The University of Alabama and SAS educate the next generation of data mining experts

Four data mining courses offered via combined efforts

With two looming trends – the retirement of the baby boom generation and a growing skills gap – conspiring to make top-notch employees scarce, companies are increasing their reliance on institutions of higher learning to graduate a well-educated work force. That's why academic degree programs like the one co-sponsored by the University of Alabama and data mining leader SAS are generating so much interest.

In 2003, the University of Alabama's Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration teamed with SAS, the market leader in business intelligence, to create four credit-carrying data mining courses, the completion of which would fulfill the requirement for the data mining specialization in the university's master's program in applied statistics. One of the few such programs in the country, the program graduated its first class in May 2004. While the number of graduates may be small, their impact on the world of analytics has been undeniable.

Growing demand for SAS skills
Michael Hardin, professor of statistics at the University of Alabama, and Jerry Oglesby, director of Higher Education Consulting at SAS, designed the proposed sequence of courses. Having both worked in the industry for a number of years, Hardin and Oglesby fully understood the dearth of individuals who are qualified to build predictive models and accomplish other data mining tasks.

"With a growing worldwide demand for analytical professionals with strong SAS skills and a well-rounded background in data mining, the program has been a boon for both Alabama's graduate students and for employers desperate to hire top-notch analytical employees," says Hardin. "Because the program teaches our students the basics of data quality and data mining through hands-on courses featuring technology from the world leader in data mining, they learn the analytical skills that allow them to immediately become competitive in the marketplace."

The courses use SAS' analytic and data warehousing technologies, as well as its award-winning data mining tool, SAS Enterprise Miner. For SAS, the program is yet another demonstration of the company's dedication to providing institutions of higher learning and their students the latest SAS technology and exposure to its software.

"Higher Education Consulting was created to address a growing demand for SAS technology within institutions of higher learning," says Oglesby. "Partnering with the University of Alabama allows us to provide leading-edge analytical technology to its students, making them better prepared to assume productive roles as technology leaders after graduation." The group works closely with nearly a dozen other institutions of higher learning developing similar certificate programs in data mining and data warehousing.

Statistics through a business perspective
It's the partnership with SAS, along with the combination of a rigorous analytical curriculum and hands-on experience, that attracts students and employers alike to the program at Alabama. The program consists of two courses in data management that teach the skills needed to collect, manage and process an organization's data, followed by two courses in data mining and data analysis. A final aspect of the program is an intensive hands-on experience with data mining in a real-world business setting. The combination allows the university to teach both the theoretical basis and practical applications of common data mining analytic tools, such as neural networks, decision trees, cluster analysis and association analysis.

The comprehensive curriculum was the primary reason Kedar Patil, one of the program's first graduates, was attracted to the program. Already holding a degree in engineering and an MBA, Patil pursued the master's degree in statistics with a specialization in data mining because he recognized the high demand for professionals with advanced skills in analytics.

"The degree in applied statistics was important to me," Patil says, "but the data mining track was particularly attractive. The program puts statistics in a business perspective, helping students understand the business need for understanding models and using data." In addition to his coursework, Patil fulfilled the field study requirement through an internship with South Trust Bank (now Wachovia), working with the bank's risk group. Shortly after graduation, he landed a job with Cleveland-based KeyCorp, one of the nation's largest bank-based financial services companies.

"Kedar was not intimidated by large data sets," says KeyCorp's vice president of database marketing, Suzanne Cashman Rain. "Because he had been through the program at Alabama, he came to us with the real-world experience you don't often see in recent statistics graduates."

In a business environment where countless companies are in a race for a shrinking population of highly educated, highly skilled workers, data mining programs like the one at the University of Alabama can be a godsend. Other University of Alabama students have found positions at such noted data mining practitioners as the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, 3M Corp., Wachovia Bank, BellSouth Inc. and NASA.

"The program has really begun to build national momentum," says Hardin. "Our graduates are doing some outstanding work in the data mining community, and we're looking forward to graduating another class of outstanding students this fall."

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