To make informed decisions about communication, we need a clear understanding of our audience and its motivations. We begin by asking the right questions and interpreting the results. This course covers essential market research methods, including quantitative and qualitative techniques. Students gain direct experience in collecting and analyzing data, developing insights and choosing research-driven communication strategies that meet client objectives.
Prerequisites: W4315 and either another statistics course numbered above the 4200 or permission of instructor. Required for the major in statistics. Data analysis using a computer statistical package and selected exploratory data analysis subroutines. Topics include editing of data for errors, exploratory and standard techniques for one-way analysis of variance, linear regression, and two-way analysis of variance. Material is presented in case-study format.
Topics in Modern Statistics will provide MA Statistics students with an opportunity to study a specialized area of statistics in more depth and to meet the educational needs of a rapidly growing field.
Topics in Modern Statistics will provide MA Statistics students with an opportunity to study a specialized area of statistics in more depth and to meet the educational needs of a rapidly growing field.
Topics in Modern Statistics will provide MA Statistics students with an opportunity to study a specialized area of statistics in more depth and to meet the educational needs of a rapidly growing field.
Topics in Modern Statistics will provide MA Statistics students with an opportunity to study a specialized area of statistics in more depth and to meet the educational needs of a rapidly growing field.
The Investment Planning course explores the essential principles of investing and how to apply them wisely as
wealth advisors. Students will examine how investment wisdom and theory has evolved – from the insights of
Benjamin Graham to Modern Portfolio Theory, the Capital Asset Pricing Model, factor-based investing and more --
and identify how these theories can be utilized as a framework for understanding and using investments of the present and future. Students will calculate and apply mathematical formulas to learn how to manage risk and return in investment portfolios. This course will compare and contrast each of the major asset classes, ranging from cash and near-cash investments to public and private equity, debt and alternative investments. Students will learn how to apply investment skills to deliver and demonstrate value to clients, net of fees and adjusted risk. In addition, this course will emphasize the parallel development of investment knowledge and communication and counseling skills to conduct investment relationships with clients effectively.
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In contemporary bioethics, we find ourselves grappling with practically important, and at the same time, philosophically fundamental questions such as: When does someone’s life begin and how should it end? What is the proper role of physicians, nurses and other health care providers and what are the rights of their patients? What is a just and fair way to provide access to health-care services and resources? Which potential uses of new genetic and reproductive technologies would represent a legitimate advance in medicine and which would signify the beginning of a humanly degrading "brave new world"? Indeed, in a society committed to protecting a diversity of lifestyles and opinions, how can citizens resolve significant policy controversies such as whether there should be public funding of human embryonic stem cell research, or a legally protected right to physician assistance in ending one’s life? The aims of this course are to identify the fundamental ethical questions that underlie contemporary biomedical practice; develop skill in analyzing and clarifying key concepts such as autonomy, justice, health and disease; critically assess the healthcare implications of different ethical outlooks; explore how citizens can reasonably address controversial bioethical issues in a mutually respectful and constructive way. The course meets once a week for an hour and a half. Live-session interaction and post-session discussion forums play a key role as students explore, in a give-and-take spirit, the pros and cons of each position. This course is designed for medical students, nursing students, and other healthcare professionals, as well as for students at the graduate or advanced undergraduate level in biology, philosophy, political science, public health, law, and related fields.
This course provides a comprehensive set of financial management tools for nonprofit professionals, including managers and staff, whether they oversee financial statements and reporting or need to translate financial statements and reporting across stakeholders. This course emphasizes the requirements for nonprofits in recording and budgeting the financials to support the organization’s mission. Additionally, the course will provide students with the ability to analyze financial statements and answer financial questions typically asked by stakeholders such as the governing board, donors, the public, beneficiaries, media, and regulators. Finally, the course will identify the risks and opportunities found in an organization's financial information to increase the public's confidence in and understanding of the organization's mission and operations.
This course will examine the data collection process, application, and management practices as it applies to soccer, specifically Major League Soccer and the National Women’s Soccer League. Using soccer as a platform to explore techniques, students will develop a working knowledge of the practical applications of analysis and models used to make management decisions within an organization and a professional league. With growing global connectivity, and access to data across various international leagues, the ability to embrace in-game analytics to improve team's performance, evaluate talent, develop in-game strategies, and more efficiently manage their roster in order to create financial value for their stakeholders has become an invaluable skill.
In response to the sports industry turning more towards application of analytics and critical thinking skills, Soccer Analytics aims to develop students into managers who can make decisions, based on provided models, regarding both player and team valuations. Students should be able to demonstrate the capability to apply advanced critical thinking skills to sports business issues and have the ability to integrate objective analysis with subjective judgment in a way that adds value to decision processes.
The class will be taught through a combination of lectures, class discussion, group presentations and guest speakers. Each class will include a review of the reading assignments noted in the syllabus, and students are expected to be fully prepared. Students are required to read assignments from the texts as well as additional sources provided by the professor. Students must attend class prepared to engage in discussions; have, articulate and defend a point of view; and ask questions and provide comments based on their reading.
As digital media increasingly drives the field of strategic communication, leading successful communication efforts also require a platform specific, evidence-based strategic approach. Leaders must know how to use a broad and rapidly changing mix of digital media platforms and tools to connect their message with the right audience. To that end, this course covers major topics in digital media and communication, such as content strategy, digital experience, channel planning, online reputation management, programmatic marketing, audience targeting, artificial intelligence and more. Through in-class lectures, discussion, case studies, guest speakers, group projects and individual writing assignments, students in this course will be introduced to strategic decision-making and communications planning for social media, mobile, digital advertising, search, email, digital out-of-home and interactive media (video, radio, podcasts). Students will also gain an in-depth understanding of how to integrate digital strategies and tactics with traditional communication efforts.
This course is about leading boundary-spanning coalitions. An old African proverb tells us that, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." While this advice is especially relevant in our interconnected 21st-century world, we have learned that working together is not always easy to do well. “Collaboration at Scale: Leading Boundary-Spanning Coalitions” takes the study of collaboration into an even wider realm by examining the potential and complexity of large-scale, cross-organizational collaboration, and how to lead it. The concept of scalability is common in the business world and this course demonstrates what it takes to make collaboration scalable and suitable for a variety of challenging contexts larger than a single organization. Inherent in the concept of scalability are the notions of "appropriate scale" and also "at scale." Both of these notions raise valid questions that we will address in this course. (Though our interpretations of scale have evolved with the advent of social media, specific technology selection is not the focus of the course.) Students will learn the characteristics, conditions and dynamics of various large-scale collaborations, as well as how to design and lead them effectively. Course materials will be drawn from the for-profit and nonprofit worlds. Using a balance of practice and theory of networks and large system facilitation, students will demonstrate their mastery of course materials through an assignment in which they diagnose and (re)design a “collaboration at scale.” This could be in the business, scientific, religious, political, or humanitarian domains.
The exponential growth of information and data—combined with software that can understand and learn from experience—provides entrepreneurs with tremendous opportunities to bring innovative customer-focused solutions to market. While there are no direct paths to bring a new product idea to market, there are easily identifiable milestones that can guide the way from idea generation to product profitability. This course will explore the process of early-stage development of knowledge-driven, data-intensive digital products like Spotify, Netflix, Watson, and TripAdvisor. The goal is to create a hands-on entrepreneurial experience at its most elemental and visceral level—ideation, brainstorming, interacting with customers, building a founding team, developing a business model, managing risk, investigating competitors, pitching the business to potential investors, and creating an interactive mobile app prototype (a design proof of concept for your business idea) through an iterative user-centered design process. In this course, we use Eric Reis’ startup method from his book, Lean Startup, as a foundation for creating and testing new ideas. Students learn to validate their new product ideas in the market by immediately engaging with customers to gauge whether their idea solves a problem better than alternative solutions. Building on the insight generated by customer interviews, students design a business model using the Lean Canvas approach designed by Ash Maurya and iterate their ideas based on Design Thinking (Tim Brown) principles. Throughout the course, we will shift from learning to the rapid application of new frameworks to speed up product design and development. Students will be exposed to all the pressures and demands of real-world start-ups by participating in teams tasked with creating weekly deliverables required to launch a new business. The user-experience skills and methods that are taught in this class are in demand by employers and startups across nearly every industry and reflect the latest best practices used to create today’s most widely used and award-winning digital products. The skills developed in this class apply to many real-world business problems that require an agile and iterative approach.
The nature of work and the workplace is changing dramatically. Disruptions, while often obvious and yet sometimes more below the surface, appear to be accelerating and continuous. Recent events have fundamentally affected organizational operations, employer/employee expectations and relationships, perceptions of social justice and the perceived role and value of organizations within society. Human Capital Management professionals are charged with stewarding their organizations to adapt to these changes and to anticipate and prepare for others. Managing Human Capital in organizations will require new ways of thinking, experimenting, and developing methods to creatively facilitate an environment that will produce high performance from employees. In this course, students will explore disruptions in the workplace and workforce, understand their impact, and develop their capabilities as HCM professionals to lead through the resulting changes, now and in the future.
This course offers students a context from which to examine "disability" and "disability studies" from the perspectives of bioethics. What can we learn when we put these two ever-broadening disciplines into conversation? Throughout the course, we will endeavor to connect academic texts and theories to real-world dilemmas, with a focus on lived experience and the social contexts of disability. Our aims are not only to read, analyze, and communicate in academic styles but also to identify, understand, and communicate the relevance of both bioethics and disability studies as they apply to broader societal structures, including medicine, public health, law, politics, and beyond.
Course covers modern statistical and physical methods of analysis and prediction of financial price data. Methods from statistics, physics and econometrics will be presented with the goal to create and analyze different quantitative investment models.
This course provides a comprehensive overview of fundraising and development in the nonprofit sector and introduces students to basic terminology and concepts in the field. The various fundraising vehicles are surveyed and participants learn to apply fundraising strategies as they balance individual donor and institutional needs. Relationship building, the solicitation process, the psychological dynamics and the realities of asking for money are examined as students refine their skills through analysis of case studies and participation in role playing exercises. A full array of written formats used by fundraising professionals including mission statements, grant proposals, acknowledgment letters, and campaign appeal materials are introduced. While students develop an understanding of the essentials of fundraising operations, they also examine the larger issues confronting today’s fundraising managers as well as explore the relationships between fundraisers and a nonprofit organization’s management structure and other stakeholders.
The course will cover practical issues such as: how to select an investment universe and instruments, derive long term risk/return forecasts, create tactical models, construct and implement an efficient portfolio,to take into account constraints and transaction costs, measure and manage portfolio risk, and analyze the performance of the total portfolio.