Not everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. At this year’s SAS Global Forum 2016, so many exciting things happened that I have to share some highlights.

From the use of analytics in college administration to the teaching of analytics in the classroom, the range of information presented was quite diverse. No matter what your role is in higher education, there's sure to be something here to interest you. And some of these topics – like Running Projects for the Average Joe – are applicable for all industries.

We had a several education customer presentations:

• North Carolina Community College System
  • Performance Measures Presented with SAS^® Visual Analytics
• University of Central Florida
  • SAS^® Visual Analytics- Implementation, Usage, and Performance (or watch the video)
• Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel
  • Using SAS^® Programming, SAS^® Enterprise Guide^®, and SAS^® Visual Analytics to Generate and Disseminate National Postgraduate Programs Data in a Mobile Computing Environment
• Kennesaw State University
  • Is It Time for a PhD in Data Science?
• U.S. Department of Education
  • Running Projects for the Average Joe
• Western Kentucky University
  • An ‘Excel’lent Journey: Exploring the New ODS EXCEL Statement
• Florida A&M University
  • Teaching SAS^® Using SAS^® OnDemand for Academics
• University of Georgia
  • A Journey from data to dashboard: Visualizing the university instructional classroom utilization and diversity trends with SAS^® Visual Analytics
• Many more…
  • All SAS Global Forum education presentations and papers

At the SAS Global Forum Academic Summit, we honored several Education awards winners and twelve SAS Student Ambassadors.

The SAS Distinguished Professor Award – At Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), Dr. Charlotte Baker is teaching grad students to use SAS analytics to explore health threats.

SAS Excellence in Education Award – Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) is using analytics and data visualization from SAS to access, integrate and manage data. With SAS software’s data management and reporting capabilities, DMACC administrators and educators can identify at-risk students before its too late, and help them select the right coursework.

The SAS Student Ambassador Program recognizes and supports students using SAS in innovative ways that benefit their respective fields of study.

New this year was the inaugural SAS Global Forum Student Symposium, in which eight teams of students and a faculty adviser present research using SAS Analytics. Three winning teams will receive financial assistance toward SAS Certification.

The education team at SAS also published two press releases:

• SAS celebrates teaching and analytics excellence.
• Capella University and SAS create career pathways for women in analytics by providing scholarships, professional networking.

With so many exciting things that happened at this year’s SAS Global Forum, I wonder what’s in store for next year’s conference. We hope to see you there!