The day centered on a student challenge using a Crumbl data prompt and a panel on how analytics drives real decisions in hotels, health care, travel and finance. Workshops, a career event and a student poster session rounded out the program.

In a Crumbl-sponsored data challenge, students raced to analyze menu rotation, demand signals, and retention levers. The top four teams advanced to present to industry judges, including Crumbl Chief Operating Officer Grace Chadwick and her team joining virtually.

The winning team members, Maylee Clerici ’26, Andrew Glas ’26 and Mike McLain ’26, showed how Crumbl can balance novelty with familiarity and use data to guide weekly menus and strengthen loyalty.

“We approached the Summit Challenge from a consulting standpoint, unpacking the rotating-flavor paradox and how Crumbl can leverage its advantages for future growth,” said Clerici, a supply chain and business analytics major from Mars, Pa. “Our shared foundation in data visualization and storytelling fueled our coordination and helped us deliver a focused, winning solution.”

The team received $1,000 and a $500 Crumbl voucher. The second-place team focused on community, voice of customer, and a repeatable weekly structure. The runners-up received $500 and a $250 Crumbl voucher.

To close out the day, industry leaders discussed how analytics reshapes decision-making, innovation, and customer experience across sectors from hospitality to healthcare and finance. The conversation centered on aligning analytics with strategy, building trustworthy data, and developing teams that can translate insights into action.

Panelists were:

• Johnathan Capps, chief revenue officer Charlestowne Hotels
• Neil Biehn, vice president, Siemens Healthineers
• John Wimmer, assistant teaching professor, ������Ƶ
• Danielle Nashold ‘04, SVP, technology executive, Bank of America
• Loren Gold, executive vice president, Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Students opened the day with AI with SAS, led by Danny Modlin ’98, senior analytical training consultant at SAS, who guided a hands-on walkthrough in SAS Viya for prepping and exploring data.

A second session, Business Analytics and Career Success, featured Lisa Thaller, former corporate learning facilitator at IBM, and Richard Pro, president and chief analytics and strategy advisor at VRINetics, on translating classroom tools into early-career impact through clear communication, project framing and measurable outcomes.

Students connected with representatives from Labcorp, Bank of America, Red Ventures, SAS, RTI International and Charlestowne Hotels at the career event, while a nearby poster session in LaRose showcased projects from the Center for Organizational Analytics and business analytics courses.

Mark Kurt, associate dean for the Love School of Business, closed the program by emphasizing how workshops, networking and student research together build the skills to lead with data.

Shiva Kommareddi, a managing director at Accenture leading its North America Supply Chain Data & AI Practice, answered student questions in the first “Conversations with Analytics Leaders” held in Sankey Hall on September 28, 2023.

Kommareddi founded two successful ventures that led to acquisitions, including one by Accenture. He described his impressive career journey and what he learned from working for companies like i2, SAS and Accenture and how their different cultures shaped and influenced his own entrepreneurial experiences.

He also provided insights about Generative AI applications in industry, including their impact on supply chain and operations, clearly articulating the specific areas where it can provide game changing value.

Student Reflections

“I really enjoyed the insight and advice Mr. Kommareddi shared with us, especially when it came to how the supply chain world will change with AI becoming a more commonly used tool. Every company’s supply chain contains a never-ending and forever changing list of problems to solve, and hearing how AI is being introduced to help in solving those problems was very insightful as I begin my career next year.” – Lotte Fox ‘24, supply chain management major 

“Mr. Shiva Kommareddi provided us with an amazing insight into top level executive decisions regarding generative AI. He shared his extremely inspiring career path with us providing everyone who attended with an amazing opportunity to reflect on the future of the market and the advancements in AI”. – Rafi Dahdal ‘24, business analytics (3+1 program)

Upcoming Visitors

Thursday, November 2, 2023 
Gayle Bieler – Senior Director, Center for Data Science and AI, RTI International

������Ƶ Provost Rebecca Kohn has named Professor Crista Arangala the inaugural director of ������Ƶ’s Data Nexus initiative following a national search.

������Ƶ introduced its Data Nexus initiative as part of a five-year Quality Enhancement Plan developed during its most recent accreditation process. Data Nexus will serve as a coordinating hub for data competency initiatives at the university throughout the plan and beyond.

“Dr. Arangala’s exceptional record of teaching and scholarship, and her wealth of knowledge about the value of data competency in finding answers to many of the vexing problems that confront humanity, make her uniquely suited for this important responsibility,” Kohn said. “There is no doubt that Dr. Arangala’s approach to building collaborations and prioritizing student success will benefit countless ������Ƶ graduates in the years ahead.”

In her new role, Arangala will help faculty and departments design courses and academic experiences to enhance student learning of foundational data literacy skills as well as more advanced data competency working with quantitative and qualitative data.

Arangala will work with a faculty advisory committee and collaborate with a range of campus partners to:

• Coordinate the implementation of the Quality Enhancement Plan and new, related initiatives;
• Support student learning for data-oriented assignments and projects;
• Connect and elevate existing data-intensive initiatives and programs;
• Provide and support professional development opportunities for pedagogical development and research around data competency; and
• Assess the ongoing success of the QEP and maintain a strong feedback loop to measure and continue to enhance student learning and data competency.

Arangala assumes her new role following eight years as chair of the Department of Mathematics & Statistics where she played a key role in the development of the department’s Statistics Practicum and the Data Analytics major. That included the creation and teaching of a course on mathematical methods in data analytics – and she serves as the director of the Data Analytics Scholars program.

“Data is everywhere. Data is the language of the digital age, and we all must learn how it’s gathered, how it’s used, and how it can be of benefit in solving some of our world’s biggest challenges,” Arangala said. “The Data Nexus initiative is another example of how ������Ƶ is a leader in undergraduate education: it unites our community in the pursuit of new and exciting ways to prepare graduates for lives of deeply meaningful service and leadership.

“I am excited to serve as the conduit for this campus-wide collaboration – embracing the need for data-competency!”

Arangala earned her Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Allegheny College, a Master of Science and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Cincinnati, and a Master of Higher Education Administration Certificate from Stony Brook University. Her scholarly pursuits have focused on a variety of applications in mathematics including mathematical biology, mathematical physics, gerrymandering, and sentimental analysis.

Since joining the ������Ƶ faculty in 2000, she has mentored more than 35 students in undergraduate research projects, many of which are related to applied linear algebra.

Arangala has published five books related to mathematical modeling, data analytics, and inquiry learning in the classroom: “Exploring Linear Algebra: Labs and Projects with Mathematica”, “Exploring Linear Algebra: Labs and Projects with Matlab”, “Mathematical Modeling: Branching Beyond Calculus” and “Exploring Calculus: Labs and Projects with Mathematica.” Her most recent textbook, “Linear Algebra with Machine Learning and Data,” was published earlier this year.

She also is the co-founder of the ������Ƶ Traveling Science Center, which offers undergraduate students an opportunity to develop science and math exhibits for both local and international exhibitions.

Arangala traveled to Sri Lanka in 2014 as a Fulbright Scholar and previously served as associate director of the Periclean Scholars program at ������Ƶ.

������Ƶ Health Analytics Day on March 31, 2023, featured insights from four speakers who discussed their work with improving hospital operations, identifying more effective medical recommendations based on human behaviors tracked with data, and researching the impact of emerging approaches to medicine and to pandemic responses.

Assistant Professor Manoj Chari directs the ������Ƶ Center for Organizational Analytics and said he selected health care as the theme of the 2023 program for several reasons.

“All of us are thinking about health because of what happened in the past few years with the pandemic,” Chari said. “I was hoping to inspire some students to work in health care, and I wanted to inform them about how much expertise on data analytics is needed to increase efficiency and to reduce costs and, more importantly, to improve patient outcomes.

“I also wanted students to be exposed to a diversity of talks on various aspects of the healthcare journey that we all experience. That’s one of the things that makes this topic interesting. We all identify with or at least recognize the problems these researchers and industry experts are trying to solve from our own experience.”

Featured Speakers for the 2023 Program

• Steve Kearney, global medical director at SAS where he helps lead the organization’s focus on the future of digital health for R&D, product management, and the team
• Tarun Mohan Lal, an experienced analytics healthcare leader with a passion for innovation, transformation and community support to improve lives
• Maria E. Mayorga, a professor of personalized medicine and director of graduate recruitment and success in the at North Carolina State University
• Alexander “Sandy” Preiss, a research data scientist at

Students who attended the presentations praised the speakers for their insights.

“They all provided a unique perspective of analytics in the health field, and they tailored it specifically to where we could all understand it,” said Will Gatchel ‘23, a business analytics major from New Bern, N.C., who will work for KPMG following his graduation in May. “There wasn’t a moment where I felt it go over my head, and honestly, this is  really helpful as I go on my analytics professional journey. It was nice that each speaker brought their own flavor of their own experiences.

“One of the things that ������Ƶ prides itself on is experiential learning, and getting here and meeting people who are in the industry and are doing research for the betterment of society, can be a lot more informative than a typical lecture. Integrating that within the classroom is something ������Ƶ as an institution does well.”

In addition to the LaRose Digital Theatre presentations, ������Ƶ Health Analytics Day featured poster presentations during the lunch break in a third-floor Sankey Hall conference and classroom space.

Nearly a dozen students from ������Ƶ’s Doctor of Physical Therapy Program shared research findings with the four researchers and industry experts who visited campus for the event, as well as other students, faculty, and staff.

Reflections from Students in ������Ƶ’s Doctor of Physical Therapy Program

• “As much as we learn from doing our own research, we also learn so much from the people who come up to our posters and share a little bit about what they’ve learned from doing similar research and some of their own perspectives. Every presentation we make gets us feedback on what else we can do with our work.” – Zachary Ormond G’23

• “I used to be a former Division I football player, so I was in and out of the training room. One of the best things we were able to do with this project was we were involved in that preseason testing, something I used to do as an athlete. It was cool being on the other side of things, really seeing the importance of these tests. Guys do them in college but don’t have an idea of why. This allows us to point out flaws in sports rehabilitation protocols and to share our thoughts with other individuals. We intend to learn a lot any time we talk. We teach others, and others always give us tips.” – Jordan Waite G’23
• “I find a lot of value in presenting to a different audience than we’re used to. We’ve presented this poster several times to other physical therapists, but it’s nice to get a different perspective on analytics and discuss how we did the research and what we did to standardize our data.” – Bridgette Macapagal G’23

• “Being able to talk and get different perspectives from others and learning what’s out there – what do people know about Parkinson’s Disease, or how have they seen their research interests in this, and what do our numbers mean to us? – for clinicians, it’s really important. We may have the data, but what does it matter for us? I think having that clinical perspective is a nice way to meet different perspectives on quantitative data.” – Allie Knuckles G’23
• “How we move forward is through learning from one another. Being in a program together, we come with similar backgrounds. Presenting at Analytics Day, we meet with people from a different background that really provides an opportunity for everyone to grow, to excel, and to bounce ideas off one another. We can take those ideas and have a greater impact on others.” – Ann Heil G’23

Registration is complimentary thanks to the generosity of Center for Organizational Analytics partners.

������Ƶ Health Analytics Day

Friday, March 31
10 a.m. – 3 p.m.
LaRose Digital Theatre in the Koury Business Center
Lunch Provided in Sankey 308

(Walk-ins Welcomed but Advanced Registration is Helpful)

Visit the ������Ƶ Center for Organizational Analytics website for a full schedule of the day and a description of presentations.

Questions? Contact Dr. Manoj Chari, director of the Center for Organizational Analytics, at mchari@elon.edu or (336) 278-5912.

Speakers

• Steve Kearney is the global medical director at SAS
• Tarun Mohan Lal is an experienced analytics healthcare leader currently working as a consultant for a joint venture between two private equity firms: DKP and GoldenTree.
• Maria E. Mayorga is a professor of personalized medicine and director of graduate recruitment and success in the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University
• Alexander “Sandy” Preiss is a research data scientist at RTI International’s Center for Data Science and AI

Among them was John Barnshaw, associate vice president for research and statistics at Ad Astra Information Systems, a software company that employs data analytics to assist higher education with course scheduling and student retention. Barnshaw walked attendees through a recent day, noting all of the data he produced as a consumer and traveler that organizations and companies can examine to better understand him and his needs. 

The collection and interpretation of this data is fueling a "quiet revolution" that could be on par with the Industrial Revolution in the impact it has on changing our lives and culture, Barnshaw said. 

"There is a fundamental shift in the way that human beings and human culture is constituted," Barnshaw said. "I would argue that we are undergoing a quiet revolution that most people aren't talking about. It fundamentally changes the way we do things from a generation ago."

Higher educational institutions now have the ability to better understand students, as well as to better organize course offerings and class schedules to more closely suit the needs of students, faculty and staff, Barnshaw said. Drawing from his own experience teaching an online course, Barnshaw said he was able to identify correlations between when students were watching videos he posted for the course and how many times they watched it with how they would ultimately perform in the class. 

Ad Astra has worked with colleges and universities to better align course offerings and schedules with demand and to identify areas where additional offerings might positively impact student retention and success, Barnshaw said. Additionally, an examination of LinkedIn profiles and job offerings helps point toward skills that businesses are looking for in the marketplace, and how well they are matching up with the skills new graduates are touting as they look for their next jobs. 

Attendees also heard from Brett Wujek, principal data scientist in the artificial intelligence and machine learning research and development division at SAS Institute Inc., who talked about how machine learning and deep learning algorithms and capabilities are transforming the world of artificial intelligence. 

Adam Gill '16, a Business Fellow during his time at ������Ƶ, returned to offer a presentation titled "Data Analytics' Impact on Strategy, Product Development and Customer Experience." A senior consultant at EY in the Connected Growth Platform, Gill spoke about how analytics is enabling clients to leverage their own databases and those from third-parties to build and improve their business products and solutions. 

Kenn Gaither, associate dean of the School of Communications and professor of communications, moderated the event, which was part of the celebration of the inauguration of Connie Ledoux Book as ������Ƶ’s ninth president.

Cindy Fair
Watts-Thompson Professor of Public Health Studies and Human Service Studies
“The experience truly changed the trajectory of my life”: The power of undergraduate research

The relationship that teacher Annie Sullivan formed with Helen Keller, who was left both deaf and blind after an illness when she was a baby, had an impact on Cindy Fair.

In her presentation, Fair referenced an iconic moment in the movie about Keller’s life, “The Miracle Worker,” when a young Helen standing at a water pump with her teacher first understood the sign for water. “Her understanding of the world profoundly shifted that day,” Fair said.

That water pump scene is an accurate depiction of Fair’s undergraduate research mentoring process, she said. “When I begin to work with my own students, I encourage them to be open to ‘water pump’ moments—moments when there is unexpected enlightenment and awakening,” Fair said.

Fair, who in her own research examines how children with pediatric HIV transition to adolescence and young adulthood, has mentored several ������Ƶ students with their own undergraduate research. She referred to her “happy place” as the intersection of her scholarship, research and the teacher-mentor relationships she shares with her students.

When Fair was working with Jamie Albright ’13, she was studying the reasons why young people living with HIV did or did not want to have children. At the same time, Albright focused on the reproductive health information that doctors shared with that same population.

Albright interviewed a 19-year-old woman and during a routine question—how many children do you have?—the woman burst into tears. The woman went on to share that she had become pregnant at age 15 and gave the baby up for adoption, a story she had never shared with anyone outside of her family. At the end of the interview, the woman thanked Albright for allowing her to share her story. It was in that moment that Albright realized she had a “gift and interest in helping people tell their stories as a way to heal from trauma,” Fair said.

Albright is now a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of Virginia and will propose her dissertation next week. “It is such an honor to walk alongside students as they begin to take ownership of a question and make previously unmade connections at their own metaphoric water pump,” Fair said. “I can imagine how Annie Sullivan felt as she watched her pupil take the world by storm.”

Tony Crider
Professor of physics
“Taking Games Seriously,” or learning from scenarios and immersive play

They might be fun but games are being taken seriously in education.

Tony Crider has been using them in his classroom for more than 10 years as a form of experiential learning.

He started using Reacting to the Past games in 2007, which involve students working in teams to debate big ideas that emerge from classic texts by Plato, Confucius and Galileo. “Think of it as Model UN on steroids and with a time machine,” he said.

Crider discovered by studying his own students that these “games” had a serious impact on who speaks in a class and how often. “Anyone who’s taught or even been in a classroom knows that some students are prone to talk less and often and there are one or two students that talk a lot,” he said. “Over the course of a well-designed Reacting to the Past game, both the number of people who speak and the number of things said increases day by day.”

Another thing that Crider and his colleagues learned from these games in the classroom is that competition matters to students. If one team was certain to win and another to lose, both sides quit preparing for class. “The driving factor was the competition,” Crider said. “The instructor’s job is to keep it interesting.”

In 2012 Crider started co-teaching with Anthony Weston, professor of philosophy. They taught a class together about the scientific and philosophic ways humans look for extraterrestrial intelligence. In part one of the final exam given in that class, students were confronted with a black 8-foot monolith and four video cameras in an empty room.

“What would you do?” he asked the audience gathered in the Great Hall at Global Commons.

“They touched it,” Crider said. “They took selfies with it. They knocked on it to see if we were inside.” Part of the class then scouted campus looking for a second monolith. A few remained behind to look for clues.

“After 90 minutes, they knocked the monolith down and treated it like a conference table,” Crider said. “With no prompting, they started to ask and answer questions that would make a teacher proud.”

What did we learn in this class? How has this class changed us as people? Do we actually believe in aliens now?

Throughout their work in the class, students realized that sometimes humans aren’t very kind to others they deem inferior. “And they promised themselves not to be like that,” Crider said.

In part two of that same final exam, students entered a backyard with three chickens, a table, three barbeque chicken pizzas, three-cheese pizzas and a bowl of sunflower seeds. “When faced with a ‘planet’ of chickens, nearly all of them quickly ate the chicken pizza and ignored the sunflower seeds, which could be eaten by humans and chickens alike,” he said.

Considering lessons learned in the classroom and conversations they shared about how humans treat life forms they deem inferior, Crider expected a different outcome. “I was hoping they would not eat alien pizza in front of the aliens,” he said.

Regardless, Crider said experiential assessment is important for instructors. “We should always try to figure out not just what students say they learn but what they actually learn,” he said.

​

Haya Ajjan
Associate professor of management information systems
The growth and impact of the Center for Organizational Analytics

Are we preparing our students for the future?

Haya Ajjan said it’s a question that professors must continually ask. One way that Ajjan has strived to offer this preparation is with a multi-disciplinary innovative curriculum for analytics. “I wanted to bridge the gap between the theory in the classroom and practice,” she said.

������Ƶ offers analytics programs, from computer science to math and statistics to media analytics. Ajjan decided students could benefit from all the programs working together.

“Those programs had the potential for a lot of synergy and I was confident that if we could all get together, we could learn from each other,” she said.

But she wanted there to be a hub that would connect them all to make collaboration seamless. She proposed creating a center for analytics and worked to recruit 11 corporate sponsors and analytics faculty.

“Today we have 18 faculty and 17 students working on seven real projects that solve real problems,” she said. “The work enables us to bridge the gap between what we do in the classroom and what students do with our clients.”

Students from computer science, math and statistics, business and media analytics are all working together to come up with solutions to problems. “It is amazing the ideas that come through when students from multiple disciplines look at the same problem using their different lenses,” she said.

Students have worked to improve data processing time for insurance companies from three days to three minutes. They have analyzed Internet of Things data to help restaurants predict food illness outbreaks before they happen. They have collected more than 72 indicators to build a snapshot for global engagement of citizens in North Carolina.

“The quality of their analytics work is inspiring, excellence acknowledged by all our clients, including Ben Martin, the chief officer of advanced analytics at Hanes Brands, who has described how impressed he has been by how quickly the students reach high-quality decisions,” Ajjan said.

The collaboration and hands-on learning that has occurred because of work with the Center for Analytics, which launched in spring 2016, has had a significant impact on students.

“My students always tell me that when they go for job interviews, they are not just talking about classroom experiences,” Ajjan said. “They are highlighting the positive impact their work has had on our partners and sharing the feedback they have received from executives of those companies or from government leaders in North Carolina.”

​

Jean Rattigan-Rohr
Executive director of community partnerships, director of the Center for Access and Success, and professor of education
Higher education and the pre-K-8 space: Is there room in which to grow?

Statistics tell us that children who come from low-income households often struggle in school.

As founder of the “It Takes a Village” Project at ������Ƶ, which uses a collaborative approach to help children in the community who are struggling to read, Jean Rattigan-Rohr understands that the work they do in the program is in response to two questions: How can we help? And what might we be able to do together?

“We have asked and over the years, friends, colleagues, students and community members have responded with great enthusiasm and in significant numbers,” she said.

The program grew from its original concept and in addition to reading, children are participating in Science in the Village and Music in the Village. In the spring, Engineering in the Village will be added to the mix.

A new faculty member had asked Rattigan-Rohr how she could get involved. “She couldn’t imagine how the little time she could spend would make a difference,” Rattigan-Rohr said and gave a compelling example as a counter argument.

This past summer, Brandon Sheridan, an assistant professor of economics, taught Economics in the Village to a group of fifth-grade students. The children created their own business—a lemonade stand—developed their own advertising and marketing plan, figured out how much they could charge per cup to make a profit and voted to donate the $750 proceeds to a charity.

At the start of the program, students were asked what steps they would need to take to be a millionaire. Hard work, get a good job and “put your money in the bank so you don’t lose it” were among their answers. At the end of the two-week session, Sheridan asked the same question. The answers—buy and sell stocks, start a business, become an owner of a company and put your money in the bank to earn interest—were very different.

“Look at the difference in the discourse,” Rattigan-Rohr said. “It’s as if these ideas, concepts and language did not exist for these students until they were in the program.”

Sheridan is teaching the same course this fall. This time it’s to a group of fourth-grade students and their parents.

“It is difficult for schools to do it all when the need is so deep and so wide,” Rattigan-Rohr said. “But this I know: When institutions, such as ours, decide to come along side classroom teachers and school systems and lend a hand for students who, for whatever reason, find learning to be daunting, we can make a difference.”

​

Four ������Ƶ faculty members from across a range of disciplines on Thursday presented the results of research conducted during the past year with the support of the Faculty Research and Development Committee. 

The presentations were part of Planning Week, a week that marks the start of each academic year with a variety of events and workshops for faculty and staff. The week precedes the arrival of students on campus for the start of classes. 

The Faculty Research and Development Committee allocates funds for sabbaticals, summer fellowships, release time fellowships, research, development and advanced study. 

Presenting this year were: 

Haya Ajjan, associate professor of management information systems
“A road to empowerment: Technology use by women entrepreneurs in South Africa” 

Cyberfeminism is a woman-centered perspective that advocates women’s use of new technologies for empowerment. This study explores the role of technology in empowering women entrepreneurship in emerging economies via increased social capital and improved self-efficacy. Results from a survey of 199 women entrepreneurs engaged in the South African marketplace suggest that ICT use can expand and enhance network ties among women and, in turn, lead to greater sense of goal internalization, self-determination, competence, and impact. Thus, enabling and encouraging technology use among women entrepreneurs will likely lead not only to greater financial security for these women but also positive change across various aspects of society.

​Jeff Carpenter, associate professor of education and director of the Teaching Fellows Program
“Opportunities and Challenges of Using Technology to Teach for Global Readiness in the Global Read Aloud”

Technology can create new opportunities for learning with and from people of other cultures, not just about them. The Global Read Aloud (GRA) offers an example of such learning possibilities. The GRA is a project that connects classrooms via digital technologies to discuss common texts. This exploratory research examined the pedagogical opportunities and challenges associated with using technology to teach for global readiness in the GRA. Findings are based upon the survey responses of 516 teachers who participated in the GRA and the observation in two schools of 16 lessons during the GRA Although technology broadened how and with whom GRA students read and discussed literature, the depth and quality of technology-facilitated teaching specifically for global readiness was somewhat unclear.

Mary Jo Festle, Maude Sharpe Powell Professor, professor of history and associate director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning
“Using Scholarship to be an Effective, Inclusive, and Sane Teacher”

We teachers now have access to a rich and helpful body of scholarship about what motivates students, how they learn, and what can get in the way of their learning. There’s also research about what contributes to a successful long-term career as a faculty member. This presentation will highlight a few insights from the literature.

Tom Mould, J. Earl Danieley Distinguished Professor and professor of anthropology
“Legends and Personal Witness Stories of Welfare: Breakthroughs in Folklore”

More than forty years after Ronald Reagan first began telling the story of Linda Taylor, the legend of “the welfare queen” remains in popular and political discourse, shaping not only our views of public assistance, poverty, and the poor, but our policies as well. Scholars in fields throughout the social sciences have provided numerous answers to why the legend persists. Narrative analysis of the oral tradition, however, provides new and disturbing answers. In this talk, I will focus on one type of story—the personal witness story—a widely ignored narrative genre that not only sheds new light on why virulent stereotypes about the poor persist in the U.S. today, but provides clear evidence in the debates of two of folklore’s most persistent questions about genre and narrative performance.

During “Predictive Analytics in a Big Data World,” Ajjan highlighted the latest analytics technology trends and best practices in cloud computing, location-based analytics, and machine learning as it relates to the convenience retailing marketplace.

CSP Daily News recently shared on its website the four data-collection options Ajjan outlined for improving a retailer’s ability to understand and predict customers’ needs. .

Hosted by the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business’ MBA and M.S. in Management programs and the ������Ƶ Center for Organizational Analytics, the conference featured presentations from industry leaders who shared analytics best practices for optimizing business processes. Participants heard from analytics providers, including SAS, Amazon Web Services, IBM Advanced Analytics and Teradata.  Also presenting were managers of firms that utilize business analytics, including United Guaranty, Progressive Insurance and Go2Market Analytics.

Anu Brookins, vice president of customer insights and analytics at Belk, delivered the keynote presentation, “Leading with Customer Insights.” Brookins discussed the art and science of analytics and shared insights from her 25 years in the analytics field.

“Analytics is answering the business questions,” Brookins said. “It’s not about the tool or technique. It’s about relevant, actionable, simple, focused insights.”

She emphasized the need to link the “what” to the “why” when deriving actionable insights. 

“A big part of the job is customer insights – gaining a deeper understanding into why customers are doing what they are doing,” Brookins said. “[At Belk,] we were able to influence strategy all because of our analysis. That insight drives people to take action.”

The conference also included the following presentations:

Big Data Analytics in the Cloud
Presented by Larry Pizette, Senior Manager Solutions Architecture at Amazon Web Services

Next Generation Data Platform
Presented by Suzanne Bryant, Chief Data Officer at United Guaranty

The Ins and Outs of Web Analytics at Progressive Insurance
Presented by Kaitlin Marvin, Digital Analytics Architect at Progressive Insurance

How Big Data and a Big Idea Revitalized a Small Museum
Presented by Heidi Lanford, CEO & President of Go2Market Analytics, and David Smith, Founder of Immortology

Outthinking the Competition: How Cognitive Analytics and Operational Excellence are Changing the Competitive Landscape
Presented by James A. Moncure II, Global Activation Leader for IBM Advanced Analytics and Cognitive Business Initiative

Consultant Panel Discussion: “Analytics – How and Why”
Presented by Scott Langfeldt, Senior Analytic Consultant at Teradata, Heidi Landord, CEO & President of Go2Market Analytics, and Jeff Thomas, Principal Industry Consultant at SAS Retail & CPG Practice

“The Business Analytics Conference serves the mission of the university by providing excellent educational opportunities for the community,” said Bill Burpitt, associate dean of the Love School of Business. “We offer this conference in response to the great demand for analytics skills across the nation, and particularly among the many professionals in the Triangle.”

The next Business Analytics Conference will be held April 2017.