MBA and M.S. in Information Systems Dual Degree Master’s Program

Applied Analytics is a capstone course for the analytic-focused MBA program. It is intended to integrate all previously taken coursed in the program by presenting a set of increasingly complex business problems. These problems can be solved through analytic skill taught in this and previous courses. In particular, the course is intended to reinforce the understanding of analysis as way to build models that can focus attention on parts of the system that can be improved through intervention. The early part of the course uses synthetic data and empirical data readily available for analysis. The second part of the course encourages students to state and solve their own problem, gathering their own data as a part of the analytic process.

Project success depends, largely, on the human side. Success in motivating project workers, organizing and leading project teams, communication and sharing information, and conflict resolution, are just a few areas that are critical for project success. However, being primarily technical people, many project managers tend to neglect these "soft" issues, assuming they are less important or that they should be addressed by direct functional managers. The purpose of this course is to increase awareness of project managers to the critical issues of managing people and to present some of the theories and practices of leading project workers and teams.

Executives make decisions every day in the face of uncertainty. The objective of this course is to help students understand how decisions are made, why they are often less than optimal, and how decision-making can be improved. This course will contrast how managers do make decisions with how they should make decisions, by thinking about how “rational” decision makers should act, by conducting in-class exercises and examining empirical evidence of how individuals do act (often erroneously) in managerial situations. The course will include statistical tools for decision-making, as well as treatment of the psychological factors involved in making decisions.

The study of marketing principles from the conceptual, analytical, and managerial points of view. Topics include: strategic planning, market segmentation, product life-cycle, new product development, advertising and selling, pricing, distribution, governmental, and other environmental influences as these factors relate to markets and the business structure.

Project success depends, largely, on the human side. Success in motivating project workers, organizing and leading project teams, communication and sharing information, and conflict resolution, are just a few areas that are critical for project success. However, being primarily technical people, many project managers tend to neglect these "soft" issues, assuming they are less important or that they should be addressed by direct functional managers. The purpose of this course is to increase awareness of project managers to the critical issues of managing people and to present some of the theories and practices of leading project workers and teams.

This course introduces students to fundamental soft skills, work techniques, and technologies employed by management consultants. Topics covered in this course include project scoping, creating statements of work, meeting facilitation, project planning, design of presentations and written reports, management briefs, and delivery of status reports. The course will improve students’ ability to present analyses of issues and organizational problems in a concise, accurate, clear and interesting manner from the perspective of a consultant. This course is designed to be taken prior to the experiential graduate courses in the School of Business, including MGT 809: Industry Capstone Project.

In this course students work on an industry project with a team of their peers under the supervision of a faculty advisor and industry mentor. Students will work on project tasks and manage client expectations while applying their disciplinary and technical knowledge to the project. In addition to the project-specific deliverables, students will produce a statement of work, present weekly project updates, and a final presentation and project report to management. This three-credit course is tied to the Industry Capstone Program in the School of Business. Students must first apply for a project before registering for this course.

Corporate financial management requires the ability to understand the past performance of the firm in accounting terms; while also being able to project the future economic consequences of the firm in financial terms. This course provides the requisite survey of accounting and finance methods and principles to allow technical executives to make effective decisions that maximize shareholder value.

This course will focus on Data Mining & Knowledge Discovery Algorithms and their applications in solving real world business and operation problems. We concentrate on demonstrating how discovering the hidden knowledge in corporate databases will help managers to make near-real time intelligent business and operation decisions. The course will begin with an introduction to Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery in Databases. Methodological and practical aspects of knowledge discovery algorithms including: Data Preprocessing, k-Nearest Neighborhood algorithm, Machine Learning and Decision Trees, Artificial Neural Networks, Clustering, and Algorithm Evaluation Techniques will be covered. Practical examples and case studies will be present throughout the course.

The objective of this course is to address the important question, "How to improve the alignment of business and information technology strategies?" The course is designed for advanced graduate students. It provides the student with the most current approaches to deriving business and information technology strategies, while ensuring harmony among the organizations. Topics include business strategy, business infrastructure, IT strategy, IT infrastructure, strategic alignment, methods/metrics for building strategies and achieving alignment.

This course deals with the basic problems of managing a project, defined as a temporary organization built for the purpose of achieving a specific objective. Both operational and conceptual issues will be considered. Operational issues include definition, planning, implementation, control, and evaluation of the project. Conceptual issues include project management vs. hierarchical management, matrix organization, project authority, motivation, and morale. Cases will be used to illustrate problems in project management and how to resolve them.

IT organizations must be able to leverage new technologies. This course focuses on how organizations can effectively and efficiently assess trends and emerging technologies in data and knowledge management, information networks, and analyzing and developing application systems. Students will learn how to help their organizations define, select, and adopt new information technologies.

This course focuses on the role of information technology (IT) in reengineering and enhancing key business processes. The implications for organizational structures and processes, as the result of increased opportunities to deploy information and streamlining business systems are covered.

This course focuses on the issues surrounding the design of an overall information technology architecture. The traditional approach in organizations is to segment the problem into four areas - network, hardware, data and applications. This course will focus on the interdependencies among these architectures. In addition, this course will utilize management research on organizational integration and coordination science. The student will learn how to design in the large, make appropriate choices about architecture in relationship to overall organization goals, understand the different mechanisms available for coordination and create a process for establishing and maintaining an enterprise architecture.

This 2-credit course focuses on data and database management, with an emphasis on modeling and design, and their application to business decision making. The course provides a conceptual understanding of both organizational and technical issues associated with data. The central theme concerns data modeling and databases. We examine organizational approaches to managing and integrating data. Among the topics included are normalization, entity-relationship modeling, relational database design, SQL, and data definition language (DDL). Discussed are specific applications such as strategic data management, master data management, and physical database design. The course concludes with a brief overview of Decision Support Systems, data warehousing and business intelligence, NoSQL databases (e.g., MongoDB) and cloud computing. The course includes a number of cases studies and modeling and design projects. Students in MIS 631 must also enroll in the associated 1-credit lab course MIS 632 Managing Data Lab.

This 1-credit lab course provides an experiential learning component for MIS 631 Data Management for which it is a co-requisite. MIS 632 provides hands-on experience in designing, implementing, and querying data bases. The relevant software is introduced using demonstrations, in-class exercises and homework exercises that are closely tied to and executed in synch with the conceptual and theoretical material covered in MIS 631. Specifically, students will gain hands-on experience in: (i) ERWIN - a widely used commercial tool for representing conceptual (e.g., E-R diagrams) and logical data models (e.g., relational DBMS), (ii) PostgreSQL (relational database software), (iii) SQL Structured Query Language) and (iv) MongoDB a NoSQL document data store. Students in MIS 632 must also be enrolled in the associated 2-credit lecture course MIS 631 Managing Data course.

This course covers the fundamental principles of finance. The primary concepts covered include the time value of money, principles of valuation and risk. Specific applications include the valuation of debt and equity securities as well as capital budgeting analysis, financial manager’s functions, liquidity vs. profitability, financial planning, capital budgeting, management of long term funds, money and capital markets, debt and equity, management of assets, cash and accounts receivable, inventory and fixed assets. Additional topics include derivative markets.

This course will provide the student with the principles and techniques of financial and managerial accounting for technical organizations. The emphasis will be on the use of financial data for decision making. The basics of accounting will briefly be covered, with the major amount of time spent on ways to understand, analyze and use the data for decision making. Budgeting and analysis of performance, as well as, recognizing fixed and variable expenses are other key areas of financial management. Issues of valuation, time value of money, uncertainty and risk will be integrated in the material. The one-term course will make extensive use of the text by Weygandt et al (see below), supplemented by cases, exercises, homework and examinations. Emphasis will be on real-world, practical application of the tools of finance to management decision making.

This course introduces managers to the essence of business economics – the theories, concepts and ideas that form the economist’s tool kit encompassing both the microeconomic and macroeconomic environments. Microeconomic topics include demand and supply, elasticity, consumer choice, production, cost, profit maximization, market structure, and game theory while the Macroeconomic topics will be GDP, inflation, unemployment, aggregate demand, aggregate supply, fiscal and monetary policies. In addition the basic concepts in international trade and finance will be discussed.

This concentration offers a deeper dive into big data and its applications in business, as well as specific analytic tools. 

• MIS 635 Designing the Knowledge Organization

• MIS 636 Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence

• MIS 637 Data Analytics and Machine Learning

• BIA 672 Marketing Analytics

Students in this concentration will specialize in understanding effective business processes and supply-chain management. Students in this concentration can choose any four of the following:

• MIS 690 Supply Chain Management and Strategy

• BIA 674 Supply Chain Analytics

• MIS 712 Advanced Business Process Management

• BIA 650 Process Optimization and Analytics

• MIS 714 Service Innovation

This concentration gives students the perspective and technical skill required to work in the highly fluid area of cybersecurity. Courses taken as part of this concentration will support your preparation for important industry certification exams. 

• FIN 545 Financial Cybersecurity

• MIS 645 Cybersecurity Principles for Managers

• BIA 670 Risk Management

With advisor permission, you may substitute one of the above courses with a different cybersecurity elective.

Students particularly interested in effectively guiding projects from conception to completion will be best suited for this concentration. 

• MGT 610 Strategic Perspectives of Project Management

• MGT 611 Project Analytics

• MGT 612 Leader Development

• MGT 614 Advanced Project Management