What Participants Will Do

1. Why a Data Approach. The morning opens with a decision audit: each participant names one decision from the past quarter and the evidence behind it. From there, we examine what it means to be data-informed rather than data-driven, and why a measure that becomes a target can stop telling the truth (an idea economists call Goodhart’s Law).
2. Locating and Gathering Data, Including Survey Design. Much of the data leaders need already exists; the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Illinois open data portals are free and underused. When existing data falls short, a well-built survey fills the gap. Participants will rewrite flawed questions, learn practical ways to raise response rates, and draft a five-question survey for the case.
3. Data Analysis with Excel. Excel remains the most widely available analysis tool in most workplaces, and a handful of skills unlock most of its power. Participants will clean a messy dataset, use XLOOKUP to connect information across tables, and summarize results with PivotTables.
4. Dashboards. A dashboard is only as useful as the measures it tracks. Participants will select three to five key performance indicators tied to a goal and build a one-page Excel dashboard with charts and filters that a busy team can read at a glance.
5. AI-Assisted Data Analytics and Visualization. Generative AI tools such as Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, and Claude can write formulas, summarize data, and draft charts in seconds. They can also be confidently wrong. Participants will repeat their own analysis with an AI assistant, compare the results, and practice the prompting, verification, and data privacy habits that make these tools trustworthy at work. The lesson is a simple one: you can only check an AI’s answer if you know what a correct answer looks like.

The Schedule

 
The bootcamp takes place on Thursday, November 12, 2026, from 8:00 am to noon at the PURI School of Business, 5100 E State Street, Rockford, IL 61108. A light breakfast is available as soon as doors open.

The optional office hours give participants time with facilitators to work through their own questions: a stubborn spreadsheet, a survey they are about to send, or a dashboard they want to build for their team. Participants leave with a practice workbook that includes the case dataset, step-by-step exercises, and completed examples to revisit long after the session ends.

Who Should Attend

 
The bootcamp is designed for professionals who make or support decisions and want a practical method for grounding them in evidence: managers and team leads, nonprofit directors and program staff, small business owners, HR and operations professionals, and anyone who has been handed a spreadsheet and asked to “find the story.” No prior analytics experience is required; basic familiarity with Excel is helpful.

Participants should bring a laptop with Microsoft Excel 2021 or Microsoft 365 installed, since several exercises use features unavailable in older versions. For the AI segment, free versions of ChatGPT, Claude, or Microsoft Copilot are sufficient. All exercises use a fictional dataset, so no one needs to upload their organization’s own data.

Investment and Registration

 
Registration includes a light breakfast, coffee, the practice workbook, and the optional office hours. Participants may also add a Credly digital credential, a verified badge that can be shared on LinkedIn, in an email signature, or on a résumé as evidence of the skills completed.

The organizations that thrive in the years ahead will not be the ones with the most data; they will be the ones that know which questions to ask of it. Join us for one focused morning and leave with the skills, the tools, and a plan to put evidence at the center of your next decision.

Questions about group or nonprofit registration may be directed to cpel@rockford.edu.