Outreach:

• Courses: data science (MA799), data mining (MA710), data science (MA402, fall 2015)
• Data lab: graduate and undergraduate students work on data projects to learn new data science tools and methods (biweekly, in progress)
• Seminars for Bentley faculty on use of the cluster (i.e. DART March 17, 2015)
• Collaboration with Bentley faculty:
  • Fred Ledley (Director, Center for Integration of Science and Industry): investigate datasets used by the center in order to determine how data science/mining tools can be beneficial to the center (planned)
  • Mingfei Li (Program Director, Master of Business Analytics): incorporate data science in the MSBA curriculum (in progress)
  • Patrick Scholten (Associate Professor, Economics): determine software tools, available on the HPC, and find data sets beneficial to the department (planned)
  • Jay Thibodeau (Professor, Accountancy): design two new courses to integrate data science into the Masters of Accountancy program (planned)
  • Jason Wells (Sr Mgr, Instr & Rsrch Technology, ATC): develop training materials for use of the HPC (planned)
• External collaboration:
  • AnalyticsWeek: Vishal Kumar and Sachin Bhate, co-founders of AnalyticsWeek, are involved in the planning aspects of Data Space with the goal of integrating Bentley into the Boston technical/meetup/startup community. We expect this to be mutually beneficial primarily by sharing expertise and by increasing Bentley’s visibility in, and contribution to, the data science and analytics community
  • Data Visualization in Metrowest Boston Meetup: Bill Shander (organizer, Beehive Media) and David Oury (event organizer, MA) have arranged several meetups on data visualization at Bentley. The next meeetup, presented by the CEO of Plotly, is scheduled for 16 July 2015
  • A corporate partnership is now in the initial planning and discussion phase
  • Bentley has been accepted as a collaboration partner for the NSF application submitted by Columbia University and Northeastern University for the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub

Marketing has undergone some drastic changes in the last few years.

With today’s technology, there are now endless streams of information available to marketers, and that information includes more about customer behavior than ever before. Today’s marketing culture has become very data-centric, focusing on all kinds of data points around consumers’ searching, shopping and purchasing habits.

Because of this abundance of meaningful data, companies are changing the way they do business—instead of taking a product-focused approach, they are shifting to one that is customer-focused. Marketers need to do a lot more data analysis than they used to in order to create meaningful campaigns for both their company and their customers.

To prove this point, Jeff Zanella, Vice President and Associate Media Director at Hill Holliday (a Boston-based marketing and communications agency) says that data analytics is an extremely important part of his marketing strategy, and even referred to it as "the new currency."

"We like to employ data for a strategy whenever we can, because we find that it influences all the decisions we make. From media decisions around where we buy and who we buy against, to helping us inform our creative and our content... From that, we can then derive our communication plan to align with that data, which gives us a sense of what to bring to market, how a client’s campaign is performing, and how that messaging and communication is resonating.”

Now that companies see the value in this data, they also see the value in hiring employees who have the skills needed to monetize it in the marketplace. This shift has produced the need for a new type of graduate marketing degree.

The “New” Master’s In Marketing

Now that marketing has a strong focus around the numbers, data analysts are playing much greater roles in influencing current marketing decisions. As a result, the curriculum being taught in a master’s in marketing has shifted toward analysis, statistics, and strategy. Employers are looking for people who know how to collaborate, think through problems, and come up with solutions (as they always have) but the type of problem is not one that can be solved without some hard skills.

Nathan Carter, Chairman of the Mathematical Sciences Department at Bentley, says interest in analytics programs have increased significantly in recent months, especially in programs such as Bentley’s MS in Marketing Analytics (which has actually been around for quite a while).

“A surprising number of students said that they were working in a company and being asked to do analysis that they didn’t know how to do. So their company (or they themselves) chose to send them back to school to learn the skills they needed out in the workforce. So there’s a lot of demand, and people are really interested in finding the skills they need to meet that demand.”

Students in Bentley’s MS in Marketing Analytics program begin with a foundation of statistics, economics, and marketing management, then move to strategic marketing, research and analysis, and relationship marketing. Upon completing the program, students are comfortable with numbers and are able to make marketing decisions based on quantitative analysis.

If you’re getting an MBA at Bentley, you can also choose to do a concentration in marketing and analytics. Both of these marketing programs teach students how to become more engaged with consumers, how to design and deliver robust statistical analysis, and how to effectively communicate the resulting insights.

Is It Time To Get Your Master’s In Marketing?

Marketing has become more of a two-way conversation than it ever used to be, allowing the consumer to influence content and marketing decisions. In order for marketers to survive this change, they need to understand and take advantage of this new stream of information. Getting a master’s in marketing analytics will teach you the skills needed to analyze this data and turn it into the meaningful information that employers are seeking. Is it time to get your master’s in marketing? 

Type the phrase “graduate school rankings” into Google and you’ll get hundreds of results listing the best graduate schools in the country. But who determines those rankings? What criteria do they use? Is it the same criteria you would use?

The truth about university rankings is that they’re completely subjective. What might be the best to some people may not be what’s best for you. Rankings can provide a good starting point for your research, but unfortunately are based highly on peer name recognition and can be artfully skewed. You can use them to learn about new schools, find schools in your area, and see which schools have good programs, but you shouldn’t choose a graduate school based solely on its rank. (Check out this recent Poets & Quants article for some reasons why.)

Here are five other important things to take into consideration as you decide where to get your graduate degree.

What To Consider When Choosing A Graduate School

1. The Campus & Facilities

A graduate school’s campus is important to consider—you want to make sure you’ll be comfortable with the environment, as well as how the campus is laid out. It’s also important to determine the quality of their facilities and whether or not they’re up to date. This means libraries, computer labs, research facilities, and more. These locations are where you’ll spend a large portion of your time during grad school, so you’ll want to make sure they offer everything you need.

Another thing to consider is the surrounding area. Schools that are in or near large cities (for example, Bentley is right by Boston) can be great for several reasons. Grad school in itself is a great way to build a professional network, but being near a large business hub like Boston lets you use that network to take advantage of the many career opportunities in the city.

Obviously, the best way to learn about the campus and surrounding area is to visit. Once you’ve narrowed down your choices, visit and take tours of the schools that interest you the most, if possible.

2. The Support Of Their Staff

The friendliness of a school’s staff, and the amount of help they’re willing to give, is a good indicator of how you’ll be treated as a student there. A good way to find out how helpful they are is to come up with one or two questions to ask the admissions office. Send them an email with your questions, and see how long it takes them to get back to you, how well your questions are answered, and if they are answered in a friendly, professional manner.

Most graduate schools are happy to help a potential new student. If they aren’t willing and excited to help, that may not be the school for you.

3. The Reputation Of Their Faculty

Esteemed professors should be high on your list of priorities for a grad school—they’ll have control over what you learn and how. Find out what the professors in your interested field are currently working on, and see if you can meet with one in person or through email to ask some questions. To find out more about faculty, speak to any current or former students you know who went to the school, or go to a website like Rate My Professors to find out what other students think.

You’ll also want to look at the student to faculty ratio—there are benefits to both large and small class sizes, so decide which is ideal for you and find a school that aligns with your preference.

4. The Quality & Curriculum Of Their Programs

The quality of the school’s programs is perhaps the most important factor of all. Once you’ve decided on your area of study, you’ll want to choose a school with a program that aligns with your goals and gives you the skills needed to further your education and career.

Even though different schools may offer the same program, the curriculum within those programs can vary, so do some research around the particular things each school’s program focuses on. Again, speak with current or former students in your desired program and ask what they’ve learned and how they’ve been able to apply it.

There are also other factors to consider when it comes to the type of program the school offers, like full- vs. part-time programs, or online vs. on-campus programs. You know which options are best for you, so choose a school that offers what you need.

5. The Employment Rates

Chances are, you’re choosing to attend graduate school to help further your career. That means you want to attend a school with high post-graduation employment rates. A good graduate school will have a strong career services department that works to build and maintain relationships with students and employers, and has a fairly substantial list of companies their students go on to work for.   

Look at each school’s website to see if they offer this career information, or ask for it in an email to admissions. Good employment rates usually indicate a good graduate school.

It’s Not Just About The Rank

Just because a graduate school is highly ranked, doesn’t mean it’s the school for you. Only you can decide which school is the best—so don’t base your decision on something so subjective. Instead, use the above criteria to find a program that aligns with your goals and preferences, and offers the skills you need to advance in your career. If possible, visit the campus for yourself and talk to people you meet for a real evaluation.

Many people assume that once they start pursuing a graduate degree, the scholarship opportunities stop. But contrary to that popular belief, there are tons of MBA scholarships available (other grad programs too!), and they’re not as difficult to come across as you might think. The key to finding them is knowing where to look.

That’s why we’ve rounded up some of the best places to go and resources to check out if you’re looking to help finance your MBA with scholarships. Here they are!

Look To Your School

The best (and easiest) place to start looking for MBA scholarships is at your school. Most schools offer forms of merit-based aid—money that is subjectively awarded based on the personal characteristics and achievements of the student—that do not need to be paid back. Here are some of the merit-based opportunities offered at Bentley (that are generally offered at other schools, as well).

Graduate Assistantships

Graduate assistants work alongside faculty and administrators to help them in a variety of research, educational, and administrative activities. Instead of receiving wages, whatever the student earns is applied to their tuition, decreasing their tuition partially or fully. These positions are generally only available for full-time graduate students and are awarded for merit, based on things like past educational achievements, what the student’s participation in an MBA program will contribute to the incoming class, GMAT or GRE scores, and when applicable, the TOEFL score.

Graduate Scholarships

Most schools, including Bentley, offer a number of merit MBA scholarships that do not involve a work component. Graduate scholarship selection is based on previous educational achievements, what the student’s participation in an MBA program will contribute to the incoming class, GMAT or GRE scores, and when applicable, the TOEFL score.

Graduate Leadership Scholar Program

The Leadership Scholar Program is specific to Bentley, but other schools may offer something similar. This program seeks to recognize qualified students who are active members of corporate and diversity organizations. The program is a unique scholarship fund, awarding three scholarships each year to prospective students that are active members of the participating organizations. These scholarships are awarded to academically excellent students with strong leadership qualities who have demonstrated a commitment to social responsibility.

Two full-tuition scholarships are reserved for qualified candidates who have been accepted into the full-time Emerging Leaders MBA and Bentley MBA programs (one award for each program). The third award is a half-tuition scholarship, reserved for qualified part-time students accepted into the fall semester of any evening MBA program.

Online MBA Scholarship Resources

Look outside of the schools you’re applying to—there are thousands of organizations that offerscholarships for graduate students. Here are a few online resources that can help you find these organizations and scholarship opportunities.

FastWeb

FastWeb is an online resource that helps you find scholarships, and matches you with those that align with the criteria in your profile. Enter things like your strengths, interests, and skills, and FastWeb will direct you to the most relevant opportunities. You can also use it to get information about financial aid, jobs, internships, student life, and more. Some of their featured scholarships include the Dr. Pepper Tuition Giveaway and the Niche “No Essay” scholarship. FastWeb also offers career planning advice, interview etiquette, and resume building tips.

FinAid

FinAid is a comprehensive online source for student financial aid information, advice, and tools. You can search through thousands of scholarships and find those you’re eligible for, connected primarily through FastWeb’s scholarship search (although they do provide others). They also offer tips and tricks about how to win these awards. FinAid provides tons of helpful information about scholarship fundamentals, including how to be wary of potential scams and the specifics of outside scholarship policies. Bookmark this site as a reference for any college financial questions you may have.

Peterson’s

Peterson’s is an online resource that lets you search for graduate programs, schools, scholarships, and more. They can help you find fellowships and assistantships, work opportunities, and special graduate financial aid for international students. Some of their featured graduate scholarships include a $40,000 Elizabeth Tucker Foundation scholarship and The NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship. Peterson’s gives you an inside look into all things in higher education, and has been providing this information for over 50 years.

Scholarships For Development

Scholarships for Development is an updated list of international graduate level and MBA scholarships specifically for people from developing countries, people who would like to pursue development-related fields, and people who seek global and national development through further education. Their aim is “to help you find opportunities for higher education and become agents of development in your own country and around the world.” You can refine your scholarship search by level of study, field of study, country of study, target group, and deadline to find the most relevant opportunities.

Scholarship Opportunity

Scholarship Opportunity is an online resource that offers blogs, ebooks, and podcasts with detailed information about how to find and win scholarships. They constantly scour the internet for new scholarships and post them to their blog, as well as rate scholarship-finding sites (from a non-biased perspective) on their ability to find relevant opportunities. They have written an ebook with their findings, A Guide To The Best & Worst Scholarship Search Sites & Apps.
 

Think Outside The Box

While tuition, housing, and books are the highest costs for grad students (and generally the first things people think about when looking for scholarships), there are other unique MBA scholarship opportunities to help offset additional costs. For example, Beat the GMAT, a popular MBA social network, doles out eight scholarship packages per year that include a $250 voucher for GMAT registration fees, a full GMAT test-prep course, and admissions consulting services.

Also, if you’re working while getting a graduate degree, a lot of companies will offer some sort of financial aid or reimbursement. Employers are usually willing to do whatever it takes to make sure they don’t lose great employees, so they’ll offer up aid to students who say they will complete their degree while working, and/or remain with the company for the foreseeable future after they graduate. Talk with your employer to find out if this aid would be available to you.

Even though graduate school is a huge investment—of your time, energy, career, and money—it doesn’t have to break the bank. If you’re open to doing some research, you’d be amazed at how many organizations you’ll find that are ready and willing to contribute to your future success. Keep these MBA scholarship resources in mind as you think about how you’ll finance your graduate degree.

The problem in Greece has never been only about debt. Sure, Greece is living beyond its means with an unsustainable debt burden, but in large part the debt is unsustainable because Greece is so bad at collecting taxes.

Greece’s economy is a lot larger than it appears since so much of it is unrecorded. The London-based Institute for Economic Affairs puts the size of the Greek shadow economy at 24% of GDP, which is far higher than the European average and correlates to the equally high self-employment rate of more than 35% of the Greek labor force. However, in Greece the shadow economy doesn’t just involve shady activities like selling counterfeit handbags, but might even occur when someone goes to a doctor.

According to a University of Chicago Booth research paper, in 2009 the self-employed in Greece underpaid their taxes by some €28 billion. The researchers point to evidence such as that many in the professions, like doctors, lawyers, and accountants have monthly debt payments that exceed their reported monthly incomes. These absurdly high consumer debt ratios are just a fiction of course. Greek banks recognize that the self-employed grossly under-report their income, and the banks make them loans accordingly. The under-reporting is so extreme that many professionals with obvious and substantial wealth claim incomes of less than €12,000, a level at which no taxes at all are due.

Between these seriously under-reporting professionals and those who are counted as officially unemployed but who work for cash, the only ones paying official tax rates are salaried workers, who as a result have heavy and unfair tax burdens that make such work less desirable, compounding the problem.

The issue is so well-known that Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has made repeated offers to send Greece 500 German tax officers. Greece’s Prime Minster Alexis Tsipras of course recognizes the problem himself and said in Parliament earlier this year “The great struggle is the struggle against tax evasion, which is the real reason our country reached the brink.”

Going back to the drachma would not solve the problem, nor would creating a parallel currency, nor would staying in the Euro. The problem isn’t about which currency Greece uses, but how the currency is implemented.

The benefit of a cashless system is that payments and income could be much more easily tracked and taxed. To be effective, a digital currency would not be an alternative to cash, but would replace cash as the only way to make and receive payments for goods and services.

If Greece moved to digital payments, it wouldn’t even be the first country to do so. On December 24, 2014, the government of Ecuador established what it calls the first state-sponsored, digital currency. In fact, it isn’t a currency as much as it is a voluntary payment system, not unlike PayPal or Apple Pay.

Having given up its own currency, the sucre, in 2000 in favor of the US dollar, Ecuador is keeping the dollar, but is allowing its dollar reserve holdings to be represented digitally in payment accounts. Given that more than 40% of Ecuadorians are without bank accounts, this is seen as a way to increase economic efficiency. Further, while a digital payment system is not a cure for corruption, money-laundering, or tax evasion, having the ability to track economic activity is seen as better than the cash alternative.

Imagine for example, if even only Greek government payments were made digitally. These huge pools of funds for salaries, pensions, and government contracts would then be spent digitally, and traceably, on goods and services elsewhere in the economy. Revenue that previously went unreported deep in the shadow economy would now be a perfectly visible part of the system. Once corporate payments were added to the digitally visible realm, you would be capturing the overwhelming majority of the Greek economy. There would no longer be large supplies of cash to allow the minority, which many in Greece would say includes the wealthy minority, to evade taxation.

Moving to a digital Euro would certainly demonstrate to the European Central Bank, the IMF, and Greece’s harshest critics that Greece is serious about reforming its tax collection. A cashless Greece isn’t the entire solution, and it may be a solution with its own problems, but it could also be a way for Greece to increase the fairness of its tax system and raise desperately needed revenue.

While the concept of a digital currency may seem unlikely, it may be even more unlikely to think that we will still be using cash fifty years from now.

Claude Cicchetti is Program Director of Bentley University’s Masters in Finance and is also a Lecturer in International Finance. He was formerly head of Global Fixed Income at SBC Global Asset Management (now UBS GAM) in Basel, Switzerland.

Why did you choose Bentley?

• Bentley’s HFID program was so intriguing to me because it grounds design in the context of real-world business. Taking classes taught by industry leaders and working closely with companies on their design challenges was a great way to learn. Bentley also has an energy about it. From the virtual class options to the rapidly expanding west coast campus, it’s a program that’s constantly innovating on it’s own model  -- not unlike the UX field itself.

What were you hoping to get out of the degree (career boost / industry change / job change, etc)?

• The main thing I was looking to get out of my graduate education was the ability to inform and defend my design decisions with a solid understanding of human behavior. Bentley was a great fit.

What was your undergrad degree in?

• Psychology with an emphasis on social interaction
• Minor in media studies

What was the best part of the HFID program, for you?

• For me, Bentley was about more than becoming a better designer. It was about becoming an innovator, an influencer and a leader.

How long did it take you to complete the program?

• 1.5 years

Why is the ‘user experience’ so important to a company like YouTube?

• At YouTube -- and throughout Google -- our job is about connecting people with the world’s information and with each other. These products have an impact on millions of people every day, which is amazing. But it also means that we need to design for the user above all else. Not just because it’s our job to build good products, but because we have a responsibility to the people who depend on it every day to create, connect and share.

Where exactly does your role as a UX designer (and the role of user experience in general) come into play in the product development cycle at YouTube?

• YouTube is phenomenal about prioritizing user experience. It’s rare that a company puts such emphasis on UX -- especially research -- and has the culture to back it up. As designers, we’re empowered to drive user focus throughout the design cycle because we have such great partnerships with researchers, engineers and product experts.
• What do you do on a day-to day basis? Do you use programs / software that you used in the HFID program?
  • For me, Bentley was less about learning software tools and more about learning the methods and processes that drive great design. Some people think we spend our days pushing pixels and arranging post-its on the wall. In reality, 90% of UX design is about making difficult decisions -- lots of them, all day long. It’s about working with a team to constantly challenge your own ideas, even when you think you have the right answer.

What do you love about your job / UX field?

• I’m still shocked that I get to wake up every day and build things. It’s a hard process, but in the end we have a chance to make a positive impact on peoples’ lives. That’s pretty rad.

With an interdisciplinary approach, the new Spanish for Business minor gives students an excellent opportunity to blend advanced language skills, cultural knowledge, and international business component.  Students who choose this minor have an excellent opportunity to learn about Spanish culture using business as a foundation.  The minor requires three classes from the Modern Languages Department and one from an approved list of courses from other departments.

• MLSP 203 Advanced Spanish Grammar and Composition or MLSP 305 Spanish Translation
• MLSP 302 Spanish for Business
• MLSP 312 Spanish for Business II

Choose from a variety of courses outside the Modern Languages Department.

For a complete list of options, contact Professor Christian Rubio at crubio@bentley.edu

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Commencement 2016

May 21, 2016

Undergraduate Ceremony: 10:00 a.m.- 12:30 p.m.

Graduate Ceremony: 3:00 p.m.- 5:00 p.m.