COBE’s Center for Innovation and Analytics provides skill training for powerful analytics software

Through the efforts of the Division of Analytics within its Center for Innovation and Analytics, Radford University’s College of Business and Economics is providing students, faculty and staff with access to some of the most powerful analytics software available.
Through the efforts of the Division of Analytics within its Center for Innovation and Analytics, the College of Business and Economics is providing students, faculty and staff with access to some of the most powerful analytics software available.

Through the efforts of the Division of Analytics within its Center for Innovation and Analytics (CIA), Radford University’s College of Business and Economics (COBE) is providing students, faculty and staff with access to some of the most powerful analytics software available.

Most recently, the Division of Analytics offered a free three-day training workshop in applied analytics using the SAS Enterprise Miner. Two SAS instructors taught the course.

SAS Enterprise Miner offers ultramodern predictive analytics and data mining capabilities that enable users to analyze complex data, find useful insights and act confidentially to make fact-based decisions.

“I learned about the power and potential of SAS Enterprise Miner and certainly its applicability to my work,” said Vice President for Enrollment Management Katherine McCarthy. “I am grateful for the opportunity to learn the software, especially as we continue efforts to be more data informed in our recruitment and retention efforts.”

Laura Jacobsen, interim dean of the College of Graduate Studies and Research, said the workshop stimulated new ideas to using data analytics to enhance our graduate enrollment management practices.

Management Assistant Professor Richard Gruss said he “enjoyed the workshop” and was “very impressed” with the software. “I plan to take some of my data, which I analyzed with logistic regressions before, and see if I can build better models using the software’s ensemble methods.”

The workshop was designed to teach attendees the skills required to assemble analysis flow diagrams using the of SAS Enterprise Miner tool set for both pattern discovery (segmentation, association and sequence analyses) and predictive modeling (decision tree, regression and neural network models). 

The course also was designed to assist preparation for anyone interested in the certification in predictive modeling using SAS Enterprise Miner, said the CIA’s Division of Analytics Director Wil Stanton, who organized the workshop.

Stanton said Radford University has a licensing agreement with SAS that will provide numerous additional learning opportunities for the university’s students, faculty and staff.

He noted that SAS has assisted other universities and corporations in such areas as enrollment management; website, social media and internet usage analytics; data mining, predictive modeling and forecasting; and data visualization.

The CIA offers a variety of unique and valuable programs, such as the SAS workshop, that assist students, faculty and staff in obtaining and improving innovative and analytic skills.

Other opportunities include Lunch and Learn sessions, elevator pitch competitions, business plan competitions, analytics competitions, case studies, seminars, workshops, lectures and experiential/active learning opportunities.

Each semester, the center provides certifications and/or training to sit for certification for faculty, staff and students in Microsoft Office products such as Excel, SQL, SAS (including Base SAS and Enterprise Miner), SPSS (including SPSS Statistics and SPSS Modeler) and Web/Google Analytics.

“Our desire for the center is to continue to form strong relationships and partnerships with major analytics providers, such as SAS, to give our students, faculty and staff numerous opportunities to develop skills, knowledge and abilities to use some of the most powerful analytics software available worldwide,” Stanton said.

Oct 11, 2017
Chad Osborne
540-831-7761
caosborne@radford.edu