Curriculum

The Master of Science in Business Analytics combines technical skills, analytic frameworks, and business
insights. It’s designed for future leaders to make data-driven decisions, delivering strategies and decisions
through an integrated approach to operations, finance, programming, machine learning, and AI.

Highlights

DATA ANALYTICS SKILLS

Cutting-edge data analytics in Probability and Statistics, Programming, Data Management and Visualization, and
Machine Learning.

BUSINESS PRINCIPLES
The overview of key management principles spans across Finance, Accounting, Marketing, and Operations.

LEADERSHIP ESSENTIALS
Business leadership essentials emphasize data-based decision making within Competitive Strategy, Leadership,
and Building High Performing Teams.

PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE
Gain practical experience through a hands-on capstone project with companies, and guest lectures from
practicing experts in the field.

Courses
You will gain business and analytical skills to develop e!ective strategies and recommendations for business
intelligence. Find out how each course in our integrated and comprehensive curriculum will help you to
become an e!ective Business Analyst.
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MSBA COURSES AT-A-GLANCE

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 Expand your technical skillset
BUS AN 507: Spreadsheet Modeling (2 credits)
BUS AN 510: Probability and Statistics (3 credits)
BUS AN 511: Programming Essentials (2 credits)
BUS AN 512: Data Management & SQL (2 credits)
BUS AN 579: Special Topics – Data Visualization & Storytelling (2 credits)

Learn to think analytically

BUS AN 513: Customer Analytics (3 credits)
BUS AN 514: Analytics for Firm Decisions (3 credits)
BUS AN 515: Digital Marketing (3 credits)
BUS AN 516: Operations Research Data Analytics (3 credits)
BUS AN 517: Machine Learning Methods and AI (3 credits)
BUS AN 579: Special Topics – Pricing Analytics (3 credits)

Advance your leadership, teamwork, and communication skills

BUS AN 502: Leadership and Professional Development (2 credits)
BUS AN 550: Business Analytics’ Leader Series (3 credits)
BUS AN 599: Business Analytics’ Practicum (2 credits)

Gain a strong understanding of business

BUS AN 500: Finance and Accounting (3 credits)
BUS AN 503: Competitive Strategy (2 credits)
BUS AN 506: Operations and Supply Chain Management (3 credits)
BUS AN 600: Independent Study
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SUMMER

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 Course Details

Business The Leader Series features industry speakers and guest lectures on a variety of
Analytics’ business analytics topics. Alumni and other business and data analytics leaders
Leader Series share perspectives on former projects and careers in the field.

Competitive This course focuses on students’ ability to think as practicing executives, provide
Strategy practice in analyzing, evaluating, and modifying organizations’ strategies while
considering the changing conditions in the economic, technological,
political/legal and social environments, and operate as a generalist in a
corporate setting. Broadly, the course will focus on the context within which the
decision maker operates, the pressures of performance, and both the personal
and professional limitations of the individual executive as he or she tries to
manage e!ectively.

Data This course will introduce students to SQL and the basic elements of data
Management management and visualization.
& SQL

Probability This course reviews the uses of statistical tools to present, analyze, and interpret
and Statistics data and emphasizes applications of statistical tools and their uses for
organizational decision-making, not the theoretical bases of statistical tools.
Students will develop data and analysis skills to apply in other courses, work
experiences, and life experiences.

Programming This course provides essentials necessary for business analytics professional in
Essentials terms of software and programing skills. Students will learn how to use software
such as R, Python and others to 1) Manage and prepare data and 2) Implement
models to analyze data.

Spreadsheet This courses focuses on the basics of spreadsheet modeling. Spreadsheets and
Modeling simple models implemented in spreadsheets are the initial step in modeling
data. The course covers typical spreadsheet modeling problems and equips
students with the tool necessary to start business analytics projects.
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AUTUMN

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 Course Details

Business The Leader Series features industry speakers and guest lectures on a variety of
Analytics’ business analytics topics. Alumni and other business and data analytics leaders
Leader share perspectives on former projects and careers in the field.
Series

Customer This course focuses on the firm’s interaction with its customers and how data can
Analytics be used to improve these interactions. Targeting and personalization are the core
concepts of modern customer-centric marketing. This course will provide students
with the tools and methods that will allow leveraging data to help shape customer
relationships.

Finance This course provides a broad introduction to the use of financial information to
and make decisions within an organization. The course will cover topics that are most
Accounting useful to managers who are (or will be) in business analytics roles.

Operations This course focuses on business analytics problems and techniques from an
Research operations research perspective. Many firms in a variety of industries use these
Data techniques and these techniques are applicable to the many functional areas of
Analytics business, such as operations, marketing, accounting, finance, etc.
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WINTER

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 Course Details

Business The Leader Series features industry speakers and guest lectures on a variety of
Analytics’ business analytics topics. Alumni and other business and data analytics leaders
Leader share perspectives on former projects and careers in the field.
Series

Digital The course is designed to help students understand the digital marketing
Marketing landscape using quantitative methods. The goal of the course is to introduce
some of the core concepts of digital marketing, and to use a quantitative
approach to develop optimal marketing strategies. This course equips students
with a solid analytical foundation to evaluate digital opportunities, marketing
strategies, and online business models.

Machine This course will introduce a theoretical and practical understanding of core
Learning artificial intelligence and machine learning concepts and techniques; and provide
Methods and hands-on experience in applying these techniques to practical real-word
AI business problems. The course will cover general concepts and techniques
including inductive learning, knowledge representation, reinforcement learning,
recommendation systems, artificial neural networks, and natural language
processing.

Operations This course provides a broad introduction to Operations Management (OM), the
and Supply design and management of the processes that transform inputs into finished
Chain goods or services. The objective of this course is to provide students with a solid
Management foundation in the models and principles that are necessary to generate
improvement ideas.

Special A critical skill has emerged in this era of data: the ability to make uncover key
Topics in insights in data, and convincingly present findings to an audience. Managers and
Business executives use data to understand their environment, set and track progress
Analytics – against goals, and communicate with a wide variety of stakeholders, from
Data employees to customers to shareholders. To that end, this course covers the
Visualization important principles of data visualization and data storytelling.
and
Storytelling
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SPRING

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 Course Details

Analytics for This course focuses on how firms can use data analytics to optimize their
Firm marketing mix decisions or the 4 Ps – Product Design, Pricing, Promotion and
Decisions Advertising, and Placement. In the process, students will also gain expertise in
methodologies for developing statistical models for descriptive, causal, and
predictive models for large-scale data.

Business Provides the capstone learning experience. Provides students the opportunity to
Analytics’ complement their in-class learning experience with practical experience through
Practicum a team-based industry analytics project for a company.

Leadership This year-long* hybrid course focuses on building and working in highly e!ective
and teams and the importance of leadership in the role of a business analytics
Professional professional. It covers the various approaches that can be pursued to accelerate
Development development and the proven behaviors that e!ective team members and
leaders exhibit. With contemporary models as the organizing framework, the
course reviews practical tools with guided self-reflection to assess students’ skills
and develops a plan for students’ development.
*credits applied in spring quarter.

Special This course blends marketing analytic frameworks, marketing strategy &
Topics in microeconomic theory, and data to formulate actionable pricing strategies.
Business Students will learn how to coordinate pricing decisions with the rest of the
Analytics – marketing value proposition. Numerous pricing structures are developed in the
Pricing course, along with their microeconomic foundations. Students will learn the
Analytics underlying theory for each pricing structure, along with the practical
considerations for implementation.

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