Higher education data quality evaluations, synonymous with data audits, are becoming increasingly important to institutions aspiring to provide evidence of student learning and success to a variety of stakeholders. This evolution is spurred by increased accountability and realizations that decision-making requires insights gleaned through data, preferably collected over time, and triangulated across multiple methods. The audience for this publication includes program coordinators, department heads, data analysts, and institutional leadership across different institutional types and sizes. Individuals with varying levels of data expertise can also benefit from this guide as the information is designed for cross-functional teams and extends beyond an individual role.

A major goal of this guide is to provide resources and direction for how to facilitate data quality evaluations at the readers' respective campuses or organizations. Another, equally important, aim is for institutions to build capacity for data collection, communication of results, and associated best practices, including establishing key partnerships that will support current and future data-focused projects. Data sources and technology platforms may have increased substantially over time. However, the method by which campuses connect information, particularly student-level data, in consistent fashion is far less developed. This publication addresses some of the prevailing challenges in continuing to move the needle on data audit best practices. It also provides recommended activities to advance readers' understanding and application of successful data quality evaluation strategies.

Rethinking Student Transitions: How Community, Participation, and Becoming Can Help Higher Education Deliver on its Promise, presents a reimagined theory of student transitions in college. The authors contend that while previous theorizations have helped move the practice of supporting student success forward through the latter half of the twentieth century, earlier conceptualizations and models have led to an inconsistent and incomplete picture of students’ experiences in transition. The book offers both a review and critique of current models of transition and then develops a new conceptual viewpoint based in the ideas of situated learning and transitions as becoming. The second half of the book is dedicated to using this new theoretical perspective to illustrate how higher education professionals can create conditions to support students in transition more intentionally, with a particular view toward supporting historically marginalized students, including racially and ethnically minoritized students, first-generation students, and post-traditional students.