{"id":20952,"date":"2015-08-06T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2015-08-06T17:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=20952"},"modified":"2015-08-06T04:40:53","modified_gmt":"2015-08-06T09:40:53","slug":"apsus-professional-science-masters-program-produces-first-graduates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2015\/08\/06\/apsus-professional-science-masters-program-produces-first-graduates\/","title":{"rendered":"APSU’s Professional Science Masters program produces first graduates"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – On a quiet, sunny morning in late July, Cara Upton stood in the nearly empty Maynard Mathematics and Computer Science Building, on the Austin Peay State University campus, and found herself unable to keep from smiling.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really exciting to be one of the first students in Tennessee that has been educated in this field,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"Cara<\/a>

Cara Upton is one of the first students to graduate from Austin Peay’s Professional Science Masters program.<\/p><\/div>\n

At 2:00pm on Friday, August 7th, Upton and three other students \u2014 Cory Keller, Austin Siders and Aaron Taylor\u2014will become the first graduates of a new APSU program that combines science, mathematics and business\u2014the Professional Science Masters (PSM) program.<\/p>\n

The program, which first admitted students in 2013, is the only PSM graduate program in the state to offer concentrations in Predictive Analytics and Database Management and Analysis.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was looking for an advanced program at a master\u2019s level that combined statistics, business, theory and application,\u201d Upton said that morning. \u201cThe Professional Science Masters is not only supposed to be designated for your science and math background, but it\u2019s also supposed to incorporate communications, business, law and ethics.\u201d<\/p>\n

The PSM seemed like a perfect fit for Upton. She has a talent for mathematics, particularly statistics, and she\u2019d earned her undergraduate degrees in accounting and finance at APSU. The PSM appealed to her interests, while also allowing her to stand out among the glut of MBA graduates flooding the job market. In 2012, around 200,000 people earned MBAs from schools across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe PSM combines graduate study in the sciences and math with a business background and applications,\u201d Dr. Bruce Myers, chair of the APSU Department of Computer Science and Information Technology, said. \u201cWe\u2019re hoping that it\u2019s a new niche we can get in as we move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

PSM programs first appeared on a few college campuses in the late 1990s, thanks to funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and a recent article in the journal Science reported, \u201cPSM graduates are finding work, and it\u2019s mostly well paid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Siri Carpenter, author of the Science article, wrote that \u201cemployers in industry, the nonprofit sector and government are clamoring for employees with advanced training in science and mathematics and professional skills in areas such as management, marketing, communication, regulatory affairs, intellectual property and business ethics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Upton, who is graduating with a dual concentration in both predicative analytics and database management and analysis, found this to be the case. In July, while still a student in the program, she accepted a position with iVantage Health Analytics as an Informatics Healthcare Analyst.<\/p>\n

[320left]\u201cI\u2019m very excited to be working in a role that I was trained to fulfill,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She\u2019ll start work later this month, but first, on Friday, she\u2019ll walk into the APSU Dunn Center, dressed in a cap and gown, and join her three classmates in the program\u2019s inaugural graduating class.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe four of us are pretty close,\u201d she said. \u201cAs data scientists, you have to be able to work as a team. Our program not only focused on the individual aspect of it, but we also had multiple group projects. Our chairs wanted to make sure when we graduated that we were part of that team effort that the industry is demanding. That\u2019s really what they\u2019re looking for in data scientists now\u2014somebody that can communicate with everybody, ranging from entry level employees to top executives to clients.\u201d<\/p>\n

More information on APSU\u2019s PSM program is available online at www.apsu.edu\/csci\/psm-information<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – On a quiet, sunny morning in late July, Cara Upton stood in the nearly empty Maynard Mathematics and Computer Science Building, on the Austin Peay State University campus, and found herself unable to keep from smiling. \u201cIt\u2019s really exciting to be one of the first students in Tennessee that has been educated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[2148,19499,23,5990,438,15863,26410,262,22809,3902,26408,825,26409,1758],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-5rW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20952"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20953,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20952\/revisions\/20953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}