Meet the Staff

Sandra Archer, Director

Sandra Archer is the Director for the office of University Analysis and Planning Support at the University of Central Florida, and provides leadership to the office responsible for the design and development of knowledge management systems to support University operations and university-wide planning. Sandra provides information and analytics to academic and administrative units in support of a wide range of planning needs. In the area of enrollment planning, Sandra facilitates regular meetings of the Enrollment Planning Workgroup, provides enrollment planning models for university-level projections, detailed models for colleges and programs, and student life-cycle studies including admissions, course taking behavior, retention, completion and continuation patterns. Sandra conducts research on various areas of university management, including faculty activity, cost studies, university benchmarking, resource utilization, and salary equity. Integral to decision support services are statistical analyses, data mining, modeling, and exploratory analyses. In addition, Sandra provides analytical support for external requests such as accountability, assessment, and performance measurement and directly supervises a dynamic staff of technical, analytical, and support personnel.

Prior to joining UAPS in 2004, Sandra was a Financial Analyst with Sodexho, the leading food and facilities management services company in North America. As a Financial Analyst, Sandra used SAS as a primary analytical tool for conducting research to support decision making using a range of analytical techniques. Sandra also integrated SAS with Microsoft Office to present financial data and balanced scorecards to executive leadership, and for data collection and dissemination. Prior to that, Sandra was a teacher of high school mathematics.

Sandra holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering, Operations Research specialization, in addition to an M.S. in Statistical Computing and a B.S. in Mathematics Education, all from UCF.

Active in the community of SAS users and Institutional Researchers, Sandra has presented papers and workshops at annual conferences for SUGI/SAS GF (SAS Users Group International / SAS Global Forum), SESUG (South East SAS Users Group), SAIR (Southern Association for Institutional Research), FAIR (Florida Association for Institutional Research), and AIR (Association for Institutional Research).

Elayne Reiss, Assistant Director

Elayne Reiss joined University Analysis and Planning Support as Assistant Director in 2008. In this role, Elayne provides support to the Director through strategic planning and analysis of University data, largely in the areas of student academic performance, enrollment trends, and institutional benchmarking. She also conducts exploratory studies, handles other ad-hoc statistical requests, and disseminates information through the UAPS website.

Before joining UAPS, Elayne served as the statistician for a local K-12 school district, conducting and presenting analyses on student performance to help improve educational offerings and outcomes. Additionally, she designed reporting systems through SAS to compile information in an accurate fashion and efficiently generate Excel-based reports used by schools for student tracking. She also interfaced frequently with the Florida Department of Education, participating in a task force to refine the state's K-12 accountability policies.

Elayne holds a Master of Science in Statistical Computing with a specialty in Data Mining and a Bachelor of Science in Statistics, both from UCF, and is currently a doctoral candidate in Educational Leadership, specializing in Higher Education. She is also an active member of the SAS and Institutional Research communities, having presented papers at annual SESUG (Southeast SAS Users Group) and FAIR (Florida Association for Institutional Research) conferences.

Yun (Helen) Fu, Applications Systems Analyst/Programmer

Helen Fu joined UAPS in July 2007. Prior to joining in the UAPS team, Helen worked as an operations analyst in the finance industry. Helen earned her Ph.D. degree in mathematics, M.S. degree in mathematics and M.S. degree in industrial and systems engineering from Ohio State University, and Bachelor's degree in mathematics from Nanjing University, Nanjing, China.

As a computer applications coordinator, Helen is responsible for the design, development, implementation, integration, documentation and maintenance of computer applications and decision support systems, collecting and analyzing data, preparing written reports of all analyses and conducting PowerPoint presentations to management.

Ying Sun, Graduate Assistant

Ying Sun joined UAPS in September 2008. As a Graduate Assistant, Ying supports data analysis projects for data management analysis and planning, benchmarking studies, as well as other ad-hoc analysis. She uses SAS tools to perform analysis on complex data sets and uses Microsoft Excel to provide user-friendly graphical displays of data. She also uses BusinessMAP tools to conduct database mapping, demographic analysis and other tasks.

Ying is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Actuarial Sciences in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Sciences at UCF . She holds a Master of Science in Medicinal Chemistry and a Bachelor of Science in Basic Pharmacy, both from China Pharmaceutical University.

Linda K. Rizzo, Office Manager

As the Office Manager, Linda Rizzo is responsible for the administrative support for OEAS and UAPS. Administrative duties include reception area responsibilities, guiding visitors and referring callers to appropriate personnel, scheduling using GroupWise calendar, and electronic file maintenance. Financial duties include processing purchases, travel, ID transfers, and budget reporting. HR duties include employee processing, payroll processing, and leave approval forms.