The Institute is delighted to announce the sponsors of the Master of Science in Analytics (MSA) Class of 2018 practicum team projects. This year 22 student teams are tasked with projects from 22 sponsoring organizations. New sponsors include the Institute’s first projects with Nashville-based Asurion, Duke Health, General Motors, and several others. Represented on this year’s list are major financial institutions, retailers, insurers, health providers, and technology enterprises. Sponsors hail from eleven states from across the U.S.
The Institute received 64 proposals for consideration during its open solicitation earlier in the year. The proposals were reviewed by a panel of faculty and staff members who weighed the scope, challenge, and learning value of the project. Among the chosen sponsors, 11 have sponsored a project previously. All of the projects are conducted under confidentiality and there is no fee for sponsors to participate.
Since 2007 the Institute’s students have been engaged in 156 team projects with over 110 sponsors. Interested organizations should feel welcome to contact the Institute to learn more about practicum sponsorship.
MSA CLASS OF 2018 PRACTICUM SPONSORS
AMC Theatres (Leawood, Kansas) – AMC is the largest movie exhibition company in the U.S., in Europe and throughout the world with 1,009 theatres and 11,083 screens across the globe. AMC operates among the most productive theatres in the United States’ top markets, having the #1 or #2 market share positions in 22 of the 25 largest metropolitan areas of the United States, including the top three markets (NY, LA, Chicago). AMC is headquartered in the metropolitan Kansas City area, where it has been since its founding in 1920. AMC employs approximately 45,000 full- and part-time associates, as of Dec. 21, 2016.
Asurion (Nashville, Tennessee) – Asurion helps more than 300 million people around the world unlock their technology’s untapped potential by creating innovative technology solutions that help keep consumers connected, from comprehensive protection to smart tech help that redefines expertise. Partnering with leading wireless carriers, retailers and pay-tv providers, Asurion’s 16,000 employees deliver a seamless, award-winning customer experience, anticipating their needs and providing tailored services reachable within one touch.
Chick-fil-A (Atlanta, Georgia) – Chick-fil-A, Inc. is a family owned and privately held restaurant company founded in 1967 by S. Truett Cathy. Devoted to serving the local communities in which its franchised restaurants operate, and known for its original chicken sandwich, Chick-fil-A serves freshly prepared food in more than 2,200 restaurants in 46 states and Washington, D.C. Chick-fil-A system sales reached nearly $8 billion in 2016, which marks 49 consecutive years of sales growth.
Direct ChassisLink (Charlotte, North Carolina) – Direct ChassisLink, Inc. (DCLI) is an operating chassis leasing company. DCLI provides chassis to Marine Terminal Operators, Non-Vessel Operating Common Carriers, Motor Carriers, Steam Ship Lines, and Beneficial Cargo Owners throughout the United States with 160 locations on or near key port facilities and other intermodal hubs. DCLI has grown from 64,000 to approximately 120,000 owned and managed chassis in the past two years. Today DCLI is a leading provider of chassis leasing nationwide.
Disney (Orlando, FL) – The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise with five business segments: media networks, parks and resorts, studio entertainment, consumer products and interactive media. Disney is a Dow 30 company and had annual revenue of $55.6 billion in its Fiscal Year 2016.
Duke Health (Durham, North Carolina) – Duke University Health System is a world-class health care network dedicated to providing outstanding patient care, educating tomorrow’s health care leaders, and discovering new and better ways to treat disease through biomedical research. Founded in 1998 to provide efficient, responsive care, the health system offers a full network of health services and encompasses three highly regarded hospitals – Duke University Hospital, Durham Regional Hospital and Duke Raleigh Hospital – physician practices, home hospice care and various support services at locations across North Carolina.
Elevate (Ft. Worth, Texas) – Elevate Credit, Inc. has originated $4.5 billion in credit to more than 1.7 million non-prime consumers to date. Its responsible, tech-enabled online credit solutions provide immediate relief to customers today and help them build a brighter financial future. The Company is committed to rewarding borrowers’ good financial behavior with features like interest rates that can go down over time, free financial training and free credit monitoring.
General Motors (Detroit, Michigan) – The General Motors Co. (GM), with 225,000 employees, has leadership positions in the world’s largest and fastest-growing automotive markets. GM, its subsidiaries and joint venture entities sell vehicles under the Chevrolet, Cadillac, Baojun, Buick, GMC, Holden, Jiefang, and Wuling brands.
M&T Bank (Buffalo, New York) – Established in 1856 as Manufacturers and Traders Bank, and today known as the M&T Bank Corporation, it is one of the 20 largest U.S. headquartered commercial bank holding companies, with assets of 123.2 billion at March 31, 2017 and more than 17,000 employees in New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.
Museum of Fine Arts Boston (Boston, Massachusetts) – The original MFA opened its doors to the public on July 4, 1876, the nation’s centennial. Built in Copley Square, the MFA was then home to 5,600 works of art. Over the next several years, the collection and number of visitors grew exponentially, and in 1909 the Museum moved to its current home on Huntington Avenue. Today the MFA is one of the most comprehensive art museums in the world; the collection encompasses nearly 500,000 works of art. It welcomes more than one million visitors each year to experience art from ancient Egyptian to contemporary, special exhibitions, and innovative educational programs.
Museum of Fine Arts Houston (Houston, Texas) – Established in 1900, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is among the 10 largest art museums in the United States, with an encyclopedic collection of more than 65,000 works dating from antiquity to the present. The MFAH is also home to the Glassell School of Art and its acclaimed Core Residency Program and Junior and Studio Schools; and the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), a leading research institute for 20th-century Latin American and Latino art.
National Council on Compensation Insurance (Boca Raton, Florida) – Founded in 1923, the mission of the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) is to foster a healthy workers compensation system. In support of this mission, NCCI gathers data, analyzes industry trends, and provides objective insurance rate and loss cost recommendations. These activities—combined with a comprehensive set of tools and services—make NCCI the source for workers compensation information.
Piedmont Health (Chapel Hill, North Carolina) – Piedmont Health was founded in 1970 by a group of health care professionals at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and local community members concerned with access to primary healthcare. Known then as Orange-Chatham Comprehensive Health Services, Inc. (OCCHS), the agency was organized to provide comprehensive healthcare services and education to all in the community, with special emphasis on those who weren’t receiving proper healthcare and who lacked access to services.
ProMetrics (King of Prussia, Pennsylvania) – Founded in 1994, ProMetrics aggregates, integrates, analyzes, and reports data across the specialty brand’s distribution network. Its core services include data acquisition strategy, contracting recommendation and execution, as well as data aggregation, integration, analysis and reporting. Using proprietary applications it develops de-identified patient-journey reports allowing customers to improve patient services and outcomes by monitoring channel performance metrics such as Time-To-Therapy, Medication Possession Ratio, and Persistency.
Putnam Investments (Boston, Massachusetts) – Founded in 1937, Putnam Investments is a leading global money management firm. At the end of April 2017, Putnam had $162 billion in assets under management. Putnam has offices in Boston, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Singapore and Sydney.
Red Hat (Raleigh, North Carolina) – Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to provide reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As the connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT.
Revenue Management Solutions (Tampa, Florida) – Founded in 1994, Revenue Management Solutions (RMS) supports a robust suite of flexible data-driven solutions providing clients with a customized approach that considers the unique business environment and operational constraints that exist in every brand. Leveraging premier consulting services and patented methodology in the use of statistics and quantitative modeling for the restaurant and retail industries, RMS takes the guess work out of crucial business decisions while optimizing gross profit and protecting brand value.
The Home Depot (Atlanta, Georgia) – The Home Depot, founded in 1978, is the world’s largest home improvement specialty retailer, with 2,282 retail stores in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, 10 Canadian provinces and Mexico. In fiscal 2016, The Home Depot had sales of $94.6 billion and earnings of $8.0 billion. The Company employs more than 400,000 associates.
Trillium Health Resources (Greenville, North Carolina) – Trillium Health Resources is a local governmental agency (LME/MCO) that manages mental health, substance use and intellectual/developmental disability services in eastern North Carolina. Trillium’s mission is to transform the lives of people in need by providing them with ready access to quality care. Trillium is investing in innovation to meet the unique needs of the individuals and communities we serve, and remains focused on delivering the right services, in the right amount, at the right time.
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (McLean, Virginia) – The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an independent government agency responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior U.S. policymakers.
Visionist (Columbia, Maryland) – Visionist provides engineering, software development and analytical services to U.S. government agencies and commercial companies. The company specializes in the following technology areas: Designing and developing visualization applications for data analysis; Signals and Cyber-related Analysis (i.e. packet and network traffic analysis); Network Penetration Testing, Vulnerability Assessment and Network Security; Database design and administration to support data analysis and reporting; and Software and hardware digital signal processing (DSP) of high-bandwidth data.
Volvo Trucks North America (Greensboro, North Carolina) – Volvo Trucks is one of the leading heavy truck and engine manufacturers in the world. It is part of Volvo Group, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of trucks, buses, construction equipment and marine and industrial engines. The Group also provides complete solutions for financing and service. The Volvo Group, with its headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden, employs about 95,000 people, has production facilities in 18 countries and sells its products in more than 190 markets.