Milligan computer science professor with student

Fitting with Milligan’s mission, the data analytics minor helps students understand how to collect and analyze data to create information that will help their respective businesses or non-profits make 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.

Course Requirements

View all details and course requirements for this program in the Milligan University Catalog (link below). The Milligan University academic catalog is the official, authoritative source for all academic requirements and policies. Any discrepancies in curricular requirements from other sources will default to the Catalog.

Faculty

Brad Ward
Associate Professor of Business Administration

Seeger's Steeple infant of a yellow sunset