‘Strategic Analytics’ Articles at Brandeis GPS Blog, Page 2

Brandeis University appoints data expert Mark Coleman as Strategic Analytics program chair

Brandeis Graduate Professional Studies has appointed Mark Coleman, Director of Business Analytics at Carbonite, as its new chair of the Strategic Analytics program.

In his role at Carbonite, Mark leads a multi-disciplinary team of data scientists, analysts, and data engineers that provide data-driven insight, analytical reporting services, and predictive modeling to all core functions across the company.

As program chair, Mark is responsible for ensuring that all Strategic Analytics courses adhere to the university’s high quality standards and that the program’s goals and outcomes remain current and relevant. His deep experience and knowledge of analytics as well the latest industry trends will help translate new in-demand skills into curriculum development.

“I am thrilled to be joining the Strategic Analytics Program at Brandeis,” said Mark. “Analytics and data science have emerged as transformative technologies, driving innovation and disruptions to virtually every industry across the globe. As Program Chair, my role is to both thoughtfully champion the importance of analytics and data-driven thinking, and to ensure our program gives our students the critical intellectual and technical foundations to succeed in their analytics careers.”

Mark’s robust experience in data science and analytics includes senior analytical management and data science positions at Warner Brothers, The Hartford and Liberty Mutual. He also founded and served as CEO of a successful analytics consulting and forecasting practice for the institutional investment community, and is a regular speaker at analytics industry forums.

Mark has an MA in Economics from Boston College, and BAs in Applied Mathematics and Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

How to create a digital culture at your workplace

November 8, 2018 / kaplane / 0 Comments

The Enterpriser’s Project defines digital transformation as the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to customers.

In a world where technology is advancing at a rapid pace, digital transformation should be a required strategy for any organization. To be successful, workplaces must build a digital culture where employees embrace new technologies.

4 Steps for Building a Digital Culture

1. Be upfront about the digital transformation your workplace is undertaking

Be sure to provide a clear message to employees about what is coming down the pike. Address the key components of what digital transformation is and keep employees informed on what changes they’ll see, what the impact will be, and the likely timeline.

2. Engage employees in forums for discussing new technologies

Employees should be included in the digital transformation process by having an opportunity to discuss/debate advantages and possible disadvantages of new technologies. They should have a forum to ask questions about new tools and platforms and the most recent technologies such as AI and machine learning, and also feel empowered to share concerns and discuss ways to mitigate risks related to any upcoming transitions.

Image Source: https://infocus.dellemc.com/tim_wright/why-the-workforce-needs-to-change-for-digital-transformation/

3. Make expectations for digital transformation clear

Once there is a timeline in place for your company’s digital transformation, management should be clear with employees about what that is and make sure they are adjusting as necessary. Provide structured goals for employees and monitor individuals’ progress.

4. Promote digital readiness by pursuing professional development in tech-rich fields

After explaining the digital transformation occurring in your workplace, employees will need to keep up-to-date with their technical knowledge. It may be beneficial to employees to take courses or undergo trainings for professional development.

Brandeis GPS provides online Master’s degrees in tech-rich fields including Strategic Analytics, Digital Marketing and Design, Digital Innovation for FinTech, Robotic Software Engineering, Instructional Design and Technology, and more. At GPS, you can take up to two courses for professional development before enrolling in one of our 12 online Master’s programs.

Brandeis GPS also works with employers through corporate partnerships, providing tuition scholarships and/or training and continual conversation around educational support for companies.

For more information about our 12 online Master’s degree programs or to learn more about taking courses for professional development, contact gps@brandeis.edu, call 781-736-8787 or visit www.brandeis.edu/gps.

Meet our newest GPS faculty members

October 12, 2018 / kaplane / 0 Comments

The first week of the October session is here and we are excited to introduce the newest Brandeis GPS faculty members. These industry leaders come to Brandeis GPS with expertise and established networks within their fields. We have no doubt that the knowledge and experience they bring will provide for meaningful learning opportunities in the online classroom.

Garrett Gillin – RDMD 110: Principals of Search Engine Marketing

Garrett Gillin, MBA, is a co-founder and Principal at 215 Marketing, a Google Premier Partner agency located in Philadelphia, PA, where he oversees the development and execution of integrated digital marketing initiatives with a concentration on programmatic advertising, marketing automation, and advanced analytics.

Todd Chapin – RUCD 185: Design for Non-screen User Experiences

Todd Chapin is a co-founder and Chief Product Officer at ShopClerk.ai. He has experience in product management and UX, as well as expertise in personal mobility, speech recognition, and e-commerce. He has worked at Zipcar, Audible, and Nuance Communications. He has graduate and undergraduate degrees in Human Factors Engineering from Tufts University.

Ernest Green – RSAN 160: Predictive Analytics

Ernest Green MS, MBA, PMP, is Vice President of Data Mining at a large financial institution in Dallas, TX. Prior to this role, he worked as a Data Scientist with General Motors and has 10+ years of diverse analytics experience. He holds multiple college degrees and most recently completed a Master’s in Predictive Analytics from Northwestern University. His research and expertise are in analytics, machine learning, natural language processing and artificial intelligence.

We are so pleased to welcome these new faculty members to Brandeis GPS and look forward to seeing how they bring their expertise to their online classrooms.

Faces of GPS is an occasional series that profiles Brandeis University Graduate Professional Studies students, faculty and staff. Find more Faces of GPS stories here.

What’s next for EdTech

September 14, 2018 / kaplane / 0 Comments

Education technology is constantly evolving alongside the development of new tools, processes and resources. Each year, an expert panel of community members publishes the NMC Horizon Report, which lays out the latest trends and developments in EdTech and identifies new impacts on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry.

This year’s key findings include:

In the short-term, a growing focus on measuring learning and new learning spaces;
In the mid-term, an increase in open educational resources and the rise of different forms of interdisciplinary studies; and
In the long-term, advancing cultures of innovation and cross-institution and cross-sector collaboration

The report predicts that analytics technologies and makerspaces will likely influence EdTech in 2019. Within the next five years and beyond, educators can expect to see the adoption of more adaptive learning technologies and artificial intelligence, mixed reality and robotics.

Be at the forefront of EdTech

Brandeis University is proud to offer master’s degrees for practitioners seeking to make an impact on the future of education technology:

MS in Instructional Design and Technology

MS in Strategic Analytics

MS in Robotic Software Engineering

Brandeis GPS programs are part-time, and 100% online. To learn more about our master’s degrees, request more information or contact the GPS office: 781-736-8787, gps@brandeis.edu.

Top 10 data scientist Charles Givre becomes new Strategic Analytics program chair

August 16, 2018 / kaplane / 0 Comments

Headshot of Charles Givre Brandeis GPS is delighted to announce the appointment of Charles Givre, MA, CISSP, as the new chair of our online MS in Strategic Analytics program.

In his role as chair, Charles ensures high course quality and provides the industry insights that keep the program’s goals and outcomes current and relevant. He also recruits and mentors faculty, and advises students on program and course requirements.

Charles is a Vice President and Lead Data Scientist at Deutsche Bank in the Chief Security Office (CSO), where he leads an international team of data scientists working on security challenges. He has a passion for solving difficult problems with data and using data in unique ways to drive business decisions. In fact, Charles was recently named as one of the Top 10 Data Scientists you need to know right now by Enterprise Management 360.

With over 10 years of experience in the intelligence community in various organizations, Charles has a lot to share with the data science community. Charles regularly presents classes and presentations at international conferences including Strata, BlackHat and the Open Data Science Conference. His research interests include adversarial machine learning as well as improving analytic efficiency. He is a committer to the Apache Drill project and has co-authored a book on the topic.

Charles received undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Music from the University of Arizona before getting his MA from Brandeis University. Then, he went on to work at the CIA and Booz Allen Hamilton before starting in his role at Deutsche Bank.

Learn more about the part-time, online Master’s of Science in Strategic Analytics here.

Faces of GPS is an occasional series that profiles Brandeis University Graduate Professional Studies students, faculty and staff. Find more Faces of GPS stories here.

Brandeis GPS students continue collaboration on statewide MATTERS data project

July 19, 2018 / kaplane / 0 Comments

According to the State Technology and Science Index, Massachusetts is the most high-tech state, with top tier-institutions for higher education producing a highly skilled workforce and innovation economy.

What is MATTERS?

Logo for the MATTERS project MATTERS™ is the Massachusetts’ Technology, Talent and Economic Reporting System. MATTERS was created to measure the strength of the technological environment in Massachusetts and compare it to other states. It was developed by faculty and students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) under the guidance of the Massachusetts High Technology Council (MHTC) to compare Massachusetts’ competitive position to it’s 15 peer technology states.

The MATTERS peer states include the 10 “Leading Technology States” from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative’s annual Innovation Index and the top 5 states in the Milken Institute’s State Tech and Science Index. The MATTERS performance index ranks each state along talent, tax (financial climate), cost of doing business, and quality of life by using a weighted average of key metrics in each data category. The goal is to make Massachusetts the most desirable state to grow a high technology business by using the data from the MATTERS™ project to drive public policy that will enhance the state’s strengths and draw in businesses.

How is Brandeis GPS Involved?

Starting in January 2016, Stephen Gentile, former chair of the MS in Strategic Analytics and a current GPS instructor, created a program for GPS students to curate MATTERS data. The course is now taught by Travis Dawry, who took over as instructor in fall 2016. In each iteration of the course, students are selected based on a variety of factors including their academic performance, professional experience, and leadership abilities.

The role of the GPS team includes:

Developing, documenting, and receiving approval for the scope of work from MHTC project sponsors
Evaluating, analyzing, and transmitting MATTERS data from multiple sources
Proposing and executing extension projects to enhance MATTERS analytics capabilities
Effectively communicating the project’s status, issues, risks, and results to MATTERS stakeholders
Creating or enhancing the methodology to maintain the MATTERS system and developing a proposed work plan for the next offering of the course

Since the launch of the program, Brandeis GPS students have:

Analyzed the current MATTERS state indices and suggested changes to the metrics and weighting across all four of MATTERS’ index categories
Compared Massachusetts infrastructure spending to that of its peer states
Evaluated traffic to the MATTERS website itself using Google Analytics data

There is now a system in place for data versioning and issue tracking, via a private GitHub repository, so the Brandeis GPS team is able to coordinate with the MHTC and WPI points of contact asynchronously throughout the semester.

How can you participate?

The Brandeis GPS course that works with MATTERS data, Special Topics in Strategic Analytics, will be taught during our Fall 2 session starting in October. It is open to students who are matriculated in our 100% online MS in Strategic Analytics program, which aims to help students master the technical and strategic skills necessary to transform data analysis into insightful, data-backed stories to influence key decision makers. The 30-credit part-time, flexible program is designed with equal focus in both the art and science of data in its seven required courses and three electives. After graduating from the program, students should be able to identify patterns and trends within big data, interpret and communicate results to stakeholders of various levels, and leverage data to inform strategic decisions. Samples of our Strategic Analytics courses include Business Intelligence, Analytics and Strategic Decision Making, Foundations of Data Science and Analytics, and Data Quality and Governance.

How do you apply to Brandeis GPS?

If you’re interested in applying to the MS in Strategic Analytics, we offer rolling admission, so you can apply and be accepted at any time. However, there are recommended deadlines if you are seeking admission for a specific term. You should submit your application by Wednesday, September 12 for Fall 2 admission with courses starting in October. Those interested in the program who do not yet wish to pursue a full master’s degree can still take up to two online courses without officially enrolling. This is a great opportunity to get to know our programs and approach to online learning. Course registration is open now for our Fall 2 classes starting in October. Learn more about our MS in Strategic Analytics, and preview our Strategic Analytics courses here. You can also contact our enrollment team at gps@brandeis.edu or 781-736-8787.

Countdown to Commencement 2018

April 23, 2018 / memiller / 0 Comments

It’s that time of year again! A new set of students from Brandeis University’s division of Graduate Professional Studies (GPS) are preparing to walk across the stage in front of 275 friends and family members and receive the master’s degrees they so diligently worked toward.

GPS is thrilled to see our soon-to-be alums progress to the next phase of their professional development and career advancement. We extend an additional congratulations to the inaugural class of graduates from the Digital Marketing and Design and User-Centered Design programs, both of which launched in 2015.

This year’s commencement ceremony will take place on the Brandeis University campus on May 13, 2018, and will feature the following speakers/honors:

Tom Gerace, commencement speaker. Tom is the founder and CEO of Skyword, a Boston-based content marketing firm. An expert in strategic storytelling, Tom recently co-authored the best-selling book Storynomics and leads Storynomics Seminars in cities throughout the world. Early in his career, Tom served as a senior business analyst at the Harvard Business School, where he wrote the first case studies on the emergence of the internet in 1995.
Steve Boardman, student speaker. Strategic Analytics graduate Steve Boardman is a senior technology consultant for iDoxSolutions, Inc. Based in Charleston, South Carolina, Steve has more than 25 years of experience implementing, delivering and supporting enterprise IT solutions for a wide variety of industries. He currently focuses on cloud-based application architectures and business intelligence and analytics solutions.
Meredith Bazzell, Rabb School Outstanding Teacher Award recipient. An instructor in the Digital Marketing and Design program, Meredith has more than 13 years of marketing experience in healthcare, construction, higher education, retail, manufacturing, and technology. Meredith currently serves as the manager of customer experience for global communications at Asurion in Nashville, Tennessee.

We look forward to sharing more commencement-related updates as the day gets closer. Follow along with us here on the blog and at #GPSclassof2018.

Brandeis GPS programs recognized for high quality education, affordability

September 29, 2017 / kemound / 0 Comments

Education research publisher, SR Education Group, recently unveiled their latest rankings for top online colleges and universities, and Brandeis GPS received high rankings for its Project and Program Management, Software Engineering, and Strategic Analytics master’s degrees.

SPOTLIGHT ON JOBS: AXIS COMMUNICATIONS

March 13, 2017 / kemound / 0 Comments

Spotlight On Jobs

Members of the Brandeis GPS Community may submit job postings from within their industries to advertise exclusively to our community. This is a great way to further connect and seek out opportunities as they come up. If you are interested in posting an opportunity, please complete the following form found here.

Where: Axis Communications in Chelmsford, MA

Brandeis GPS analytics program ranked in U.S. top 30

February 22, 2017 / memiller / 0 Comments

Brandeis University’s MS in Strategic Analytics program ranked 28th on College Choice’s list of the 50 Best Big Data Degrees for 2017.

From the College Choice announcement:

View College Choice’s full list of schools here, and click here to learn more about Strategic Analytics at Brandeis.

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