Milliron Quits Western Governors U.-Texas for Civitas Learning

After a year and a half as chancellor of Western Governors University-Texas, Mark D. Milliron is leaving to work full time at Civitas Learning, the Austin-based “predictive analytics” company that he helped start.

Mark Milliron (Civitas Learning photo)

Mr. Milliron, who was deputy director for postsecondary improvement at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation before assuming the WGU-Texas job, will become chief learning officer for Civitas, working alongside his co-founder, Charles Thornburgh, who is the chief executive.

“Mark brings an intense focus on student learning and degree completion,” Mr. Thornburgh said in a written statement, adding that Mr. Milliron had “spent a career evangelizing the importance of making learning data actionable.”

Civitas aims to pull in data from various campus sources—learning-management systems, student-information systems, and others—and use institution-specific predictive models to help students, faculty members, and administrators make good choices on individual and institutional levels. The company recently attracted $8.75-million in financing from a venture-capital firm.

Mr. Milliron will be succeeded as chancellor at WGU-Texas by Ray Martinez, who has held government-relations posts at Texas A&M International University, in Laredo, and at Rice University. He has also been staff director of the Texas Senate’s Higher Education Committee, among other posts. Mr. Milliron will remain on the WGU-Texas Advisory Board.