ISyE Department Unveils New Analytics Program
In Fall 2018, ISyE launched a new MS program in Analytics.
"Analytics is essentially a modern-day form of operations research,” says Professor Bill Cooper, ISyE's Director of Graduate Studies. “The ultimate goal is to make better decisions. What’s new – and evolving rapidly – are all the sophisticated mathematical and computing toolsets available to the field. And we’re at the point when it takes a significant investment in learning and training to master these tools and make them work together.”
From industry’s point of view, the new program is much-needed. A 2016 McKinsey Global Institute report notes that demand for analytics employees already outstrips supply and that this imbalance may get worse – a reality that many of ISyE’s industry partners confirm.
During the development of the new degree, one challenge was to clearly distinguish it from two other master’s-level programs at UMN: the Master’s in Business Analytics at the Carlson School of Management and the MS in Data Science, which is a joint program of the College of Science and Engineering, the College of Liberal Arts, and School of Public Health.
“These are both good programs, and we had no interest in drawing potential students away from them,” says Cooper. “So we had to ask ourselves: what does ISyE have that’s special?”
The answer, in short: a focus on decision-making. “Our engineers analyze data sets and build and solve optimization models to help make decisions in an industry setting,” explains Cooper.
"We're focusing on skills and concepts necessary to turn data into useful insights and good decisions."
—Bill Cooper, ISyE Professor
The core of the 30-credit, three-semester program is geared toward decision-making based on rigorous data analysis and mathematical optimization. Semester 1 includes a full course on regression analysis and another dedicated to optimization, a series "which lays a solid groundwork for analytics in an industry setting,” says Cooper. “We’re focusing on skills and concepts necessary to turn data into useful insights and good decisions.”
In Semester 2, students take courses on analytics and data-driven decision making (reflecting the focus of the program) and a course on either machine learning or data mining (reflecting key tools for identifying patterns in data that can improve decision making).
The core coursework in Semester 3 includes a full course on stochastic modeling and a capstone project modeled after ISyE’s successful senior design course. In the capstone course, students will work on advanced analytics projects proposed by industry partners under the supervision of both an industry mentor and a faculty mentor. According to Cooper, the capstone project is a feature that makes the MS in Analytics degree stand out. “It is a great opportunity for students to work on real problems and to have close interactions with two mentors. The capstone is designed to provide invaluable practical experience.”
Students will also participate in a new practice-focused seminar course that will mainly feature industry speakers describing cutting edge applications of analytics. This strong industry focus is intended to provide students with a broad understanding of various practical implementations of the analytics tools they learn in the program.
Cooper arranged for Daikin Applied, a major Twin Cities-based HVAC designer and manufacturer that has sponsored several undergraduate senior design projects in the past, to host the first capstone project. “We’ve had great interactions with Daikin,” notes Cooper, “and Daikin was eager to have MS-level students. They’ve had a number of undergraduate senior design teams, but they had some analytics and optimization projects that could only be tackled by more advanced students.”
The department expects the MS program to gradually grow to about 30 students per year. “There are plenty of Minnesota companies already connected to ISyE that would sponsor a graduate-level capstone project,” says Cooper. He adds that ISyE has grown rapidly since becoming a department in 2012, “so we know how to accommodate new students and faculty.”
What’s most exciting for Cooper is that the University of Minnesota will have an engineering-focused, graduate-level analytics program. “The state needs it, the university needs it, and the students need it.”