New Undergraduate Outcomes Dashboard Highlights Success of Billiken Alums
08/26/2022
Saint Louis University Career Services has launched an Undergraduate Outcomes Dashboard.
The Dashboard is the result of the undergraduate First-Destination Survey (FDS) results from the past three academic years. This voluntary survey showcases what recent bachelor’s degree recipients are doing and where they are going following graduation, among other information.
“The Undergraduate Outcomes Dashboard is an instrument we can use to achieve our desired goal of better informing our stakeholders of the ROI (Return on Investment) of a degree from Saint Louis University,” said Jeffery L. Jackson, Ph.D. associate provost for Career Services. “The Dashboard serves as a visual of self-reported data that can be used to inform our stakeholders, especially prospective students, and their families, about the post-graduation outcomes of our undergraduate students.”
The Dashboard can be found on the Career Services website. Career Services also has provided an overview video to assist users in digging deeper into the data.
Jackson said the Dashboard is a way to let the community know what SLU alums are doing after earning their degree.
“We know our undergraduate students are doing outstanding things after graduation,” he said. “The Dashboard provides a visual our stakeholders can use to see the outstanding post-graduation outcomes.”
Charlie Revord, Career Services Coordinator, said the Dashboard took a year to develop.
“There were lots of steps involved in the process, namely: cleaning and verifying thousands of post-graduation survey response data points, designing the dashboard components in Tableau, and making sure dashboard functionality worked across all major device formats — computers, tablets, and phones,” he said.
The result is a thorough look at what SLU alums are up to. Revord, a graduate of the class of 2019, said he was proud to highlight the work of his fellow Billikens.
“My main design goal was making a fun and informative interactive dashboard that clearly answered what SLU graduates are doing and where they are going following graduation,” Revord said. “I believe this was ultimately achieved thanks to the teammates, friends, and family that provided feedback along the way. There's no question that it took multiple perspectives, besides my own, to get to the final product available today.”
By the Numbers
The Dashboard has graduate data from Academic Years 2019 - 2021. A total of 2,828 respondents took part in the survey.
“The Dashboard highlights the variety of domestic and international companies that recruit our students,” Jackson said. “Equally important, it reveals the locations of where our students attend both professional and graduate schools.”
According to the Dashboard, 47 percent of graduates reported they were working after graduation. SLU alums found work in health care, aerospace, higher education, management consulting, and investment industries.
Most of the graduates found those and were living in the Midwest — specifically the St. Louis area.
“Saint Louis University is a viable partner for a talent pipeline for interns, research partners, and full-time staff because more than half of their students stay in the Saint Louis area after graduation,” Jackson said.
The Dashboard also notes that 26 percent of respondents chose to pursue a post-bachelor education.