From the Dean: The Wild and Wonderful World of Analytics

I wake up in the morning to an alarm on my cell phone. I adjust my thermostat through an app – and before leaving the house, I set my security system with a few clicks. On my drive to work, my phone connects to my car’s infotainment system giving me a handy approximation of how long it will take me to drive to the office. If I stop in for a coffee, I’ll likely enter some sort of reward points number to get me one step closer to a free cup. When I get home, I pull up Netflix and scroll through the recommendations they’ve curated for my enjoyment. And what do all these seemingly meaningless things have in common?

Data.

It’s hard to think of an item being manufactured today that doesn’t tap into data. We’re seeing unprecedented amounts of data being collected. In fact, Forbes recently reported that over the last decade, data has seen a 5,000% growth. It’s everywhere – and businesses want in.

As a business school, we regularly engage with industry partners to learn more about their needs – and the voices shouting for “more talent with experience in analytics” is a common refrain. These companies know that there is no better place to look for experts in analytics than a top-tier research university like NC State University. 

With the university’s historic roots in STEM disciplines, the college’s reputation of producing exceptional business leaders and our location as one of the largest technology hubs in the country, Poole is poised to be one of the top schools for business analytics. 

With the university’s historic roots in STEM disciplines, the college’s reputation of producing exceptional business leaders and our location as one of the largest technology hubs in the country, Poole is poised to be one of the top schools for business analytics. 

Our first formalized program centered on business analytics, the undergraduate Business Analytics Honors Program, launched in 2017. Graduates of the program receive immediate offers – the majority with around 20% higher base salary than their classmates. As we watched the program succeed and saw increasing demand for business leaders with keen insights into data analytics, we launched the Business Analytics Initiative in 2020 – followed by our first cohort of the new Master of Management, Marketing Analytics in fall 2021, with an inaugural cohort in the new Master of Management, Risk and Analytics slated for fall 2022. Many business leaders looking to upskill or stand out in a competitive workforce have also pursued a Business Analytics certificate in our Jenkins MBA program.

These programs are continuing to build a national reputation, with the US News ranking Poole #27 for our Undergraduate Business Analytics program and #9 for our Business Analytics Certificate in our Jenkins MBA program.

Beyond all these major moves within the college, the university is also solidifying its position as a leader in the world of data analytics by launching the Data Science Academy – a university wide interdisciplinary effort to enhance this historic strength of the university and meet the growing needs of data science research, education and expertise here in North Carolina and around the world.

Our faculty are bought in as well. We have strong support from our Poole faculty in expanding our curriculum to include analytics across disciplines – whether it’s finance, supply chain or accounting. As a dean, hearing the resounding approval from our exceptional faculty is a great sign we’re continuing to move in the right direction to prepare our students for the careers that lie ahead of them.

We want every graduate of Poole College to have the ability to define strategic problems, set appropriate goals, understand how to use data to solve them, and then be able to visualize and interpret that information into actionable insights that transform business. There are huge opportunities for growth in this space and I’m excited to see us continue to build upon the foundation we’ve set over the last several years.

Always looking forward,
Frank Buckless