CIRPA Day Three

So that is a wrap for the main portion of the 2025 CIRPA virtual conference. You can see my posts on day one and day two for more information. This is my first time being a conference chair, and it's really only now dawning on me that I won't have our regular bi-weekly conference planning meetings to go to.

The day started out with a great discussion of modeling, machine learning and AI in Institutional Research roles during our networking session. We had some modeling experts in the room and it was really fascinating. I was glad to see that my workhouse model the logistic regression is still delivering results for people. It was also hard to hear that a lot of the modeling efforts that IR professionals do are still off the side of their desks.

I facilitated a sponsored session by Plaid Analytics and Northern Lights College on using an API to leverage an operational reporting tool to create a data warehouse out of their Student Information System. Since I'm putting together a data warehouse myself, it was a really interesting session for me.

And finally, Phillip Wallace brought down the house with his closing keynote: "Beyond Waffle House". I really loved his presentation and thoughtful answers to all our questions.

And with that, all that's left of the CIRPA conference is the President's Reception. I'll see the rest of the CIRPA folks there tomorrow.

Posted on October 23, 2025.