As part of our MS Analytics curriculum, students must get experience working with a company or other organization on real analytics/data science project. One of the ways our students fulfill this requirement is through the 6-credit Applied Analytics Practicum course. Prerequisites for the course are at least 7 courses toward the MS Analytics degree including CSE 6242 Data and Visual Analytics and MGT 6203 Data Analytics in Business; or, permission of the instructor and the MS Analytics program.

Overview of Applied Analytics Practicum

The applied analytics practicum is a semester-long course which provides a professional practice experience for students in the MS Analytics program, and creates an opportunity to apply ideas from the classroom to a data science problem of significant interest to a business, government agency or other organization. The course is designed to give students experience in how to:

• properly define and scope an analytics project to fit the needs of an organization;
• manipulate, structure and analyze real data sets;
• apply appropriate data science or analytics ideas, methodologies, and tools;
• create value, insight, and knowledge using analytics and data science skills and principles;
• manage a project; and
• present results professionally in writing and orally.

The practicum spans an entire semester (10 weeks for summer or 15 weeks for fall or spring) ending with a written report and presentation to the sponsor.

Students from our on-campus MSA cohort will work in teams of 3-4 members, while students from our on-line MSA cohort will work individually or in teams of 2-3 members on the practicum project. All students receive 6 academic credits for the practicum, and thus are expected to spend 20 hours/week on this project.

Students can be asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) at the sponsor’s request. There is no cost to organizations to sponsor an applied analytics practicum project.

Practicum Project Requirements

To meet Georgia Tech's MS Analytics practicum requirements, opportunities must allow the student to:

• Apply concepts learned in the classroom to an important analytics or data science problem currently faced by your organization
• Apply graduate-level data science skills
• Work on various aspects of the data science project life cycle (i.e. data mining, machine learning, predictive modeling, statistical correlations, visualizations, etc.)
• Contribute 20 hours/week throughout an entire semester

Sponsor Commitments

1. Impact: Sponsors agree to provide a data science project of significant interest and value to their organization.
2. Transfer of Data: Data must be ready to be securely transferred to the students approximately four weeks prior to the start of the semester. Sponsors typically transfer data via an internal method of their choice.
3. NDA: If your organization requires that students complete a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), we ask that you provide the NDA. Because part of the benefit of the practicum experience for students is in marketing themselves for full-time positions, it is required that the NDA allow students to list the sponsoring company’s name and a high-level description of the project. The NDA will be solely between the students on the project team and your organization; Georgia Tech faculty and staff will not have access to your data.
4. Liaison & Student Communication: Sponsors will be asked to assign a liaison to be the primary point of contact for communications with the students. This person will provide technical and strategic guidance as needed to ensure that the project remains on course. For the on-campus practicum, we recommend scheduling weekly calls with the team initially and then possibly reducing the frequency to bi-weekly. For the on-line practicum, we recommend scheduling virtual office hours and establishing a dynamic communication channel, such as Slack or Teams, where student questions can be answered by a designated liaison.
5. Meetings & Deliverables:
   1. We ask all sponsors to host a kick-off meeting for the students during the first week of the semester. This meeting can be on-campus, at your office or virtual. For employers, hosting online MSA students, kick-off meetings will be virtual.
   2. We recommend that you develop a timeline of deliverables/milestones to keep the team on track throughout the semester.
   3. Midway through the semester, students will be required to submit a progress report to the MS Analytics program. You may also ask them to submit a progress report and/or present to your team at this time.
   4. At the end of the semester, students will be required to submit a final project report to both your organization as well as the MS Analytics program. On-campus students are required to present their project results/recommendations to your team.

Call for Proposals

We are actively seeking organizations who are interested in sponsoring a MS Analytics practicum project for the coming academic year. If your organization is interested in sponsoring a practicum project, please fill out the form below to have your practicum opportunity added to our MSA practicum opportunities database. We will review your proposal and be back in touch with regards to next steps.

Project Proposal Deadlines:

• Summer proposal - March 1st
• Fall proposal - May 20th
• Spring proposal - September 20th

Submit A Practicum Proposal For Consideration

Project Examples

• Analyze and predict timeline risk associated with clinical studies for a pharmaceutical company
• Perform social media sentiment analysis for a telecommunication company
• Analyze and predict likelihood of injury for players based on their training schedule, for a college sports team
• Predict paper breaks in paper manufacturing process in advance and identify potential causes
• Develop a predictive model and risk calculator to identify patients as high risk for being readmitted to the hospital
• Apply neural network to time-series data from consumer payment history to predict future payment delinquency

More Information

For more information on becoming a practicum sponsor, please contact Ann Blasick, Director of MS Analytics Career Services, at ann.blasick@isye.gatech.edu or 404-385-2537.

If you are an on-line MSA student and would like to use an analytics project from your current employer as your practicum project, please submit and inquiry HERE to discuss next steps.