Learning, Earning and Beyond

It's a learn-to-earn world. Never before have the futures of people, companies and communities been so directly tied to their ability to learn, adapt and grow.

You may already know that SAS is a long-time champion of learning: SAS' founders came from university campuses; our first wave of tools was aimed at academic researchers; our education and publication divisions provide customer training and support; and much of our corporate philanthropy has been directed toward educational ventures.

In a continuation of those leading-edge efforts, the mission of SAS' Education Practice is to improve and expand educational opportunities through SAS solutions, academic programs and strategic services. We are seeing great momentum in this effort: SAS employees (and the programs they run) are stepping up to provide leadership to help this newly formed practice extend learning – learning about SAS, learning with SAS and beyond.

For many, learning about SAS begins in the world of education. In the minds of many of our customers, we are forever branded as their "grad school stat pack." We are now working to ensure that not only do up-and-coming statisticians and research designers see us as a cutting-edge company, but that leading educators in other fields – science, engineering, technology, math – learn more about our cutting-edge tools and solutions.

Moreover, we are reaching out to business schools, education leadership programs and medical schools with software, curricula and partnerships to ensure that tomorrow's leaders know more about our world-class business intelligence, CRM and strategic performance management work. In addition, we regularly survey our commercial clients to determine which educational institutions provide them with technicians, managers and senior leaders. We then explore ways to help these schools produce workers who are trained and ready to use SAS as soon as they enter the work force. We've also developed SAS Ambassador programs to engage students, SAS Mentor programs to harness talent from across SAS to connect with the education world, and a SAS Leadership Library to reach out to academics and students.

Just as exciting, however, is our work to improve and expand learning with SAS. Our own Dr. William Sanders and the SAS Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS) demonstrate that we can make a difference in learning. More than 400 school districts in the United States are using EVAAS for No Child Left Behind reporting and to improve individualized instruction, teacher performance, curricular evaluation and school-quality initiatives. Also, our award-winning SAS inSchool^® Curriculum Pathways^® software is being used across the United States as an engaging curriculum resource.

In addition, we are now seeing K-12, community college and university customers use our BI solutions to create what we call intelligence architectures. By extending SAS across the institution, they're reaching new levels of institutional research, student recruiting outreach, student retention interventions, academic program performance initiatives, accountability efforts and K-20 collaborations. Moreover, on top of this intelligence architecture, they are beginning to do exciting work with financial intelligence to target resources better, with human capital intelligence to support faculty and staff, and with customer intelligence to reach out to students and potential donors (see related story about the University of Washington).

Clearly, there is a move afoot in the education world to create robust intelligence systems that have the power to improve and expand learning in new and innovative directions. SAS is pleased to help lead the way. In the end, however, there is more behind the momentum of these efforts. Leading educators are turning to SAS because they realize that our services and solutions can improve and expand learning beyond SAS by bolstering core academic skills, critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, community engagement and global awareness.

Because learning is not just about earning well, it's about living well too.

Bio: Marianna Clampett is vice president of Government, Latin America, Education and Canada for SAS Americas. Mark David Milliron is vice president of SAS' Education Practice.

(left to right): Marianna Clampett, vice president of Government, Latin America, Education and Canada for SAS Americas and Mark David Milliron, vice president of SAS' Education Practice.