Preliminary data from student placement activities indicate strong demand for the MSA Class of 2008. The Institute hosted fifteen recruiting visits by employers to campus during the spring semester, with seven coming from outside North Carolina. Several employers came with a goal to hire for multiple positions. The placement status, so far, is as follows:

• Number of employers seeking to hire MSA candidates: 50
• Number of employers conducting campus interviews: 15
• Average number of interviews per student: 6
• Average number of job offers per student: 2
• Expected placement rate by date of graduation: 90%
• Median offer (salary + bonus): $80,000
• Range of offers: $65,000 – $125,000

To date, two-thirds of the visiting employers have made a job offer to one or more students. The average salary for a MSA graduate is comparable to the nationwide average for a MBA and nearly twice a baccalaureate degree.

Residents of Georgia, Kentucky and Mississippi are now eligible to enroll in the MSA program at reduced NC resident tuition rates. The Southern Regional Education Board’s Academic Common Market (ACM), which is an umbrella arrangement among sixteen Southern states, allows students to pay in-state tuition at out-of-state schools while studying in select programs not available at public institutions in the home state. The ACM eligibility greatly increases the size of the student population that could enroll in the MSA program at resident tuition rates. The number of states with MSA tuition reciprocity now stands at five; Virginia and Tennessee approved the program last year. Read the rest of this entry »

A large group of MSA students will travel to San Antonio, Texas this week to attend the SAS Global Forum. SGF is the premier event for SAS professionals worldwide, offering an abundance of educational and networking opportunities over four days beginning March 16. Petr Husták (MSA candidate, class of 2008) will present his paper titled “Range Formats Made Easy – CreateRangeFormat Custom Task for SAS Enterprise Guide”. Petr, who is a native of Prague in the Czech Republic, was named as a SAS Student Ambassador and awarded a travel grant to attend the meeting.

The annual “Awards for Excellence” reception for the Office of the Provost was held today. Included in the Provost’s list of eight nominees to be honored was Kathy Green, Associate Director for Administration of the Institute. Kathy was cited by the Provost for her dedicated service to the university, for the instrumental role she played in marshalling the MSA proposal through the approval process in record time, and her indefatigable spirit in getting the Institute off the ground the past two years.

It’s spring break week and the Master of Science in Analytics (MSA) students will skip the annual migration to southern beaches, and instead dive into a three-day, intensive bootcamp to hone their communication skills. In today’s competitive marketplace employers seek the best analytical talent. But to be truly productive on the job, analytics professionals must also possess strong communication skills—to be able to effectively present the results of complex analytical work to senior management and non-technical clients. MSA students voted collectively to forgo their spring vacation in favor of investing the time and effort in bolstering their communication skills with the guidance of an industry trainer.

The NC State Board of Trustees has approved a proposal to expand the Institute that would double the size of its facility on Centennial Campus to 8,000 square feet. The new space will allow the Institute to consolidate its operations into a single location on the fifth floor of the Venture 2 Building. After the retrofit is complete, the facility will accommodate offices for faculty and staff, a 45-seat classroom, work areas for students, and a data center. The Institute is slated to occupy its new home in August 2008, and will allow the Master of Science degree program to double its current enrollment capacity of two-dozen students.

MSA students led by classmate Sean Harris contributed a record amount to the 24th Annual Pack-A-Thon, which raised a total of nearly $7,000 in support of the NC Children’s Hospital. Sean spent the day on February 9 with students from across campus helping to raise awareness about the importance of children’s health and the quality of life for children and family at the hospital. The MSA Class of 2008 joined together to support Sean’s effort with their contributions. Thanks to everyone for their generosity.

The Institute’s spring semester speaker series kicks-off with special guests Roger Potter and Joseph Grillo, both of whom are analytics executives with Travelers Companies, Inc., in Hartford, Connecticut. Travelers is one of the largest providers of property and casualty insurance products in the United States with over 7.1 million personal insurance policies in force. Their talk centers on the application of advanced analytics in today’s insurance industry. The speaker series continues through April with invited guests from 17 companies.

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Laura Ladrie as the Institute’s new Academic Program Coordinator. Laura oversees day-to-day operation of the Master of Science in Analytics degree program, working closely with our students and faculty. Laura served as a member of the university task force that led to the creation of the Institute. Since 2006, she worked in a half-time capacity to coordinate MSA curriculum development and implementation during the first year of the program. Prior to joining the Institute full-time, Laura worked as an IT consultant with the NC State University Information Technology Division.

Students in the Master of Science in Analytics began their spring semester with a packed schedule of classes in data and text mining, financial analytics, data visualization, and risk analytics. Students are continuing their work on the practicum projects, as well. The team projects will culminate in late April with each team delivering a presentation to the project sponsor. The spring schedule also includes a series of invited guest lectures.

Students in the Master of Science in Analytics (MSA) celebrated the midpoint of their 10-month program of study with the successful completion of the fall semester today. Students gathered at a luncheon after their last exam before heading off for a one-month holiday recess. During the semester, students took courses taught by a team of faculty spanning several disciplines. Subjects covered included Time Series and Forecasting, Optimization, Data Security and Privacy, Text Analytics, Customer Analytics, Geospatial Data Analytics, Survival Analysis, and Data Mining.

The Institute for Advanced Analytics is pleased to host the archive of past proceedings of the Southeast SAS Users Group (SESUG) Annual Meetings as a service to the SAS user community. The digital library contains 1,059 papers presented at the meeting since 1999. Future proceedings will be added as they become available each year. The archive, which contains a wealth of practical information for SAS users, can be browsed by year or searched using keywords. In the first 30 days of operation the library servers recorded over 15,739 downloaded files, or an average of 525 per day.

Mahesh Pappu and Rajashekar Mareddy (MSA candidates, Class of 2008) are analyzing performance data on plug-in hybrid electric vehicles used by the City of Raleigh in conjunction with Centennial Campus-based Advanced Energy. The data are collected using on-board data loggers and off-board kilowatt hour meters during charging, and analyzed using JMP. The project is led by Advanced Energy’s Ewan Pritchard and Ken Dulaney.

Today, the MSA program moved its operations from a temporary classroom in BTEC to the first floor in Venture 3. The new location includes a 24-seat classroom, work areas for student teams, an office for staff, and wireless networking and teleconferencing facilities. The lease extends to the end of the current academic year. The Institute’s head office remains in Venture 2. The process for locating space to occupy beyond June 2008 has begun. The new location will require classroom and workspace to accommodate significant growth in student enrollment over the next two years.

A large contingent of MSA students attended the SouthEast SAS User Group (SESUG) three-day annual conference in Hilton Head, South Carolina. The meeting, which had 350 attendees from across the southeast, provided a venue for over one-hundred presentations, tutorials and workshops on topics including applications development, data mining, statistics and data analysis, and programming.