Student Success Hub | Data, Peers, and Progress: Leveraging the IPEDS Peer Benchmarking Dashboards

Dr. Resche Hines is the CEO of Trivium BI and a subject matter expert for the NACUBO grant-funded project. His research expertise is in organizational and leadership coaching, strategic communication, data visualization, implementation, and dissemination, and facilitation of systems to facilitate and enhance data-informed decision making. Additionally, Hines partners with key stakeholders across a diverse group of institutions - including Black colleges and universities - to support the institutionalization of high impact practices, development of enrollment management plans, data governance, stewardship and security structures, and the alignment of planning and budgeting practices. Hines has a Ph.D. in Educational Administration.

Yesenia Espinal is a higher education data analytics, reporting operations, and ERP implementation advisor who helps colleges, universities, and mission-driven organizations strengthen data foundations, improve reporting reliability, and turn complex information into actionable institutional strategy. Her consulting work focuses on supporting institutions before, during, and after ERP implementation, with particular emphasis on reporting and audit readiness, data validation, reconciliation, governance, compliance reporting, stakeholder training, and post-go-live stabilization. Prior to launching her consulting practice, Yesenia served as Associate Vice President for Data Analytics at Howard University, where she led enterprise data strategy, reporting transformation, and data governance initiatives to strengthen decision-making, operational effectiveness, and measurable student outcomes. She built trusted analytics operating reporting models that integrated data quality controls, audit-ready reporting, KPI monitoring, and stakeholder enablement across Enrollment Management, Student Affairs, Finance, Institutional Research, and IT. Yesenia led reporting and data validation workstreams during Howard University’s Workday ERP transformation and supported an additional year of post-implementation stabilization. Her work included helping teams identify reporting risks, validate data across systems, reconcile outputs, support functional users with testing scenarios, and establish reporting governance practices to improve the reliability, scalability, and security of campus-wide analytics. This experience shaped her current advisory focus: helping institutions close the gap between system implementation and sustainable reporting operations. Her institutional analytics work has supported executive decision-making, student success strategy, institutional research, compliance reporting, enrollment and retention analysis, financial aid insights, and strategic planning. She also led institutional data strategy in support of Howard University’s R1 priorities, advancing performance measurement and data governance to strengthen evidence-based planning and reporting. Her analytics and reporting contributions supported institutional efforts that helped secure more than $50 million in philanthropic funding for research initiatives and student achievement. Yesenia serves as Chair on the Association for Institutional Research (AIR) Nominations and Elections Committee. Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Brooklyn, New York, she holds an M.S. in Management and earned her B.S. from the Polytechnic Institute of NYU, now the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Yesenia currently resides in Bowie, Maryland, Prince George’s County.