Cal Poly’s Orfalea College of Business is accepting applications for its new Business Analytics Certificate Program*, a five-course interdisciplinary degree aimed at business leaders who use data to analyze and solve fundamental business problems.

Cal Poly plans to offering the program in June. The certificate program’s proposed curriculum includes classes related to statistics, data mining, data management, econometrics, and marketing analytics taken over two quarters.

Reflecting Cal Poly’s Learn by Doing philosophy, courses would give students hands-on experience with the quantitative tools necessary to analyze data sets of all sizes and types, including Oracle programs, SAS Enterprise Miner for data mining, and R programming language for regression analysis. The program aims to make a direct impact on local business leaders who need to visualize and analyze data before communicating insights to a larger team.

“We’re building this program in response to a demand for business professionals who can make data-driven decisions,” said Sanjiv Jaggia, the Orfalea College of Business’ associate dean for graduate programs. “This would be the perfect complement to an undergraduate degree in business, engineering, science or math, especially for professionals looking to enhance their skills for tomorrow’s economy.”

Jaggia sites industry trends that forecast demand for data analysts. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported, “Companies of all sizes are expected to add enough data analysts that, as a group, the job category should grow by 45 percent through 2018, making it among the fastest-growing career choices out there.”

*The program is pending final approval.

For more information, visit https://gradbusiness.calpoly.edu/ms-business-analytics/ .