Analytics and Information Management/MBA
A combined 72 credits for these two degrees (30 credits for the M.S. in Analytics and Information Management and 42 credits for the MBA) is reduced to 67.5 credits through credit-sharing.
How to Apply
Students must apply and be accepted to both programs of study. Students may begin
their studies in either program. Students who successfully complete all requirements
will receive two degrees and two diplomas. The degrees must be conferred simultaneously.
Tuition Information
While the student is enrolled in both the MS in Analytics and Information Management
and the MBA programs, the Professional MBA tuition rate will apply for all terms except
any term during which a student is enrolled exclusively in MS-AIM courses. During
those terms, the MS-AIM tuition rate will apply.
Curricula Details
Students will earn credits toward the MS-AIM for either ISYS-620 Predictive Analytics
with Machine Learning or ISYS-622 Behavior Analytics with Visualization by taking
STAT-510 Applied Statistics (3 credits).
Students will earn credits toward the MBA for ISYS-525 Managing Information (1.5 credits) by taking ISYS-611 Information Systems Ecosystem (3 credits).
Based on prior coursework, students may also be eligible for advanced standing credits for ACCT-501 Accounting Fundamentals, ECON-501 Economics Fundamentals, FINC-501 Finance Fundamentals, and STAT-501 Statistics Fundamentals, each 1.5 credits for a maximum total of 6 credits.
Program Information
Hone your vast potential with a Professional Master of Business Administration degree from Duquesne University, and meet your professional potential in Duquesne's Master of Science in Analytics and Information Management program.
Program Type
Dual Degree
Degree
Master's
Required Credit Hours
72
MS-AIM Courses
Statistical and technical understanding are essential for the AIM professional. This
course focuses on creating a solid foundation of technical skills, which will be applied
in downstream courses. Topics will include programming concepts and logic, descriptive,
predictive and prescriptive statistics, and data storage techniques.
Prerequisites: None
Within the context of data analytics, this course teaches students to manage information
as a strategic asset with the potential to create significant business value. Students
will be exposed to various approaches to managing the capture, retention and disposition
of information. Special emphasis will be placed on the legal/regulatory, ethical,
risk management and cybersecurity requirements of managing information. Topics include
the role of information systems in an organization, information systems governance
(which is designed to ensure that IT investments create organizational value), data
governance (which seeks to ensure that organizational data meet the standards for
quality data), and strategies for identifying measurable sources of ROI.
Prerequisites: None
Modern organizations use database management systems to store their critical business
data. In this course, students learn to answer business questions using various data
retrieval, manipulation and transformation tools. For instance, data retrieval for
most data-driven business applications relies on Structured Query Language (SQL) –
the international standard language for data manipulation and retrieval. To source
the data required by analytics projects, students will learn to utilize SQL along
with other data-related concepts and languages.
Prerequisites: None
Increasingly, organizational decision-making relies on data available from a diverse
collection of sources. This course covers the objectives, methods and skills for sourcing
data from both internal and external data sources. Students will be exposed to numerous
data sourcing techniques and methods including ingesting data from common file formats,
web APIs (application programming interfaces), and web scraping. Students will also
learn a variety of methods for examining and enhancing the quality of acquired data.
Pre- or co-requisite: ISYS 610
One of these is substituted by STAT-510 Applied Statistics
Predictive Analytics with Machine Learning:
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the science of getting computers to learn and solve
problems autonomously without being explicitly programmed (machine learning). In the
past decade, through machine learning, AI has given us self-driving cars, practical
speech recognition, effective web search, and a vastly improved understanding of the
human genome. Companies are increasingly applying AI technologies and techniques to
uncover new business insights and assist managers with making better informed and
timely decisions. This course will cover concepts and algorithms in artificial intelligence
with an emphasis on machine learning. Students will learn about the most fundamental
machine learning techniques, gain practice implementing them and applying them to
new problems. Prerequisite: ISYS 610
Behavioral Analytics with Visualization:
E-commerce and social media have experienced rapid growth during the past decade.
Billions of users have been generating and sharing a variety of social content including
text, images, videos, and related metadata. Social media can be viewed as an indicator
reflecting different aspects of the society, and organizations can combine this with
their existing data to support organizational decision-making. In this course, students
will learn how to analyze behavioral data and apply the analyses to answer business
questions. Advanced regression techniques, network concepts, and social theories will
be covered throughout the course. Prerequisite: ISYS 610
Organizations have more opportunities than ever before to collect, organize and store
internally- and externally-generated data. Such data are used to support organizational
operations, managerial decision-making, and strategic planning. This course will
examine multiple types and sources of data, including how it is collected and stored
in relational and non-relational databases. The focus is on understanding the structure
of the data and designing structures appropriate for various organizational needs.
Prerequisites: None
Two foundational attributes of an outstanding data analyst are: 1) a fundamental ability
to ask insightful business questions using a purposeful, scientific approach, and
2) to be able to tell a ‘story’ regarding how the results of the analytical process
can be turned into operational assets for different stakeholders. Industry leaders
find that being able to build and tell a story using the data are becoming even more
critical than the data extraction skills alone. As such, a focus of this course is
building Socratic questioning and storytelling abilities within the analytics ecosystem.
Other course topics will include project management methodologies, decision-making
models, persuasive presentation techniques, and business process documentation. Prerequisites:
None
The 21st century has been called by many ‘The Century of Data.’ The explosion of social
media and the digitization of many aspects of social and economic activity have resulted
in the creation of large amounts of rich data in a variety of formats. By applying
advanced analytical techniques to these data, organizations hope to uncover hidden
insights that will yield competitive advantages. This course will introduce strategies
and methods for developing meaningful business intelligence to assist managers in
making decisions in complex environments. The focus will be on using data analysis
to make managerial recommendations as opposed to collecting and managing the data
itself. The key objective of this course is to equip students with knowledge about
how organizations are applying analytical techniques in various business situations,
as well as the associated technical, conceptual and ethical challenges associated
with the application of such techniques. Prerequisite: ISYS 610
In this course, student teams work with a real company to develop a data analytics-based
recommendation for advancing the business. The project is the program’s capstone
experience designed to provide students the opportunity to utilize the methods, skills
and techniques acquired throughout the program to solve a real-world business challenge.
In doing so, students will experience what it is like to make high-stakes and impactful
recommendations to top management under time-pressure and with high expectations for
quality and analysis.
Prerequisites: ISYS 612, ISYS 613, ISYS 620, ISYS 621, ISYS 622, and ISYS 623
Professional MBA Curriculum and Course Descriptions
This course provides graduate business students with an introduction to fundamentals
of accounting for corporations. Topics will include the accounting cycle, an introduction
to the basic financial statements of a corporation and determinations of corporate
profitability and solvency. Online. Offered every semester.
The course is a prerequisite for ECON 520 and covers introductory topics in both microeconomics
and macroeconomics. Online. Offered every semester.
Financial Management is about decisions firms make in two broad areas: the investments
it makes and how it pays for them. The first involves expenditures for physical capital,
human capital, technological capability, brand capital, and so forth. The second involves
raising money in financial markets. In business decision making, the objective is
to maximize shareholder wealth. Why the emphasis on shareholders? Among stakeholders
generally (i.e., customers, employees, suppliers, government, communities, etc.),
shareholders alone possess a uniquely comprehensive and long-term view of the firm’s
viability as an ongoing enterprise. This perspective arises from the residual nature
of shareholders’ claim to earnings and assets. Wealth is created when the return from
investing business resources exceeds their opportunity cost. FINC 501 Finance Fundamentals
provides an introduction to fundamental topics which are prerequisite for FINC 530
Financial Management:
• Financial Statements and Ratio Analysis
• Financial Statement Forecasting
• Time Value of Money
Pre-Requisite: ACCT 501 for level GR with minimum grade of C (may be taken concurrently). Online. Offered every semester.
This course provides the necessary foundation in probability and statistics necessary
for students looking to go on to study the application of statistics to business.
In this course, students will learn the rules of probability, how to identify and
use common probability distributions, and how to conduct basic hypothesis tests.
In this course, students will learn how to apply statistical methods of inference,
produce and interpret statistics that attempt to answer typical business questions,
and use probability theory and statistical methods to draw conclusions. Students are
required to arrive having a working understanding of basic probability and statistics
up through and including hypothesis testing. This course places heavy emphasis on
the application of statistical techniques to business problems and the interpretation
of results for a non-technical audience.
PR: STAT 501
The primary responsibility of all managers is to make decisions in situations in which
there are multiple competing objectives. This course introduces students to a set
of tools that can be applied to scenarios in a variety of business environments. Specifically,
this set of tools will include data summarization, data visualization, optimization
methods, Monte Carlo simulation, multi-criteria decision analysis, and decision trees.
Subsequent courses in the program will utilize these analytical methods within their
specific decision environments.
PR or CONCURRENT: STAT 501
This course examines the ways in which leaders, managers, and employees can improve
employee performance and commitment – key factors underlying competitive organizations.
Guided by an examination of contemporary research and real-world cases, students will
develop the knowledge and tools needed to help them navigate the opportunities and
challenges inherent in managing themselves and others to generate enduring social
and financial value, while incorporating long-term sustainable business objectives
into the vision for the firm.
This course provides graduate business students with a deeper understanding of the
accounting cycle used in companies to produce both internal and external financial
information. Special emphasis is placed throughout the course on understanding, analyzing
and interpreting financial statements and related information. Additionally, students
will be introduced to decision making tools such as ratio analysis and challenged
to utilize them to critically evaluate financial information and make effective decisions.
The basics of corporate sustainability reporting will also be covered. Prerequisite:
Online Accounting Module to be completed prior to ACCT 715; material to be tested
in ACCT 715.
The course covers selected topics in microeconomics. It emphasizes the integration
of microeconomic theories and tools from a managerial perspective. The applied aspect
of the course comes from analyzing case studies and studying empirical evidence of
the theories. Topics include both traditional topics in microeconomics (quantitative
demand analysis, elasticities, production and costs, market structures and profit
maximization), in addition to advanced topics (game theory and pricing strategies).
CO or PR: STAT 510
Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the business process that has evolved from the integration
of the traditional business disciplines of forecasting, demand planning, materials
planning, purchasing, production, operations management, transportation, inventory
management, warehousing, packaging, materials handling, customer service, and related
information systems. SCM focuses on efficient and effective customer satisfaction
from the exchange of goods, services and information to complete the business transaction
from supplier’s supplier to customer’s customer. This course provides insight into
the goals and best practices of each business discipline included in the SCM process,
and how these disciplines integrate to ensure a competitive advantage and corporate
success. Students will assess industry specific differences in managing the flow
of materials, goods, services, information and cash via the processes, technologies,
and facilities that link primary suppliers through to ultimate customers for both
service and product industries.
Financial Management is about decisions firms make in two broad areas: the investments
it makes and how it pays for them. The first involves expenditures for physical capital,
human capital, technological capability, brand capital, and so forth. The second involves
raising money in financial markets. In business decision making, the objective is
to maximize shareholder wealth. Why the emphasis on shareholders? Among stakeholders
generally (i.e., customers, employees, suppliers, government, communities, etc.),
shareholders alone possess a uniquely comprehensive and long-term view of the firm’s
viability as an ongoing enterprise. This perspective arises from the residual nature
of shareholders’ claim to earnings and assets. Wealth is created when the return
from investing business resources exceeds their opportunity cost.
FINC 530 Financial Management provides an advanced discussion of the analytical techniques
used to assess the impact of business decisions on shareholder value. The course
covers these topics:
• Valuation—stocks, bonds, corporate valuation
• Interest rates and financial markets
• Investment decision making (capital budgeting analysis)
• Risk, return and the opportunity cost of capital
• Market efficiency
• Capital structure
PR: FINC 501, ACCT 515, STAT 510, GRBU 503
PR or CONCURRENT: ECON 520
This course examines the role of marketing in creating exchanges that satisfy consumer
and organizational objectives thereby creating value for the firm. The course focuses
on formulating and evaluating marketing strategies. Students learn how marketing
mix decisions – product, place, promotion and price – are made as part of a cohesive
strategy. Contemporary concepts and theories will be presented with a focus on analytical
and financial models that will assist marketing managers in making better decisions.
Emerging perspectives on strategic sustainability, marketing management and the impact
of digital media are also emphasized.
PR: ECON 501
Strategic sustainability advances students’ managerial skills for identifying, researching,
evaluating and communicating innovative opportunities involving the efficient and
effective management of financial, social, and environmental resources.
Building on our commitment to the Principles for Responsible Management Education
(PRME), this course experience serves as a foundation for strategic sustainability,
models and tools across the curriculum.
Students work individually, and in teams to frame problems, research and develop training
seminars, and manage resources for assigned topics. The focus is inspiring innovation,
and creating competitive advantage – both short and long term – for organizations.
Deliverables include presentations of mini training seminars to peer, analytical life
cycle assessment along with participation in class discussions while applying critical
thinking to identify productivity gains, cost savings, revenue increases, and profit
growth when implementing sustainable business practices.
The course is taught as a seminar where sharing learning, best practices and sustainability
knowledge across teams and individuals enables all to gain insight to emerging issues
beyond the scope of a single entity. Students work within an integrated curriculum
to analyze internal/external situations, drivers and risks; to identify problems and
opportunities; to evaluate return on investment from alternative courses of action;
and to value both short- and long-term prosperity. Students independently learn about,
apply, and reflect on proven models and methodologies while honing their skills as
a researcher, analyst, writer, and speaker.
PR: GRBU 503
This course helps students acquire the knowledge and skills needed to interact and
manage effectively in a global business environment. Students will be exposed to
international aspects of organizational behavior, human resource management, labor
relations, corporate strategy, political risk and ethical issues. Overall, this course
is designed to raise students' international business acumen as well as their cultural
intelligence. While business is an increasingly global proposition, cultural differences
impact everything from how employees are hired to how they are led to how business
strategies are formed.
This is a dynamic course that provides an overview of executive leadership and opportunities
to interact with senior managers. The course draws on the collective experience and
wisdom of distinguished business leaders who visit the class to provide students with
executive perspectives on the challenges associated with thinking entrepreneurially,
strategic leadership, developing a vision and motivating organizational change. Students
use a variety of conceptual frameworks in leadership and related areas to assess and
evaluate these “executive insights” (e.g., via papers and projects) with an eye toward
developing their own leadership skills, particularly their ability to seize opportunities
and create effective solutions for the contemporary challenges facing business leaders.
This course addresses the process of planning and implementing business strategies.
In order to develop a future direction for an organization, this class builds on the
formulation of a company’s mission, industry analysis, an organization’s internal
assessment, innovation, and strategic planning. This course emphasizes corporate governance,
sustainability, and ethics in strategic management.
The second half of our integrative capstone sequence, the Capstone Project involves
students teams working with a real company client to develop a set of strategic recommendations
for advancing the business. In this course, students will assess the firm’s strategic
context and diagnose its internal operations as well as its products and/or services
as they relate to customer needs. In doing so, students will experience what it is
like to make high-stakes and impactful recommendations to top management under time
pressure and with high expectations for quality and analysis. Final deliverables
for each team include a detailed report that lays out specific action steps and metrics
(e.g., for productivity gains, cost savings, increased revenues/profit growth) as
well as a sophisticated presentation to company management that highlights the team’s
analysis and recommendations.
PR or CO MGMT 540