Despite the challenging economy, the MSA Class of 2009 job placement rate has topped 90-percent within 30 days of graduation. Average starting salaries including signing bonuses exceeded $75,000. During the 120-day placement period beginning in February, the Institute had more employers interviewing (70), hosted more recruiting visits (18), and averaged more interviews per student (7) compared to the same period in 2008. Read the rest of this entry »
Today thirty-five candidates were awarded M.S. degrees in Analytics at the NC State University spring commencement exercise. A celebration for students, family and friends was held at the Park Alumni Center on Centennial Campus. Over one hundred were in attendance to applaud the graduates as they received their diplomas. The commencement exercise is only the second for the Institute. With the addition of the Class of 2009, the MSA Alumni Society now numbers 58 members. Congratulations to all of the graduates!
The MSA Class of 2010 is set to arrive on June 29. The cohort of 40 students was selected from a pool of over 160 applicants. Seventy percent of the incoming class are residents of North Carolina, forty-five percent are women, and nearly half hold a prior graduate degree. The Class of 2010 has a median age of 29, and a median 5 years since earning their last university degree. The class is internationally diverse, representing nine countries of origin. Read the rest of this entry »
The Institute has signed a letter of cooperation with the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) to support their effort to launch a degree similar to the MSA in 2010. BME is Hungary’s leading technical university. As a first step in the agreement, the Institute will host a BME Ph.D. candidate for 2009-2010. The agreement also includes the exchange of visiting faculty, as well as cooperation in curriculum development. This is not the first such partnership between NC State and BME. An earlier agreement was signed in the area of computer networking. BME has 14,000 students and issues 70-percent of Hungary’s engineering degrees each year.
The MSA Class of 2009 completed seven team projects as part of the company-sponsored analytics practicum. Students worked with large amounts of data usually provided by their sponsor. The practicum culminated with a written report and presentation to the sponsor in the last week of April. All projects were completed to the satisfaction of their sponsors. The sponsors this year included: Detica, Hallmark, IBM, NetJets (which sponsored two projects), Travelocity, and Wachovia/Wells Fargo. Many thanks to our sponsors for their participation!
Dr. Michael Rappa will co-chair the 19th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2010) to be held at the Raleigh Convention Center in April 2010. The conference is a yearly international gathering of 1,000+ researchers who work at the forefront in setting the technical direction of the Web. Begun in 1994, it is the premier forum to discuss and debate the evolution of the Web, the standardization of its associated technologies, and the impact of those technologies on society and culture. Joining Dr. Rappa as General Co-chair is Paul Jones (UNC). Kathy Green, the Institute’s associate director, will chair of the Local Arrangements Committee.
Two Louisiana residents will join the MSA Class of 2010 under the Southern Regional Education Board’s Academic Common Market (ACM) tuition reciprocity agreement. Louisiana becomes the seventh state along with Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia in granting its residents eligibility to enroll in the MSA program at reduced NC-resident tuition rates. The ACM is an umbrella arrangement among sixteen Southern states that allows students to pay in-state tuition at out-of-state schools while studying in select programs unavailable at public institutions in the home state. Read the rest of this entry »
Students in the MSA Class of 2009 completed the program with a record level of achievement on professional certifications in statistical programming and statistical quality control. In addition to the much sought after SAS certifications, this year’s class also had the option of completing NC State’s Six Sigma training. The professional certifications are extremely popular with students and employers alike. Ninety percent of the class will graduate with one of more certifications in statistical programming, and nearly eighty percent will complete one or more levels in Six Sigma.
The Institute’s new Industry Advisory Board (IAB) met for its inaugural meeting at the Park Alumni Center in February. Thirty members representing 24 companies were in attendance for the daylong meeting. The agenda focused on a comprehensive review of the MSA curriculum. Members heard presentations on each of the major components of the curriculum and were given the opportunity to provide structured feedback. Since the meeting, the IAB has expanded its membership to 27 companies. Members partner with the Institute to recruit MSA graduates and to sponsor practicum projects. The next meeting is planned for October.
Three teams of MSA candidates—sixteen students in total—are competing in the Third Annual Data Mining Shootout sponsored by SAS, Central Michigan University Research Corporation and Dow Chemical. Winners will be announced in August. The top three teams will be honored as the winners at the M2009 Data Mining Conference. The MSA team advisors are Dr. David Dickey, Dr. Simon Hsiang and Dr. Sudipta Dasmohapatra.
Laura Ladrie (Academic Program Coordinator) and John Jernigan (IT Coordinator) received NC State’s 2009 Gertrude Cox Award for Innovative Excellence in Teaching and Learning with Technology. Laura and John were honored for their development and application of a suite of web-based software tools used to operate the MSA degree program.
The Institute is delighted to announce SAS will sponsor a series of executive guest lectures for students in the Master of Science in Analytics degree program. The series will include five lectures during 2009. Our first guest executive is Eric Webster, vice president of Marketing at State Farm® Corporate Headquarters in Bloomington, Illinois, who will visit on February 19. The theme of Eric’s talk will focus on the application of analytics to marketing in the insurance industry. Read the rest of this entry »
U.S. News and World Report’s guide to the best careers published this month lists data miner as one of a dozen “ahead of the curve” careers for 2009:
Data mining is a great career for people who would enjoy using statistics to unearth patterns in data, using ever more powerful software. Opportunities are particularly good if you also have business sense and the ability to tease out the information that bosses really want to know.
The impact of the recent economic downturn on data mining jobs appears to be limited. CareerBuilder.com, the U.S.’s largest online job site, has over 800 data mining related jobs—and nearly 1400 jobs in analytics—listed in the past 30 days. Although salaries for data mining analysts vary with education and experience, annual base pay for new recruits is frequently in the range of $80,000.
The Institute is pleased to announce a newly established Industry Advisory Board (IAB) to provide guidance on the MSA curriculum. The IAB is composed of two-dozen companies that represent a variety of industry segments from across the country. The first meeting of the IAB is scheduled for February on NC State’s Centennial Campus. Participating companies Read the rest of this entry »
As most students are leaving campus for winter break, MSA students are gearing up to complete an intensive communication boot camp designed by professional industry trainer Bart Queen of C3 Communications. Employers want most to hire recruits with stronger communications skills. The MSA program addresses this need head-on with 30 hours of communications training over three days of the winter break. Students are divided into groups of a dozen to complete the rigorous curriculum. The program continues into the spring semester with additional practice sessions and a final hour-long presentation by each student. In addition to presentation skills, students receive tutoring on interview skills. The training program is a key feature of the MSA program and distinguishes our graduates from those in traditional M.S. programs.