Customer Spotlight: Paul Downey

College/Unit: UK Athletics

Department: Center for Academic & Tutorial Services (CATS)

Describe what you and/or your team does at UK.

CATS is a comprehensive academic services provider for student-athletes here at UK. From recruiting to graduation, we assist with all points in between such as academic advising, tutoring, study hall, learning services, and monitoring for eligibility and timely graduation.

Talk about the ways you’ve collaborated with ITS and how it impacted your work.

The simple fact is none of us could do our jobs without ITS. This was true long before COVID moved us all to a virtual existence, but was solidified during the throes of the pandemic. CATS uses so many programs and features such as Canvas, Qualtrics, Teams, SAP and Tableau. While much of our work is done on an individualized basis, as the Director of CATS, one of my main responsibilities is to examine and analyze our student-athlete population in the aggregate. Learning how to navigate Tableau and utilize the tools within has helped our unit with efficiencies when it comes to running reports for entire teams and the department.