Partnering to Advance STEM Leaders in Africa

Man reviewing data analytics dashboards on a wall-mounted screen

Help Your Employees Gain Essential Analytics Skills

NUTM and WPI Provide Nigerian Companies a Data-Driven Edge

Data is woven through every aspect of a company’s operations, and there’s a growing demand for professionals who can interpret data to inform sound business decisions. Where will you find these people? Many of them are already in your organization.

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WPI and NUTM logos side by side

NUTM and WPI—a world leader in project-based, purpose-driven global education, research, and outreach—have partnered to make it easier for companies to equip employees with valuable data analytics skills. The WPI Business School will offer its Master’s in Business Analytics, while NUTM will offer its Professional Certification in Design Thinking Leadership Principles.

Notably, the program—curated to upskill the Nigerian workforce—features online and hybrid synchronous modalities, allowing employees to balance work and education.

 

Photo of campus quad with an overlay of data and charts

WPI's iconic campus, located in Worcester, Massachusetts in the U.S., is situated in the educational hub of Boston, proximate to MIT and Harvard

Optimize Your Company's Performance

52%

Productivity increase

“Becoming Irresistible: A New Model for Employee Engagement" – Deloitte
15%

engagement increase

WPI: A Global Leader in STEM Education and Innovation

Located in Worcester, Massachusetts, WPI is a U.S.-based, STEM-focused university with a premier business school situated in the education hub of Boston proximate to other prominent institutions, including MIT and Harvard. The university was founded in 1865 to create and convey the latest science and engineering knowledge in ways that are most beneficial to society. Today, WPI holds firm to its founding mission to provide an education that balances theory with practice.

WPI by the Rankings

Top 100

Master's in Business Analytics program

World University Ranking (Times Higher Education)
#20

top undergraduate business schools

Poets&Quants (2021)
Top 100

best graduate school in the U.S.

U.S. News & World Report (2022)
Top 25

online MBA business schools

Poets&Quants (2022)

Where World-Changing Innovations Start

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A man and a woman riding Segways

Segways

Dean Kamen

 

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Siri

Curt Carlson

 

WPI Alumni Spotlight

Headshot WPI alum Michael Dolan
Former Senior Vice President for Exxon Mobil

Michael Dolan

Michael Dolan is a former senior vice president for Exxon Mobil, where he held a variety of engineering and business management positions. He has also served as director of the American Chemistry Council, the Society of Chemical Industry and the Sam Houston Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Michael is a former trustee for WPI.

Headshot WPI alum Urvashi Tayagi
CTO, ResMed

Urvashi Tyagi

Urvashi Tyagi is the CTO at ResMed, which offers cloud-connected medical devices, and a WPI board member. She has held high-ranking technology positions with companies that include Amazon, American Express, and Microsoft. In 2021, she was awarded WPI's Robert H. Goddard Alumni Award for Outstanding Professional Achievement.

Headshot WPI alum Chuka Ebi
Founder and CEO of Kana

Chuka Ebi

Nigerian alum Chuka Ebi is the founder and CEO of Kana which provides pricing and packaging solutions for internet companies. Prior to starting Kana, he was a product manager for Dixa and accuRx. Additionally, Chuka is a fellow for On Deck, a program that supports entrepreneurs, and an angel investor for startups in London, England.

Headshot WPI alum Steve Rusckowski
Former CEO of Quest Diagnostics

Steve Rusckowski

Steve Rusckowski was CEO of Quest Diagnostics until 2022. He led Quest through COVID-19 pandemic during which time the company played an critical role in administering testing. Prevsiously, he was the CEO of Philips Healthcare. Steve has also served on the boards of Xerox and Project Hope, a global health education and humanitarian assistance organization.

NUTM: Home to Africa’s Next Generation of Leaders

NUTM is a pioneering higher education institution focused on nurturing leaders for Nigeria and Africa. NUTM currently offers  an intensive one-year postgraduate program in Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Design. The program exposes students to world-class education delivered by global faculty consisting of academic and industry professionals. The institution will be offering academic and research offerings in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) and Management at the undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral levels.

What Our Students Are Saying

Kaija Gisolfi-McCready, MSBA ‘22
[Today's companies] need people who can manage teams, but also carry out a large data analysis or use the latest accounting applications.
  • Kaija Gisolfi-McCready, MSBA ‘22

Program Components

The WPI Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA)

Position your employees to make data-driven business decisions that solve real-world problems and drive meaningful impact.

Suggested Curriculum Plan for Fall 2023 Start

MIS 584: Business Intelligence (Fall 2023)

Today’s business computing infrastructures are producing the large volumes of data organizations need to make better plans and decisions. This course provides an introduction to the processes, technologies, and techniques for organizing, analyzing, visualizing, and interpreting data and information about business operations in a way that creates business value. During the course, students will study a variety of business decisions that can be improved by analyzing data about customers, sales, and operations, preparing students to be knowledgeable producers and consumers of business intelligence. Students will apply commercially available business intelligence software to develop performance dashboards to facilitate organizational decision-making. The course explores the technical challenges of organizing, analyzing, and presenting data and the managerial challenges of creating and deploying business intelligence expertise in organizations. The course includes business cases, in-class discussion, and hands-on analyses of business data. It is designed for any student interested in learning about data-driven business performance management and decision-making, including students whose primary focus is Data Science, IT, Marketing, Operations, or Business Management.

OIE 501: Operations Management (Fall 2023)

The operations function in an organization is focused on the transformation processes used to produce goods or provide services. Operations design is driven by strategic values, and innovative improvements can support sustained competitive advantage. In this course, a variety of analytical and statistical techniques are introduced to develop a deep understanding of process behavior, and to use this analysis to inform process and operational designs. Topics such as process analysis and value stream mapping, postponement and global and local supply chain strategies, queuing models, and managing system constraints are covered using case studies and hands-on activities such as on-line simulations. Non-traditional operations systems are also explored. The skills required to model an operational system, to reduce variation and mitigate bottlenecks, to effectively present resource needs, and to adjust capacity and inventory service levels are practiced during the course. (Students cannot get credit for OIE 501 and OIE 500)

MIS 502: Data Management for Analytics (Spring 2024)

This course develops the skills business students need for handling data. It focuses on student skills in (1) cleaning and preparing data for analysis, (2) writing SQL queries to access and manipulate data, and (3) ethical uses of data and data privacy issues. It also covers the types of data typically found in organizations, e.g., employee, customer, product, marketing, operations, and financial data.

OIE 542: Risk Management and Decision Analysis (Spring 2024)

Risk management deals with decision making under uncertainty. It is interdisciplinary, drawing upon management science and managerial decision-making, along with material from negotiation and cognitive psychology. Classic methods from decision analysis are first covered and then applied, from the perspective of business process improvement, to a broad set of applications in operations risk management and design including: quality assurance, supply chains, information security, fire protection engineering, environmental management, projects and new products. A course project is required (and chosen by the student according to his/her interest) to develop skills in integrating subjective and objective information in modeling and evaluating risk. (Prerequisite: OIE 501 or equivalent content, or instructor consent.) (Students cannot get credit for both OIE 542 and OIE 541.)

OIE 558: Designing and Managing Lean and Six-Sigma Processes (Summer 2024)

In this course, Lean Six Sigma is presented as an organizational improvement system and a set of process analysis and statistical tools that have helped the world’s leading organizations achieve operational excellence, saving millions of dollars and improving customer satisfaction. This course is organized in three parts: part one covers the essentials of Lean Six Sigma, including fundamental concepts and problem-solving methods; part two of the course covers Lean Six Sigma tools, including topics such as value-stream mapping, process capability, and experimental design; part three describes the major activities in a Lean Six Sigma roadmap, from identifying core processes to executing improvement projects to sustaining Lean Six Sigma gains.

OBC 505: Teaming and Organizing for Innovation (Summer 2024)

How do we navigate complex human systems in organizations? How do we foster innovation within organizations? In this course, we explore the paradoxes, opportunities, and hidden systemic challenges that arise on teams and projects, and in working across networks and within innovative organizations. Students will learn to more deftly manage the inherent challenges and opportunities of cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary teams; work through or avoid dysfunctional team and organizational conflicts; wrestle with ambiguity and uncertainty; negotiate change by learning to work with networks of power and influence; and analyze the individual, group, organizational and contextual dynamics that enable and constrain productive and innovative work in organizations. (Students cannot get credit for OBC 505 and OBC 500)

OIE 559: Advanced Prescriptive Analytics: From Data to Impact (Fall 2024 A Term – 7 weeks)

This course covers mathematical optimization beyond the foundational concepts of linear programming. Approaching from the perspective of obtaining globally optimal solutions, a variety of optimization problem classes will be addressed, likely including integer programming, nonlinear programming, and stochastic programming. While ensuring an appropriate level of theory, the emphasis of the course will be on the mathematical modeling and computational solution aspects of such problems that may arise in the finance, healthcare, humanitarian, inventory, nonprofit, operations, production, staffing, and supply chain sectors, among others. (Prerequisite:  OIE 552, equivalent knowledge about optimization and linear programming, or consent of the instructor).

OIE 552: Modeling and Optimizing Processes (Fall 2024 B Term – 7 weeks)

This course is designed to provide students with a variety of quantitative tools and techniques useful in modeling, evaluating and optimizing operation processes. Students are oriented toward the creation and use of spreadsheet models to support decision-making in industry and business.

MKT 562: Marketing Research (Fall 2024)

This course is designed to equip students with research methods and tools that are used for marketing decision making. Students will learn to conduct, use, apply, interpret, and present marketing research in order to become effective decision makers. The topics covered in this course include problem formulation, research design, data collection methods, data analysis, and finally presentation of a research plan. This course will be an activity-based course involving design, implementation, and presentation of a marketing research plan. Basic knowledge of marketing and statistical concepts is assumed.

MIS 587: Business Applications in Machine Learning (Spring 2025)

This course explores how Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is applied to solve business problems, to satisfy specific business needs, or to discover new opportunities for businesses. Applications of ML and AI are constantly evolving across many industries. This course utilizes existing AutoML solutions to address issues identified in business case studies (e.g. predicting hospital readmissions, loans likely to default, customer churn). The course covers the machine learning project life cycle starting with defining ML project objectives, acquiring and exploring data, modeling using AutoML tools, interpretation of models and communication of outcomes, and implementation and deployment of predictive models in organizations.

BUS 596: MSBA Capstone (Spring 2025)

This course is the capstone course for the STEM-based, specialty MS programs in the Foisie School of Business. This course serves as a practical integration of the STEM-based tools, techniques, and skills and the related business theories and practices that students learned in their MS program. The medium is a major team-based project in the form of an actual corporate STEM-based business need for which students will develop solutions. Students will produce a written report that documents and provides the financial, organizational, and technical rationale for the solutions. They will also formally present their results to the project sponsors. Students are expected to have completed (or are currently completing) all the courses requirements for their MS program prior to taking the capstone project. While the capstone requirements are the same for all STEM-based, specialty MS programs in the Foisie School of Business, the actual content of the project will differ by sponsor and by MS program. Students must take the appropriate section of BUS 596 for each MS program they complete.

 

Program Highlights

  • Strategic Business Decisions: Develop analytical skills to make strategic business decisions
  • Leadership Skills: Build valuable leadership and communication skills
  • Real-World Projects + Tools: Work on real-world projects using today’s tools including Microsoft Power BI, Qualtrics, and Tableau
  • World-Class Faculty: Learn from world-class faculty who are scholarly and industry leaders

Program Details

  • Specializations:  Advanced Business Analytics Methods & Operations Analytics
  • Curriculum: 11 courses (includes 2 capstone courses) / 33 credits
  • Course Duration: 2 years / 4 semesters
  • Mode of Learning: Live Synchronous 
  • Learning Hours: 3 hours of online synchronous faculty taught session each week + learning materials and project based work facilitated through Canvas

Application Requirements

  • 3.0 minimum in bachelor’s degree
  • Transcripts from all post-secondary institutions
  • TOEFL iBT score of 90, TOEFL Essentials score of 8.5, IELTS score of 7 (minimum sub-score of 6.5), or Duolingo score of 115
  • 3 letters of recommendation
  • Statement of purpose

NUTM Professional Certification in Design Thinking Leadership Principles

The NUTM Professional Certification in Design Thinking Leadership Principles is designed to help new and aspiring leaders unleash the potential in themselves and others, and cultivate high-performing teams. Design thinking gives leaders a structured and systematic way to build a culture of innovation within their organizations. This certification will equip your employees with the skillset of creative problem solving, so that they can lead effectively and be a catalyst for creativity.

Program Details

Course Duration: 2 years / 4 semesters

Mode of Learning: Hybrid

Learning Hours: 25 (4 weekends) + 8 hours online

Curriculum: 7 modules + capstone project

What Our Corporate Partners Are Saying

The quality of the institution is incredible and the students we see coming out of WPI really add value here.
  • Chris Ross, Senior Vice President, Global Operations
  • MilliporeSigma (Parent Company: Merck)

About The WPI Business School

WPI’s Business School is a STEM-focused school that bridges the worlds of business and technology to develop adaptive leaders who impact the world. They are the business school for engineers, scientists, and changemakers.

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For Companies
Are you ready to offer these educational benefits to your employees? Complete our form to request more information.

For Prospective Students
Are you ready to apply or have questions about the programs being offered by WPI and NUTM? Complete our form to get started or contact us.

You can also email us at: analytics@nutmng.org