Fountain Valley, CA, (October 29, 2020) GLOBE NEWSWIRE
Aeron Zentner, Dean of Institutional Effectiveness: Research, Analytics, Accessibility, Planning, and Grant Development at Coastline College was recently honored by the Research and Planning Group (RP Group), a distinguished research and education focused non-profit, formed almost 30 years ago to advocate for and support the use of data and evidence to encourage effective policy and practice within the California state community colleges. The RP Group organization strives to build a community college culture that views planning and institutional effectiveness as integral, collaborative strategies, that work together to promote student success, increase equitable outcomes, improve college operations, and inform policymakers.
The award recognizes excellence and outstanding achievements in research, planning, and institutional effectiveness and represents a project that addresses models, process, or tools that serve as a breakthrough in areas of institutional effectiveness. Under Dr. Zentner's leadership and guidance, Coastline College developed an instructor-led data coach training online course, entitled "Data Training and Coaching for Higher Education Professionals."
The course provides colleges the opportunity to train their own data coaches by presenting the fundamentals of applied data analytics, data collection, data analysis, data presentation, and facilitating conversations using data in a higher education setting. Tools and activities included in the course can be adopted and adapted to help institutional researchers expand their efforts to strengthen data awareness, access, application, and confidence to utilize information to build and support planning, innovation, and change. The instructor-led online course shell is available for free on Canvas Commons.
According to Dr. Zentner, "In building this infrastructure to strengthen data literacy, we wanted to develop a data coach training course and activities (e.g. data labs, micro workshops, interactive web tools) that support data awareness, access, analysis, and action. We complemented this vision by encouraging cross-functional cohorts, which fostered new collaborations in support of building a community of practice around data utilization."
Dr. Zentner has been a Dean at Coastline for over six years and has focused on developing and implementing effective data analytics processes and facilitating strategic planning efforts to foster a community of data literacy, innovation, and change. He and his team has completed over 5,000 research related projects and been awarded over 40 grants. Dr. Zentner has published over 70 working papers and articles around innovation, leadership, strategy, and higher education and has delivered statewide, national, and international presentations on similar topics.
Dr. Zentner's educational credentials include a Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.) with an emphasis in Strategy and Innovation, a Master of Science in Administration (M.S.A.), a Master of Science in Leadership (M.S. L.) and a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and Business Administration (BA). He also has certifications in data science, executive data science leadership, leading breakthrough innovation, innovation leadership, disruptive strategy, qualitative research methods, foresight practitioner, root cause analysis, total quality management, six sigma, and project management.