Helzberg School of Management Announces New Data Science Certificate Programs

The Helzberg School of Management at Rockhurst University is launching two new certificate programs designed to equip students with the skills to excel in the new landscape of “big data.”

Both the data science and business analytics and the data science and business intelligence certification programs set to begin in January are graduate-level curriculum meant to fit somewhere between a seminar-length instruction and a full graduate degree program in terms of program intensity, according to Myles Gartland, Ph.D., associate professor of management and director of the MBA program at the Helzberg School. The certificate programs were created, he said, in response to a growing need in the workplace.

“What we hear from our local companies is they need people to be able to handle both the volume and the nature of data that is coming into their company,” he said. “Things like social media have made that data landscape a lot bigger and more complex, so it requires employees to be able to do more than write a simple report. There’s a lot more we can do with data now — for instance, companies can build models to try to better predict market behavior.”

Some of those same companies — those already looking for analysts, IT professionals or marketing researchers trained to operate in a world of “big data” — had a strong hand in crafting the curriculum for the program, alongside Helzberg School faculty, he said. With each course meeting once a week in the evening over a period of eight weeks, Gartland said the program is a also good fit for working professionals looking to continue their education.