Southeast Community College (SCC) serves as a cornerstone of higher education in Nebraska, offering affordable, high-quality education to a diverse student population. With campuses across the state, SCC is dedicated to fostering economic mobility and creating opportunities for individuals to improve their lives through education. The college’s mission is to empower and transform its community by delivering accessible, innovative, and responsive educational programs and services.
Despite its commitment to this mission, SCC faced significant challenges that impeded its progress. The absence of a cohesive data system meant that the college struggled to access the insights needed to make informed decisions. Reporting processes were fragmented, manual, and time-consuming, often requiring extensive effort to produce basic data summaries. These inefficiencies made it difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of programs, allocate resources strategically, and align institutional goals with measurable outcomes.
The catalyst for change came with the arrival of Dr. Paul Illich as President in 2014. His leadership brought a renewed focus on modernization and data-driven decision-making across the institution. Dr. Illich recognized that reliable, accessible data was essential for SCC to achieve its mission, from evaluating student success initiatives to optimizing resource allocation. Under his guidance, data became a central element of the college’s institutional strategy, driving decisions that touched every facet of operations. One of the early priorities in his tenure was a facilities master plan that identified $325 million in building projects. This ambitious initiative highlighted the need for a robust, centralized data platform not only to guide these investments but also to support SCC’s broader mission of educational transformation and community empowerment.
After evaluating its options, SCC chose ZogoTech as its data partner. While SCC also uses Tableau for data visualization, it became clear that Tableau alone could not address the foundational need for clean, reliable, and integrated data. As Rebecca Carr, Associated Director of Strategic Analytics at SCC noted, “We use Tableau heavily, but if we had bad data, then Tableau wouldn’t be valuable.” ZogoTech’s platform provided the centralized data warehouse needed to ensure data quality and consistency across the institution. This solid foundation allowed SCC to leverage Tableau more effectively for display and analysis while using ZogoTech to handle the complexities of data integration, automation, and validation. SCC valued ZogoTech’s tailored approach to higher education and its ability to address the specific needs of colleges beyond visualization.
Since partnering with ZogoTech, SCC has experienced transformative benefits. The college now operates with a centralized data system that provides accurate, timely insights to support strategic planning. Data from ZogoTech played a pivotal role in guiding hundreds of millions of dollars in investments for the facilities master plan, ensuring that projects were aligned with institutional goals and community needs.
Beyond infrastructure, the integration of ZogoTech’s platform has fostered greater collaboration among departments, enhancing the college’s ability to evaluate and improve its programs. Staff have been empowered to focus on strategic initiatives rather than getting bogged down by labor-intensive reporting processes. The ability to produce actionable insights has enabled SCC to better serve its students, providing them with the resources and support they need to succeed.
SCC’s partnership with ZogoTech exemplifies how leveraging data can transform an institution. By addressing its challenges and embracing a data-driven approach, the college has not only strengthened its infrastructure but also advanced its mission to empower and transform its community. Today, SCC is a model for how higher education institutions can use data to drive meaningful, long-term impact.
