Congratulations to our University of Illinois competition winners!

Student Submission: The College Fight Song Breakdown (Andrea Turek)

“A visual tour of what colleges sing when they want to feel unstoppable. We treat fight songs like data: tropes, repetition, “rah” energy, and competitive language – then compare the rhetoric to reality.”

Employee Submission: Illinois App Users & Popular Pathways (Cameron Schwing)

“This dashboard summarizes who uses the Illinois app, how they engage with its features, and how they navigate between core services.“

University of Illinois Honorable Mention:

Employees (in alphabetical order):

University of Illinois System Student Money Management Center’s Year in Numbers for FY2025 (Andrea Pellegrini, Emmy Tither, & Sahil Shimpi)

“We are all about making a positive impact on students’ lives through financial education. Check out the information below to see how we’ve done over the past several fiscal years.”

What Does the Big Ten Teach? A Degree-Output Profile Comparison (Joel Swenddal)

“How do Big Ten universities differ in what fields they graduate students from? Use this tool to explore each institution’s degree-output profile across broad fields of study (CIP2), then compare institutions on any single field.”

Students (in alphabetical order):

Mapping Big Ten Fight Songs for DHH Accessibility (Atharva Anil Sathaye)

“This DHH (Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Deaf-Blind) accessibility score is calculated using Rhythm Clarity, Predictability, and Cognitive Ease. Score is comparative and design-oriented, not clinical.”

Big Ten Fight Song Exploratory Dashboard (Colin Bertrand)

“This interactive dashboard analyzes the fight songs of Big Ten Conference schools using audio features and lyrical analysis. Features included: summary metrics and statistics; tempo and duration analysis; common trope identification; and school rankings by traditionality and uniqueness.”

What lyrical/tempo features cluster together? (Ben Graft, Christian Moczarny)

Fight Song Style Map

Differences Between Schools’ Fight Songs by Conference (Benjamin Leidig)

The Big Ten Fight Song Formula (Rylan Mui)

The Rhythm of Victory: Analyzing Big 10 Fight Song Characteristics and Football Performance (Sam Rhodes)

“This visualization explores the intersection of fight songs and football success within the Big 10 Conference. By mapping song characteristics like tempo, lyrics and instrumentation against historical winning percentages, we can begin to see which “sounds” align with the most successful programs on the field.”

Correlation Matrix of Numeric Variables (Khuaja Sediqi)

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