Haslam College of Business - Haslam Master’s in Business Analytics Earns Second Nomination for National Award

For the second year in a row, the Haslam College of Business’ Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) was named a finalist for the UPS George D. Smith Prize presented by the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS).

“The Smith Prize is the most prestigious award given to an academic analytics program,” said Missie Bowers, director of the MSBA program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “The fact that we have been nominated for a second year recognizes our program’s strong connections with corporate partners and the value our graduates deliver to industry by transforming data into business insight.”

The Smith prize recognizes one academic program per year for innovation in preparing students to be effective practitioners of operations research, management science or analytics.

Typically a field of three, INFORMS selected only two finalists for 2018. The other competitor is Cornell University’s School of Operations Research and Information Engineering. The winner will be announced on April 16 at the INOFRMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research in Baltimore, Maryland.

The U.S. Air Force Academy’s operations excellence program received the award in 2017. Haslam and North Carolina State’s Institute for Advanced Analytics also were finalists.

Haslam was the first business college to launch a graduate degree in analytics. Its MSBA has placed 100 percent of students in jobs within three months of graduation every year since the program’s inception. The program focuses on teaching analytics within a business context and developing the soft skills graduates need to excel in the business world.

UPS established the Smith prize in 2012 in memory of its late chief executive officer. INFORMS is the world’s largest association of business analytics and operations research professionals, with more than 10,000 members.