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UA Hopes New Degree Will Fill Data Need

3 min read

The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville used the team approach in creating a new bachelor degree program for data science.

The university will start offering classes in the fall of 2020, and officials expect approximately 50 students to enroll in the program each year. That would be welcome news for the business leaders of the state and northwest Arkansas who have been clamoring for more skilled graduates in an increasingly digital world.

“This is an area of data science that is of significant importance to our economy today and probably even more important in the future,” said Nelson Peacock, CEO of the Northwest Arkansas Council and a member of the university’s advisory council for the program. “The digitization of the entire economy, having these trained individuals that do this deep data work and understand algorithms, is critically important. To attract talent to the region and to retain it, not only for our biggest companies but also for the smaller businesses, this is an important focus in the area for us.”

Many of the area’s business heavyweights that drive the council’s nonprofit work had representatives on the university’s advisory council, including Walmart Inc., the Walton Family Foundation, J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. and Tyson Foods.

The final result is the bachelor of science degree in data science. It involves the university’s colleges of business, arts & science and engineering after several years of planning and feedback from the bevy of interested parties.

The university said the new degree will mean 16 new courses and new faculty, although some existing faculty could be reassigned to the data science courses.

Building Flexibility

The 120-hour degree plan is unique in that it will require 21 hours of specialized studies and 36 hours of core studies.

The university originally wanted to have four areas of concentration but as the degree was put together it eventually ended up with 10 “domains.”

The domains include studies that focus on supply chains, health care, accounting, social data and business operations. Karl Schubert, a university professor who directed the degree project, said it is a “hub-and-spokes” model in which students get a big dollop of core data education with intensive specialized courses.

“The industries around the state and that we support with our graduates were telling us that the people they were hiring with different computer degrees weren’t actually able to do the kind of data analysis or interpretation they were looking for,” said Schubert, a research professor in the university’s College of Engineering. “They said we need some graduates with a rigorous degree in being able to deal with data, model it, analyze it and make recommendations with a very high level of skill.”

Schubert earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from Arkansas and returned to the university as a professor in 2016. In between, he spent more than 30 years in the private sector working for major tech companies and fledgling startups; his positions include chief technology officer at Dell and program director at IBM. “I actually have hired and been hired or managed each one of these jobs,” Schubert said.

Schubert said the hub-and-spokes model is important because it creates the flexibility such a program will require as technology and business continue to evolve. What is needed urgently now may not be what businesses need in 10 years.

“This has to be a partnership,” Schubert said. “They will be the first to tell us that they won’t be able to tell us what they will need in five-10 years. They can tell the kind of skills they need (today).

“The end is data science. These [domains] are just tools for them to use. It is not important that they can design the database; they need to be able to use the database effectively.”

Schubert said the university is working with the Arkansas Center of Data Science to make the program a statewide tool. He said the flexibility would allow a university in Conway, for example, to pattern its domains after what local industries need.

“That could make us a destination for students,” Schubert said. “As it stands right now, there is no one else in the world that has a program like ours.”

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