Insights Training
- Insights Data Ingestion
- Data Staging
- Legacy Data Modeling
- Legacy Data ETL Support
- Liaison with ITSS EDBA Team
Analytic Deployment
- Insights Analytic Creation
- Dashboard Deployment
- Dashboard QA Testing
- Analytic Delivery For Finance, Student, and Academics
- Legacy Cognos Reporting in Admissions, Finance, IR, and Student Card Swipe
Please hover over a functional area above to see a representative sample of current DAIR responsibilities. Note this is not an exhaustive list of all deliverables.
DAIR Mission
The mission of the DAIR team is to promote sound analytic and institutional research practices, manage existing and develop new data models, and provide decision makers and external agencies with official and transactional academic, enrollment, faculty, financial, and student data.
Working in partnership across the institution, DAIR is tasked with supporting analytic deployment via the Insights program, surfacing data to assist with institutional planning and policymaking, and responding to other strategic data requests in accordance with the UNT mission and goals. DAIR promotes a culture where employees across the institution have the data training and tools they need to best respond to pressing institutional concerns.
Meet The Team
Jason F. Simon, Ph.D.
Associate Vice President - Data, Analytics, and Institutional Research
Professional Organizations: Jason is involved in the Texas Association for Institutional Research (TAIR), Higher
Education Data Warehousing (HEDW), and the Association for Institutional Research
(AIR)
Subject Matter Expertise: Campus Culture, Analytic Visualization, Advancement, Student Affairs, Academic Affairs
Jason leads a comprehensive enterprise-wide data warehouse team designed to bring
together data sources across enrollment management, finance, academic affairs, and
student affairs to promote data informed decision-making within the University of
North Texas. Over his 22 year career, Jason has lead teams in advancement, student
affairs, academic affairs and finance and administration. Jason brings these diverse
perspectives to his work in supporting creative data solutions for strategically important
challenges facing his institution. Jason has been at UNT since 2008. Prior to UNT,
he has served in various roles at the University of California, Berkeley, Wichita
State University, University of Vermont, and Collin College. In addition to his full-time
role as Associate Vice President Jason also serves as an affiliate faculty member
within the Counseling and Higher Education program at UNT. Jason is a frequent speaker
at local, regional, and national conferences on data, analytics, and institutional
culture. Jason also is a frequent writer and his research focuses on how campus culture
can impact the success or failure of data and analytic projects. Jason is also currently
working on examining how to best "future-proof" institutional research as a field
within higher education.
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Dan Hubbard, Ph.D.
Director of Data Management
Professional Organizations:
Dan is a member of the Association for Institutional Research (AIR), the Texas Association
for Institutional Research (TAIR), the Higher Education Data Warehousing (HEDW) Forum,
and the Acoustical Society of America (ASA)
Subject Matter Expertise:
SAS Business Data Network, SAS Visual Analytics, Data Governance, Data Management,
Insights Program Training, Peer Benchmarking
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Mary Barton, Ph.D.
Director of Institutional Research
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Matthew J. Fields, M.S.
Principal Data Warehouse Architect
Professional Organizations:
Higher Education Data Warehousing Forum (HEDW Forum), Association for Computing Machinery
(ACM)
Subject Matter Expertise:
Data Modeling, Data Integration, Data Warehousing, SAS Data Integration Studio, Informatica
PowerCenter
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Vacant