The University of Mount Union’s major in data science and analytics provides students with the in-demand expertise needed to obtain meaningful insights from vast quantities of complex data.
The major is grounded in practical, hands-on training and is relevant for students with myriad interests; by working with real-world data and sector-specific case studies, students gain familiarity with diverse industries including healthcare, marketing, politics, sports analytics, and epidemiology. Motivated students can complement the major with a minor and/or second major in a wide variety of fields from the applied, health, natural, and/or social sciences. There is no prior knowledge in programming required to take the introductory course.
The program reflects the increased demand for data scientists across a variety of disciplines. According to LinkedIn’s 2021 Emerging Jobs Report, “data roles, specifically data scientist and data engineer roles, are increasing steadily.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the overall career growth in data related fields to be between 16-31% through 2028.
The 46-credit major provides students with marketable and transferrable skills, including the ability to:
- Articulate an empirical question relevant to a body of data
- Interface with the data using the most popular programming languages in the field
- Leverage training in statistics and computer science to identify appropriate methods (for example, machine learning) to extract meaningful information from the data
- Design and write computer code to carry out the analysis
- Create appropriate visual representations of the data and results of the analysis
- Connect the results to the empirical question
- Communicate the findings to technical and non-technical audiences