Reconnecting with alumni and assessing the model

Dashiell Coyier and Zaeda Peter ‘26 took on two linked jobs for Paula Lackie. The DataSquad website has an alumni directory with short bios, much of it unchanged since the students were at Carleton, and online information stays put unless someone manages it. They built a short Qualtrics form that let alumni update or remove their bios, add a preferred email, and choose how to stay in touch.

The records did not line up. Some alumni appeared in the program’s records but not on the website, and others had no bio or photo. To avoid burdening anyone, the form used fields such as “On Website” and “Photo on Site” so that alumni with a bio were asked whether to update it and those without were invited to add one.

The second job was an assessment. The DataSquad model has a long history but had never been formally assessed. The form asked alumni what they found effective and ineffective, what could improve, and how the experience shaped their path after graduation. The team first planned separate tracks for graduates before and after COVID, then dropped that and cut nearly sixty questions to keep the ones that mattered most. Merging the two tasks into one form also made it simpler for alumni to answer.