Data Analytics
William B. Greene Jr., School of Business & Technology
Fitting with Milligan’s mission, students who understand how to collect and analyze data to create information will help serve their respective businesses or non-profits in making informed decisions, leading to better efficiencies and productivity.
The Need for Data Analytics Skills
The Data Analytics minor helps students in any discipline (not limited to business students) understand how big data sets are collected, sorted, and interpreted, ultimately leading to information necessary for making decisions based on the data. Additionally, limitations of data driven decision making and limitations of data gathering methods are explored to provide students with a robust framework for decision making.
In general, there are three reasons why students need analytics skills.
- Virtually all businesses collect data, and functional areas such as accounting, marketing, sales, management, and customer service need to understand how data is collected.
- Analyzed data is used to create information that helps businesses make better and more informed decisions.
- Analytics skills help students readily advance in their careers. Many career opportunities, such as data scientists, exist beyond the typical functional business areas.
Career Opportunities
Potential careers in data analytics can be found in the field of financial analytics, human resource analytics, marketing analytics, health care analytics, supply-chain analytics, analytics for government and nonprofits, sports analytics, web analytics, and many more. The Society For Human Resource Management states that data scientist related jobs are some of the fastest growing in the U.S. (Maurer, 2018).
Job titles of recent employment searches by a Fortune 500 company include scientist/engineer, process engineer, sales representative, applications development technical sales representative, quality engineer, talent acquisitions manager, business solutions analyst, administrative assistant, tax analyst, quality assurance manager, price management leader, cost analyst, logistics planner, manufacturing systems analyst, regional HR specialist, account manager, and maintenance planner.
Coursework
The Data Analytics minor provides students with skills that are useful in industry and for graduate work. Students complete coursework in computer, economics, operations management, and math.
