Business Analytics

• QST BA 881: MSBA Marketing Elective
  
• QST BA 882: Deploying Analytics Pipelines
  Pre-requisites: QST BA775, BA780, BA810, or BA820. This course will equip students with the essential skills for transitioning data analysis and machine learning tasks to the cloud, supporting production workloads. It covers the creation and deployment of data and ML pipelines, including those for generative AI applications, with a focus on data integration strategies, cloud data warehousing, BI, and ML-Ops. Leveraging prior coursework in data management and machine learning, students will learn to implement ETL/ELT processes, monitor data quality, and deploy models as APIs using cloud services.
• QST BA 885: Advanced Analytics 2
  This course covers analytics topics in applied optimization (or prescriptive analytics). In contrast to the unsupervised and supervised machine learning studied in BA820 and BA810 (and BA865) where the focus was to discover patterns and predict uncertain events, this course focuses on determining the best course of action given an objective and a set of constraints. In other words, making operational and strategic decisions using a rigorous and principled approach. The methods learned in this course have broad application including in logistics, marketing, health care, finance, and more. Example problems include determining which products to advertise to which customer to maximize sales, identifying best location of warehouses to best serve geographically dispersed stores or customers, and allocating medical resources to health care facilities to minimize the fallout during an active pandemic. Topics include linear programming, integer programming, network models, and related methods. Students will learn how to set up such optimization problems and solve them using spreadsheets and Python.
• QST BA 888: Capstone Project
  The capstone project course will allow students to work on a data project in a team setting. The goal is for the students to solve a real-world problem using the knowledge, tools, and techniques acquired throughout the program and show their skills to potential employers. This course spans across the degree program and requires multi-semester efforts, however, the vast majority of the work will be done during the spring semester. The final product will be presented to a faculty panel at the end of the spring semester, followed by a poster session which will be open to the public.
• QST BA 890: Analytics Practicum
  The analytics practicum provides an opportunity for students to gain individual, practical experience related to business analytics. Students will complete a report based on one of the following: - Reflection paper related to an internship experience: Students will describe work accomplished and knowledge gained from working on a part-time or full-time internship in an area directly related to Business Analytics (e.g., data engineering, data analysis, data modeling, machine learning, data visualization). The paper should demonstrate the student's knowledge of Business Analytics concepts acquired through the internship experience. - Research Project: Students will select a topic related to Business Analytics which has not been covered in existing coursework or significantly extends concepts taught in the MSBA curriculum. The research topic can be novel or can be an extension of work completed during the capstone project. It should be substantive enough in terms of technical, quantitative, data management, or programming aspects and contain appropriate references. Students should not merely compile work of others, but also display genuine critical thinking.
• QST BA 891: Analytics Practicum II
  0 cr. The analytics practicum provides an opportunity for students to gain individual, practical experience related to business analytics. BA891 is a required course for all MSBA students on the 16-month track that provides additional opportunity for students to explore new topics or deepen their knowledge and skills, in areas covered in prior coursework (for example, in BA888 or BA890). Students will complete a report based either on a reflection paper related to an internship experience, or on a research project based on a topic related to Business Analytics which has not been covered in existing coursework or significantly extends concepts taught in the MSBA curriculum. The research topic can be novel or can be an extension of work completed during the capstone project or during BA890. It should be substantive enough in terms of technical, quantitative, data management, or programming aspects and contain appropriate references. Students should not merely compile work of others, but also display genuine critical thinking.