I am very pleased to announce that Peter Paul has committed a major gift of $6 million to enable us to build out a college-wide Business Analytics Initiative at Paul College. The new Initiative will enable us to drive enrollments and expand our course offerings, research, industry engagement, and career opportunities for our students.
While expertise in business analytics is most closely associated with decision sciences, business analytics concepts, techniques and expertise are increasingly being applied across all the disciplines within the college, including marketing, finance, accounting, HR management, and economics.
With this Initiative and the additional resources from the gift, we will be able to develop business analytics as a specific area of academic expertise that will further enhance our reputation and differentiate us in the highly competitive business school market.
The field of business analytics continues to grow rapidly and analytics is now central to many firms’ competitive advantage. Business analytics includes three primary domains of analysis: descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics. These are all aimed at efficiently harnessing the power of large quantities of data to enhance understanding of complex phenomena and provide actionable insights to drive strategic decision-making in organizations.
Specifically, the new funding will enable us to:
- Hire faculty more quickly than we could with university resources alone
- Increase funding for scholarships to attract high performing graduate students
- Establish a Center for Business Analytics that will serve as the hub for faculty doing research and teaching in analytics and related fields. It will also be our base for engaging with industry and developing faculty and student consulting projects with businesses in the region.
Peter sees this gift as an investment to accelerate our ability to build our core strength in business analytics while there is still opportunity to distinguish ourselves as a center of excellence in this evolving field. The demand for graduates with training in business analytics is strong and will continue to grow in the future. As we build our reputation and strengthen our programs, our projection is that we will be able to attract a sufficient number of additional undergraduate and graduate students, philanthropy, sponsorships, and research funding to sustain this expanded capacity after the initial six years of support provided by the gift.
The schematic above illustrates the scope of the Business Analytics Initiative. While the Department of Decision Sciences will be a key driver of this Initiative, the intent is to bring all of our faculty resources together to leverage our expertise and connections to build an area of strength that is more than the sum of its individual parts.
I want to recognize Khole Gwebu and Tevfik Aktekin, -- as well as Debbie Dutton, VP for Advancement -- for their collaboration in developing this gift proposal. And, obviously, we are very grateful to Peter Paul for continuing to support our efforts to take Paul College from “good to great” as he likes to say.
