2013-16

Arizona State University
University Senate
Fall 2012

Senate Motion #2013-16

Motion Introduced by:         Curriculum and Academic Programs Committee
                                                Arnold Maltz, Chair 

Date of First Reading:          November 5, 2012

Date of Second Reading:      December 3, 2012

Title of Motion:                    

Request from the W.P. Carey School of Business- Office of the Dean – for the establishment of a graduate degree -MS in Business Analytics

Action Requested:

The Curriculum and Academic Programs Committee recommends University Senate approval of a proposal submitted by the W.P Carey School of Business – for the establishment of a graduate degree – MS in Business Analytics

Rationale:

The MSBA addresses a predicted 50-60% gap by 2018 in the supply of talent capable of performing deep analytics to address business and government problems and opportunities. Four trends are fueling data growth and job demand: cloud computing, a shift in emphasis to interaction processing from transaction processing, the growth of mobile data, and significant improvements in quantitative modeling software. The Program will leverage the combined analytics expertise of faculty in W. P. Carey School Departments. Data visualization will be a key integrating research niche and a catalyst for a new MSBA Laboratory. Such a laboratory is envisioned to be virtual; analytics vendors contacted thus far provide cloud-based, on-demand, visualization portals. Analytic vendor support for a virtual lab is anticipated to mitigate the need for substantial ASU resource investments.