Capstone Project

The MS Analytics program capstone is a career enhancer. Students utilize real data from their organization (or another) and partner with a project coach to build a predictive model. The individual project is completed over the five semesters.  Graduates have earned significant raises because of their capstone projects.

Mays Business School offers this 36-credit hour program as a single-cohort, action-based, purposely-designed curriculum intended to help students develop core business acumen, cultivate leadership skills, and dynamically enhance professional marketability in an increasingly competitive job market.

The 18 courses will be delivered across the 5 educational blocks as follows.

Semester 1: Identify & Formulate Business Problems

• Skills Taught:
  • Basic Project Management Planning
  • Statistical Modeling and Possibilities
  • Big Data Book: Understanding Ethics and Applications of Predictive Modeling
  • Understanding Self
  • Working in Team
  • Conflict Management
• Assignment
  • Summary Paper

Semester 2: Data Prep & Exploration

• Skills Taught:
  • Formulating a concise business problem
  • MECE
  • Constructive Criticism
  • Leadership
  • Ethics
• Assignment
  • Project Plan
  • Peer Review of proposal and feedback on paper

Semester 3: Transfer Data and Select Model

• Skills Taught:
  • Data dictionaries
  • Data Visualization
  • Begin modeling (3-5 methods)
  • Presentation Skills
• Assignment
  • Two meetings for progress updates
  • Former student help desk

Semester 4: Build & Validate Models

• Skills Taught:
  • Business impacts and conclusions
  • Modeling (3-5 methods)
  • Data storytelling
  • Constructive Criticism
• Assignment
  • One meetings for progress updates
  • Peer Review # 2 of proposal and feedback on paper

Semester 4: Deploy Models

• Skills Taught:
  • Business impacts and conclusions
  • Data storytelling
  • Data visualization
  • Strategic Analytics
  • Presenting complicated stat models in layman’s terms.
• Assignment
  • Three meetings for progress updates
  • Review of presentation
  • Video of practice presentation
  • final presentation slide deck

Final Presentation