Wake Technical CC Located in Raleigh, NC Largest community college in the state Approximately 70,000 students; approximately 30,000 curriculum students Business and Public Services Technologies Division is the largest division under Career Programs, filling over 12,000 seats Fall 2014.

AAS Business Analytics DOLTAA funded; received $2.9 million grant in October 2012; third year of a 4 year grant. FOCUS: employability in analytics fields First and only AAS Degree in Business Analytics in the country Official Launch Fall 2013; second year of the two-year program

Student population Vast majority of students have undergraduate and graduate course work completed Of the 162 students who have taken BAS classes, only 8 are coming in with High School or GRE. Average age of students is 39 (range 18-61). 77 men and 84 women Career transition or upgrading skills Some taking courses for ‘fun’

Teaching SAS at Wake Tech Background: Why SAS? SAS is a powerful analytics software, used by more than 90% of fortune 500 companies. SAS software is fully vetted; it has detailed documentation, supplementary text books and also excellent technical support. Learning SAS software provides the necessary foundation needed for using other software, most of whom do not have the same level of support like SAS to enable use in classrooms.

Which SAS software? SAS Enterprise Guide/Enterprise Miner use simple menu driven tools to run statistical processes. However, the simplicity of use can also lead to dangerous errors by new students. At Wake Tech, we teach students how to program in SAS, using Base SAS, SAS Stat and SAS ETS.

SAS certification The Business Analytics program prepares students for the following SAS certifications SAS Programming 1 SAS Business Analyst

Teaching SAS software: WTCC Approach SAS is introduced to the students as their third course in Business Analytics, after they have learnt the basics of data pre-processing, data management and data visualization using Excel and Tableau. There are two courses that teach students how to use BASE SAS for analytics.

Teaching BASE SAS: Methodology BAS220 is the first course that introduces Base SAS. It is taught using “Learning SAS by Example”, by Ron Cody. The second course teaching SAS applications to analytics uses a recently released book, “ Practical Business Analytics Using SAS”, by Venkata Reddy et al.

SAS Certification Bootcamp After the first two courses, additional preparation for the Base SAS certification is provided through weekend bootcamps. Similar to a driver’s license test, knowing how to use SAS is not sufficient to pass the tough SAS exam. Additional practice is needed, which is provided through these bootcamps.

SAS Business Analyst Certification The second SAS certificate that students are eligible for is the SAS Business Analyst. This test can be taken after completion of additional two courses that teach predictive analytics including linear regression and classification models.

SAS certification: a signal of skills SAS is universally recognized as an analytics software. It makes sense to receive certification in SAS that is complementary to Wake Tech’s certifications and associate degree in analytics. Having SAS certification is a powerful signal to potential employers about the individual’s advanced skills in analytics.

“This workforce solution was funded by a grant awarded by the U. S “This workforce solution was funded by a grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration. The solution was created by the grantee and does not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Labor. The Department of Labor makes no guarantees, warranties, or assurances of any kind, express or implied, with respect to such information, including any information on linked sites and including, but not limited to, accuracy of the information or its completeness, timeliness, usefulness, adequacy, continued availability, or ownership.” Except where otherwise stated, this work by Wake Technical Community College Building Capacity in Business Analytics, a Department of Labor, TAACCCT funded project, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/