Celebrating Five Years of the Business Analytics Honors Program

By Caroline Barnhill

When big data hit the scene, starry-eyed businesses understood that a world of opportunity had been opened. A window into the minds of consumers. Tools for innovation and cutting-edge technologies. A way to eliminate guesswork and make informed decisions. With data, they realized, the opportunities were endless.

Before long, data analytics swept the globe, transforming industry and business. There was one problem, though – there wasn’t enough data analytics talent to meet the demand.

Poole College stepped up to the plate, launching the Business Analytics Honors Program (BAHP) in 2017. 

“Through our relationships with members of Poole’s advisory boards, we recognized that data analytics was transforming the landscape of business – and that soon enough, data analytics skills would become the table stakes needed to compete,” explains Scott Showalter, director of the Master of Accounting program and a key player in the development of the BAHP.

“Our board members wanted to know how we planned to educate students to meet businesses’ needs and prepare them for this new business environment. So our faculty got to work,” he continues.

Filling the Gaps

The college’s goal, Showalter explains, was to build a best-in-class data analytics program that leveraged its active partnerships with business and industry. Faculty understood that the program wouldn’t be perfect from the start – but they launched it anyway.

“Recognizing how quickly the data analytics field was developing, we didn’t want to fall behind emerging marketplace trends, so we decided it was better to develop a program and improve it as we move forward,” Showalter says.

Designed to be interdisciplinary in nature, the BAHP is open to undergraduate students from any major or concentration in the college – allowing Poole students to fill their toolkit with unique skills and gain a competitive edge.

Designed to be interdisciplinary in nature, the BAHP is open to undergraduate students from any major or concentration in the college – allowing Poole students to fill their toolkit with unique skills and gain a competitive edge.

“The need for data-driven decision-making is exploding in organizations throughout the world. Making those decisions requires many different types of people – people who can build tools to collect data, people who can assemble large-scale databases to organize the data, people who find patterns in the data and people who use those decisions to make business decisions,” explains Bill Rand, executive director of Poole’s Business Analytics Initiative (BAI) and associate professor of marketing.

“Our BAHP students get tastes of all these roles, but they become particularly skilled in finding patterns and making key business decisions. And since our students also major in another area of the business enterprise, they become deeply skilled in a functional unit of the organization – which is critical to decision-making,” he continues.

The BAHP also includes a business analytics practicum course, giving students the opportunity to gain hands-on experience before they even turn the tassel. Working with a local industry partner for the entire semester, students practice their analytics skills and develop an analytics-based solution to a real-world problem.

I think the practicum experience has to be the biggest accomplishment of the BAHP. It has given all of our students practical experiences in analytics with real companies and organizations.

“I think the practicum experience has to be the biggest accomplishment of the BAHP,” Rand says. “It has given all of our students practical experiences in analytics with real companies and organizations. And at the same time, it has introduced dozens of local and international entities to the business analytics talent at NC State.”

Moving Forward

Due to its popularity, the BAHP is currently at its maximum capacity of 100 new students per academic year, but to satisfy the demand, Poole College faculty hope to expand the program to accommodate more students.

“In the future, we’d also love to invite students from our other colleges to join the program, rather than limiting it to Poole students,” explains Sherry Fowler, BAHP lead and professor of practice in information technology and business analytics. 

“We also hope to introduce an offering in business analytics at the concentration, minor or major level for all interested Poole undergraduates – similar to what is now being done at the graduate level,” she continues. 

And to keep up with an evolving field, the BAHP and BAI are committed to continually offering state-of-the-art tools and innovative techniques, regularly revamping the curriculum and expanding opportunities for students – including research opportunities, career and networking opportunities and thought leadership events. Additionally, the BAI has plans to announce an industry advisory board in the near future.

Since its inception, the BAHP has added four core courses and an elective, ranked No. 27 in the country in undergraduate business analytics programs and placed No. 4 in its first data hackathon competition in 2021.

But BAHP’s greatest success, Fowler says, is launching highly-skilled leaders into the marketplace.

“We’ve seen our graduates move on to accomplish great things. Several have pursued graduate studies or accepted positions in industry in the area of analytics. Most garner higher salaries than their counterparts who do not complete the certificate. And many find their sought-after career choice after completing the program,” she says. 

Graduates like Anna Lawson, for example. Lawson graduated in the spring of 2019 with a degree in business administration with a concentration in operations and supply chain management. She currently serves as a world wide service parts forecast analyst with John Deere.  

“The classes in the Business Analytics Honors Program were some of my most challenging Poole College classes but also some of my most useful and rewarding. Looking back, I appreciate that I was able to learn skills for working with data and also practical people skills in collaboration with fellow students and my practicum sponsor,” Lawson says. “The program taught me how to use many of the different data analysis tools in the workplace but also the logic behind the tools and methods we were using. I may not use every single data program that was taught in the BAHP classes but I constantly use the logic and reasoning in my day-to-day work.”

We also hope to introduce an offering in business analytics at the concentration, minor or major level for all interested Poole undergraduates.

Opening Doors

Garrett Watkins, a senior studying business administration with a concentration in finance and a minor in statistics, decided to apply to the BAHP with the understanding that analytics is now an integral part of the business world – and to gain hands-on experience doing it.

“I recognize that more businesses are investing heavily in analytics as the benefits of leveraging data become more apparent, and so I wanted to learn how to pick apart datasets, capture insights and make informed decisions. I felt that all of these could be useful skills to have when entering this evolving workforce,” Watkins says.

In addition to learning these key skills, Watkins has also appreciated the experiential learning environment of the BAHP. “Class time is rarely a lecture – but typically includes hands-on learning, discussion and group projects. I’m so immersed in class topics that I never find myself looking at the clock,” he says.

But the greatest advantage of the program, Watkins explains, is the opportunity to grow professionally.

“The BAHP has opened doors for me that maybe wouldn’t have been opened otherwise. I believe it’s one of the main reasons I had the opportunity to intern as an actuarial analyst at Blue Cross Blue Shield NC last summer. During my interviews, I was able to emphasize the Excel and SQL skills I had learned from the BAHP, and I ended up using them almost every day while interning. I have also found myself getting further in the interview process – I am beginning to pass technical assessments and interviews that I was not passing before joining the BAHP,” he says.

In particular, Watkins credits Sherry Fowler and Vivek Ajmani with his professional development.

“They both know what recruiters are looking for and prepare students well for the application process. They often highlight what to include on a resume, what things to discuss when talking to a potential employer and how to apply what we have learned to the business world. In every class, they incorporate public speaking, presentation skills, clean coding techniques and technical interview questions – and they make it known that they are there to help you pursue your post-graduation aspirations and not just to help you perform well in their class,” he explains.

After graduation, Watkins plans to complete a master of science in analytics at NC State’sInstitute for Advanced Analytics and to take steps toward his dream of becoming a baseball statistician or data scientist for Major League Baseball.