SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The University of Texas System has built analytics and business intelligence into a national model for higher education transparency. Dr. Goutam Chakraborty of Oklahoma State University is producing data mining experts who are in high demand. Both were honored by business analytics leader SAS, along with the 2013 SAS Student Ambassadors.
“These honorees represent the best analytics innovation in colleges and universities,” said SAS CEO Jim Goodnight. “Their applications of SAS technology demonstrate the diverse ways SAS impacts higher education.”
UT System’s Productivity Dashboard
The SAS Excellence in Education award recognizes the UT System Productivity Dashboard, which gives Texas citizens an unprecedented view into the system’s performance. The award spotlights an educational organization using SAS to improve operations, empower leaders, prepare students for today’s workforce, spark innovation and/or expand educational opportunities.
Powered by SAS® Analytics and SAS® Business Intelligence software, the dashboard – available to the public, staff and administrators – shows progress in productivity and excellence initiatives across all 15 campuses and system administration.
The dashboard was built on the foundation of The UT System Framework for Excellence. It helps UT assess institutional progress toward the framework’s goals, and is central to the system’s efforts to become a national model for transparency and accountability. The metrics are clustered around five major areas: student access and success, faculty productivity, research and technology transfer, finance and productivity, and health care. It frees up research analysts to do more complex tasks by providing easy access to information via the Web. And it provides a central data repository with standardized definitions and data sources to ensure data integrity and reliability and streamline processes.
Cultivating data mining experts at Oklahoma State
Dr. Goutam Chakraborty, founder of OSU’s SAS Data Mining Certificate Program, earned the 2013 SAS Distinguished Professor Award for using SAS in teaching and/or research and supporting successful student use of SAS.
Last year, the program had the most applicants and graduates since its launch eight years ago. All 75 graduates in 2012 received job offers within three months of graduation, many at salaries above fellow business and engineering classmates, from companies such as Capital One, Apple, Google, Verizon and FedEx.
A marketing professor in the Spears School of Business, Chakraborty’s specialty in quantitative marketing inspired him to teach data mining to students. Chakraborty specifies SAS because it works well for university-based research and is valued in the business world.
Chakraborty has expanded the coursework to include text analytics and plans to offer high-performance analytics. Recently, Chakraborty's students used SAS Text Analytics to analyze tweets for a company interested in measuring the value of customer sentiment.
Tomorrow’s analytics leaders
Recognized for using SAS in innovative ways that benefit their respective industries and fields of study, the 2013 SAS Student Ambassadors include:
Lucy D’Agostino, Washington University School of Medicine; Leonard Gordon, University of Kentucky; Whitney Smiley, University of South Carolina; Michael Keith Jr., University of Pennsylvania; Deanna Schreiber-Gregory, North Dakota State University; Mantosh Kumar, Oklahoma State University; Aude Pujula and David Maradiaga, Louisiana State University; Cally Ong Yeru, Singapore Management University; Ignacio A. Inoa, Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
Additional honorees, representing 23 institutions, were the winners of 10 student ambassador honorable mentions, 10 student scholarships and 10 faculty scholarships.
Today's announcement was made at SAS Global Forum 2013, the world's premier analytics conference and the largest gathering of SAS users, attended by more than 4,000 business and IT users of SAS software and solutions. Key sessions will be live streamed at the SAS video portal.
About SAS
SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions, SAS helps customers at more than 60,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW®.
SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright © 2013 SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.
