Virtual Open House MS in Data Analytics Engineering Transcript

George Mason Online Admissions: Okay, we’re gonna go ahead and get started. It is being recorded. My name is Denise Summarons. I am an enrollment counselor.

George Mason Online Admissions: I work for Rice Point on behalf of George Mason University. We have here Director Gin Baldo.

George Mason Online Admissions: I’m going to go ahead and introduce to you our agenda. There’ll be some housekeeping items. I’ll go over, and then I’ll go ahead and transition it over to our director, Mr. Baldo.

George Mason Online Admissions: So on the agenda today you will get to meet the presenter, which will be well, I’m presenting, and so is Mr. Baldo. He’s going to give your give himself some information about himself. He’s gonna go over the driving forces. Why you should choose Mason’s data, analytics engineering program.

George Mason Online Admissions: He’s gonna discuss the masters and data analytics, engineering the curriculum details. He’ll touch base on the online

George Mason Online Admissions: classroom curriculum.

George Mason Online Admissions: I’ll go through the admissions requirements and then towards the end, we’ll have an opportunity for QA.

George Mason Online Admissions: Before I go ahead and transition over to Director Baldo did want to give some housekeeping items.

George Mason Online Admissions: so how to participate

George Mason Online Admissions: for chat instructions in your controls at the bottom window. You can click, chat for the chat window to appear and type your message you can also select. Who would you like to send them message to by clicking on the dropdown next to 2.

George Mason Online Admissions: You may also raise your hand in your webinar controls.

George Mason Online Admissions: I will be. I will be notified that your hands is raised. If you’re prompted, speak, you may then unmute yourself

George Mason Online Admissions: if you have any questions. Click. QA. In your webinar controls to get access to see the QA. Window type your question in the text box to ask a question.

George Mason Online Admissions: so please try and hold them off towards the end, unless there is something that you need answered. At the moment. I will go ahead and let the director know, and he will answer that

George Mason Online Admissions: without further ado.

George Mason Online Admissions: The director of the data analytics and engineering program is Mr. James Boudo. And here’s a little bit of information about him. I will go ahead and transition it over to him so he can introduce himself.

Jim Baldo: Okay, thank you. Thank you very much, Denise, hopefully. Everybody can hear me. Well, I’ll I’ll move up a little bit here. Every once in a while this, this mic on my, on my laptop gets a little sensitive. So so Hi, I’m I’m Jim Ballow. I’m the director of the data analytics engineering program at George Mason University.

Jim Baldo: And and this slide here, I’ll just give you a little bit about myself. I was away for 2 years I was on Sabbatical over at the Department of Homeland Security, where I had this wonderful opportunity to practice every single day as a data analytics engineer doing the same things that we prepare our students for.

Jim Baldo: I spent about 40 years in industry full time. And of those 20, about 19 of those years I was an adjunct professor here at George Mason University. One of the reasons why I liked being an adjunct was I was able to teach. I was able to work with students.

Jim Baldo: and I learn more from students than they learn from me. So it’s always really great to work with graduate students who are working full time and get to hear all these wonderful things that they’re doing and these interesting projects that they’re working on.

Jim Baldo: I then around the fall of 2,018, I decided to make a switch

Jim Baldo: I switched to full full time. I became a director of the Data Analysts engineering program here at George Mason University, and I was then became part time in industry. So I still work in industry about 10 to 15 HA week

Jim Baldo: the Dean of the College of Engineering encourages me to do that. And so I do that a a little rough in the sense that I spend, you know, a 40 plus hour week normally close to 50. But I really enjoy what I’m doing, and being able to practice, and then come back to this program here and work with all the wonderful faculty that we have is just really really great.

Jim Baldo: so

Jim Baldo: this program is really set up for folks like who are working. And so I wanted to give you that background about me because of the 1st 2 degrees that I got in chemistry. I was a full time student when I was in graduate school. I had a stipend

Jim Baldo: so in those days I’m I’m a lot older than anybody here. Education was a lot more economic and so I had a full, a full stipend and teaching assistantship. So I really didn’t have to pay for much of my undergraduate or my my 1st graduate degree. Then I worked full time

Jim Baldo: on my second masters in computer engineering and my Ph. DI worked here in the Washington DC. Area, for I worked in the government sector worked at some Ffrcs.

Jim Baldo: And then again, it was full time. I had a family and all those sorts of responsibilities. So this program here

Jim Baldo: is very much like what I went through. You know I would work during the day and then come home at night, and I had to sort of manage my time. So I just wanted to to throw that out. I

Jim Baldo: been through that sort of the sort of thing that you’re going to go through. And

Jim Baldo: it’s very doable.

Jim Baldo: very, very doable.

Jim Baldo: So

Jim Baldo: why don’t we move on to the next slide, please?

Jim Baldo: Okay, so

Jim Baldo: this program started

Jim Baldo: around the fall. It started in the fall of 2,014. So we’ve been this fall will be 10 years.

Jim Baldo: I think we actually celebrated our 10 year anniversary at the end of last semester in the spring, so it could have been the spring. I can’t I? I get those confused in the spring of 2,014. The program. So so in a university, you have departments.

Jim Baldo: And then you have programs. Some programs are attached to a department. This program here is a multidisciplinary program, and it is in this, in the College of Engineering, which has 2 schools, the the school of engineering and the school of Computer Science.

Jim Baldo: And this is the multidisciplinary program and the Dean Ball, who’s still the Dean? He started. He he was the one who encouraged the the this program be initiated. He was seeing a lot of requests across all of his departments in engineering for data, analytics, not data science with data analytics. And so he said, Hey, we need to get a program in place. I wanted to be multidisciplinary. No department will own it. It’ll be independent, and the director will report directly to me.

Jim Baldo: So that’s how this program got started, and it was due to Dean Ball’s belief

Jim Baldo: and and pushes very hard, and is very supportive of keeping this program to to go through all these porous walls with the, with the school, the 2 schools, and and their departments. We also go outside of the College of Engineering to the school of business, the College of Science, our College of Health and policy. We also go into the department of Language. We have a linguistics component as well. So

Jim Baldo: we.

Jim Baldo: that is a really big driving force for us to be multidisciplinary. Okay, so that was sort of why we were created.

Jim Baldo: And I want to talk a little bit about some of the trends that we’re seeing in industry today. 1st and foremost, diversity is a very, very important dimension to analytics.

Jim Baldo: And the reason being this program was set up on 4 pillars, computer science

Jim Baldo: statistics.

Jim Baldo: general engineering

Jim Baldo: and domains.

Jim Baldo: And so the computer science and statistics just makes a lot of sense for data analytics. There’s a lot of of tools and and concepts and theories that come from both statistics and and computer science that are quintessential to have to to perform in analytics the general engineering aspects. Because we are a

Jim Baldo: data analytics, engineers provides the necessary things that you need from an engineering perspective, from a tooling perspective risk management. So we embed those sort of things into the courses that we’re that we’re teaching.

Jim Baldo: And then the problem domains allow us to be generalists. So I am a general data analytics. So I’m a data analytics engineer.

Jim Baldo: I’m a journalist. So the way I practice is that I come in on a team.

Jim Baldo: And that’s how we prepare our our graduates from this program here to go off and work

Jim Baldo: on across different problem spaces, finance healthcare

Jim Baldo: defense.

Jim Baldo: oil industry. We cut across every major domain all the problem spaces that you can think of.

Jim Baldo: And so normally we come in. We work with subject matter experts, we apply our knowledge and our skills, and from a teaming perspective to solve problems, to produce analytics, you know, sort of to provide that sort of insights and 4 sites. That our custom that a customer or client or an organization would be looking for. So one of the things that’s interesting about

Jim Baldo: technology, engineering and science today

Jim Baldo: is how quickly technology is changing. So when I left for my Sabbatical

Jim Baldo: to the Department of Homeland Security 2 years ago in May of 2022

Jim Baldo: large language models were just coming on, the the landscape becoming very, very noticeable. Everybody was talking about them and

Jim Baldo: they just sort of you know they had been around for a while.

Jim Baldo: You could talk about you could. You could see them on the landscape. But all of a sudden they became very, very popular. There were technological enablers that allowed them to to become really, really powerful.

Jim Baldo: And of course the people

Jim Baldo: took, you know.

Jim Baldo: took to heart, started to use them. And of course.

Jim Baldo: as in any type of new technology, one begins is to run into sorts of problems limitations. But they’re still there, and they’re still going to be there for a long period of time.

Jim Baldo: And then

Jim Baldo: what we were seeing was a change in data, the way people were viewing data. And so one of the things that we’re seeing right now is that a lot of

Jim Baldo: folks doing analytics.

Jim Baldo: we’re looking at things like data sets. Okay, hey? I want a data set.

Jim Baldo: And of course, all the things that all the dimensional.

Jim Baldo: the quality, the observability,

Jim Baldo: sparcity and things like that that you have to deal with when you have large data sets.

Jim Baldo: People are now starting to look at this in terms of 2 2 areas, one is data products.

Jim Baldo: So the notion of a data set is starting to go away.

Jim Baldo: And then

Jim Baldo: this concept of a data mesh and and the other concept is of of a data fabric

Jim Baldo: are coming on where specific domains take ownership of your data. So this has been rather rapid

Jim Baldo: and very quick, and people are trying to figure out how to deal with all this. Some companies you don’t get sea level folks coming in in, you know, Ceos coming in saying, we’re gonna do this. We’re going to embed AI into all of our analytics.

Jim Baldo: And and and speaking of that. Then we started to see agenic or agent based systems come on. And the agent based the the agents we’re beginning to use the data mesh. They were beginning to use the Llms so that technology is coming on and that will take over. We’ll start to see some of the analytics that we’re dealing with today will be, the agents will be using agents to to

Jim Baldo: implement to design our analytics with.

Jim Baldo: And so the question comes about, you know, why do you need a program like this? Or are we all gonna lose our jobs and and artificial intelligence? Gonna take over

Jim Baldo: I’ve been around for a long time. I’ve seen huge disruptive technologies come on the landscape, and this one’s no different than anything else. It is pretty powerful. No question about that, but usually it’s an enabling.

Jim Baldo: It enables us to do our work enables us to work faster.

Jim Baldo: By working smarter.

Jim Baldo: and allows us to work more intelligently. So we can solve more problems. And I think there’s going to be a huge, unknown number of new types of roles for data analytics.

Jim Baldo: That’s gonna that’s gonna come about. There will be some changes, is the way we do work. No question about that. But this is one of the things that we try to do in this program is to give you the tools to go forward with. Go to the next slide, please.

Jim Baldo: Okay, so I do wanna say something. This is a really really nice slide. We are being noticed. there’s a number of of of

Jim Baldo: organizations institutions that come around and and evaluate and assess programs. We’re showing up more and more.

Jim Baldo: we have great faculty here.

Jim Baldo: It is

Jim Baldo: second to none

Jim Baldo: and and our folks are doing some exceptional research across the board in in engineering. And, as I said, we go outside of the engineering school

Jim Baldo: out of the engineering college. We go outside of that for the business. And we have some. We we we have a very, very famous center here. There’s the the shar center that we’ve been doing some work with them.

Jim Baldo: And so we are embedded with

Jim Baldo: all of these folks that are doing some excellent work. You so you know George Mason faculty

Jim Baldo: the they get quoted in the news. You’ll see them on. Npr. You’ll be, you know. They’ll be interviewed on Npr and things like that. So

Jim Baldo: there’s there’s a lot of

Jim Baldo: of really really good people here and again.

Jim Baldo: I think that is a really powerful

Jim Baldo: oh.

Jim Baldo: component of our program is to have access to all these really really fine people.

Jim Baldo: Okay, in the bottom, right hand quadrant here. There is the online graduate certificate option. And I just wanna say a few words about that. It’s a 4 course option. And

Jim Baldo: it’s there we have some folks that come back. They’re not really interested in getting the masters, and they just wanna take some courses. They get the certificate. It’s helpful for the work that they’re doing. Sometimes they’re working on projects where they need to have a certificate in order to work on a project. And so this is this is you know, this is an enabler for them. But

Jim Baldo: Many of our folks who get the certificate they they get bit by the bug. Here they get. They get excited about what they’re seeing, and then they continue to go under the masters. So if you do get the certificate. All those courses count, and you can go on further. But it is. It is a nice option to have if you just wanna get, you know. Take those 4 courses and get the certificate the beauty of this certificate here versus other certificates that may come like from an online. And I’m not. And I think

Jim Baldo: other online certificates from other

Jim Baldo: places are are equally as good. But the the thing here is that it’s branded. This is a George Mason is known. It’s it’s a branded name. And so it’s nice to have that certificate with George Mason University on it.

Jim Baldo: So

Jim Baldo: One other thing I I wanna say, that is unique about our program

Jim Baldo: is that we produce the blended

Jim Baldo: data analytics engineer. So you’ve heard this term, the data scientist.

Jim Baldo: the data engineer, the data architect, the machine learning engineer, you on and on. We

Jim Baldo: do everything we can. And I. And when I took over the program. I did put this emphasis on these particular roles that we were seeing and skill sets that industry was asking for. We looked at a lot of job Recs. We were constantly, you know, surfing the web and looking for job reps what people were looking for and skill sets because it’s important for us to provide industry fulfill their needs at the same time.

Jim Baldo: We’re not short sighted we are are looking for in the long down that down that path as far as we can. So we wanna give people skills so that we know folks need to be lifelong learners. And that’s part of our program. We we made the program very, very flexible. We put high quality courses in here with our high quality vaccine.

Jim Baldo: And then we wanted to make sure that once you leave us. And one of the things that I’m doing now is we’re trying to establish some some programs that people can come back. And we can provide things like. For example, I mentioned these agent based systems and specifically for analytics that we might be able to offer some some courses for our alumni, our alumni. Rp.

Jim Baldo: okay, so we we only have you for a short period of time in this degree program. You know 2, maybe 3 years at the most in in in these cases. We get a chance to know you. But then you take off after you get your degree rightfully so. But we do. Wanna bring you back in. And that’s 1 of the things that we’re trying to establish right now.

Jim Baldo: So I think that’s what makes our program unique in the sense that we are generalist.

Jim Baldo: We provide that general degree which there’s we’ve yet to find, a program that offers that that general data analytics engineer. Okay?

Jim Baldo: There’s programs that offer specializations like business and finance healthcare. And those are good. There’s no question about that. But we were. We were trying to build the general.

Jim Baldo: the general data analytics engineer.

Jim Baldo: with an emphasis on engineer.

Jim Baldo: Okay, next slide, please.

Jim Baldo: Okay, a little bit about the course, the the structure of the program, these core courses that you see here. There’s 5 of them.

Jim Baldo: And there’s 4 foundational courses. And just let me say a little bit about each one. The ait 5, 80 is really our data course. That’s the one that talks about that. That addresses data. What is it?

Jim Baldo: Where, how is data used? And equally is important? What is the value of data? And that’s something that is become very, very important when you start talking about data products is that you are under constant pressure as a practicing data analytics engineer to produce value.

Jim Baldo: and then the CS. 5 0. 4, which is our data management. And we we do introduce machine learning and data mining in that course as well. That sort of is the active part of data.

Jim Baldo: That data, relational databases, data warehouses are still important. But on that landscape we are seeing things like data, lake houses, data, mesh data, mesh data fabric. I’m updating that course as we speak right now. So when that course is offered in the the fall of this year. I’ll have a chance to embed some of those newer concepts in that I that I briefly just touched on this evening. Here

Jim Baldo: the or 5 31 is is the modeling course.

Jim Baldo: and what it does is it tries to give our students the the core modeling capabilities. They understand how to do modeling and do it in the context of analytics.

Jim Baldo: And then the stats 5, 1, 5 is a.

Jim Baldo: It’s sort of a combination of statistics, machine learning and visualization.

Jim Baldo: The course was originally set up by Dr. Dan Carr. And he was a world class expert in visualization.

Jim Baldo: And so that that course really he’s since retired. But that course, you know, tries to address that aspect of visualization, because to get insights or 4 sites when you’re projecting this back out to end users people who are consumers.

Jim Baldo: You know that consumable layer that sits out there and on on your data platforms. They’re consuming a product. The visualization tables clearly are visualization graphs, charts. Sometimes of 3 dimensional rendering. And and lo and behold, we are already seeing virtual headsets, you know, virtual reality augmented reality. Being mixed into the into the visualization area.

Jim Baldo: So those are the 4 course. So that is the found. That is a foundation that sits on top of this, these, these knowledge pillars of computer science

Jim Baldo: statistics.

Jim Baldo: engineering

Jim Baldo: and domains. So we, we put those foundations on top of those pillars. This last course, it’s a core course that you have to take is the Data Analytics project. And this is sort of it’s a shining star of our program.

Jim Baldo: When I came on board in 2,018,

Jim Baldo: this was really on a very, very important and very, very interesting and exciting course to take. It’s usually the last course that you take.

Jim Baldo: Oh, so the online program, which I’ll mention a little bit later is 8 week, 8 week sessions. This one is 15. This is the one you have to take. It’s 15 weeks the full semes. It’s a full semester rather than a session.

Jim Baldo: and it is really an adrenaline rush we get you. You’ll you’ll pair up. You’ll work in a team of 4 to 4 to 6 students, and then you will work with an industry partner or academic partner. We’ve had students

Jim Baldo: have capstone projects with their employers, you know, employers willing to to sponsor the project. And when I say sponsor, it doesn’t mean they they don’t pay anything for this. It’s just that they have to provide us with a subject matter. Expert.

Jim Baldo: they. They attend the weekly sprints. It’s it’s agile, scrum-based.

Jim Baldo: So it’s really, really.

Jim Baldo: I wish we could have, you know, like an internship, for all of you keep you here for 3 years, and one of those years is an internship. But we just haven’t gotten there yet to do that this last course. And I’ll talk about electives on the next slide.

Jim Baldo: We do have an independent research course. This is A. DAN. 6, 98. You could take it up to 3 h.

Jim Baldo: and it has to be with a faculty member, and you’ll write a proposal

Jim Baldo: and it’ll be an 8 week. Course, I’ve sponsored a number. I’ve been a faculty member for several of these courses. Just recently, just before I went on sabbatical, a student came to me, wanted to do some advanced statistics.

Jim Baldo: so we went ahead and and looked at some advanced statistics, got a data set from the University of Michigan. We did some some social science data analytics. It was actually a really really good little project. And then one of the things he wanted to do was go in and verify and validate some existing findings, some results that came from the University of Michigan, the study, the social science study that they performed.

Jim Baldo: So anyways, that’s that’s open to you as well as one of your 5 electives. Okay, go to the next slide. Please, Denise.

Jim Baldo: thank you. So

Jim Baldo: our electives. As I said, we come

Jim Baldo: from a multidisciplinary program. So so ist is our information Science and Technology Department, which is in the College of of Computing. They have probably the most of the of the elective courses that they offer cause. All of our elective courses have to be

Jim Baldo: asynchronous.

Jim Baldo: And so these courses have been packaged so that they’re asynchronous so that we can offer them to to our online folks here. The seor is our systems, engineering and operations research department. They have packaged for

Jim Baldo: courses for us. So you can. You can pick from those if you’re interested in some systems engineering work.

Jim Baldo: The electrical engineering has 2 courses right now. And actually, those 2 courses were put together by Bob Osgood, who was the original director of the DNA program. In fact, he was the fellow who reached out to hire me.

Jim Baldo: So Bob’s a really good guy, and he put together those 2 courses when I asked them to do that and then the G bus come from our business school.

Jim Baldo: So you can actually take some analytics courses that are oriented towards the the college of business, the the business college. So so right now, those that’s what we got packaged each year, or each semester. We try to add more to those. So I wouldn’t be surprised that by the time you leave we’ve added, you know, some more to this. We continue putting courses online.

Jim Baldo: Does take a lot of effort. It’s especially when they’re they’re asynchronous.

Jim Baldo: And so

Jim Baldo: you really learn how to teach a course when you have to do it, cause I taught the Cs 5 will course for a number of years. In the theater, in a classroom, and it’s totally different. When I had to put it together for the online. But the beauty of the online is, I think these are actually, I do think the online courses come off much, much better. They’re they’re better packaged

Jim Baldo: for the student I’m for I shouldn’t say for a student. You folks are working professionals for the for the working professional and the way they are packaged, and and to help you learn

Jim Baldo: so that’s there. And again,

Jim Baldo: you have 4. You have 4 foundation courses, and then the capstone. So those are the 5 core courses.

Jim Baldo: Then from there you have this menu of of electives that you can take, and you and you get 5. Now, you could substitute one of the 5 with independent research. If you’re so interested in doing that.

Jim Baldo: Okay, please. Next slide, please.

Jim Baldo: Okay,

Jim Baldo: I want to say just a little bit about the online learning. I’ve said a few things so far, but I’m just going to summarize it to give you a little bit of a taste

Jim Baldo: of it.

Jim Baldo: number one. These are asynchronous. So it is.

Jim Baldo: They’re set up so that you, when the semester, the session starts. They’re they’re based on. With the exception of the capstone, they’re 8 week sessions. So there’s 8 modules.

Jim Baldo: That is standard. You have the 8 modules. Normally in the module, you will have lecture content.

Jim Baldo: There could be some video. It it could be just soundtracked, or it could just be slides. Usually it’s a mix of those depending on the instructor who built the course you normally in a module and and modules you can think of is is the one week. So you start on Sunday Sunday evening, and you go to the next Sunday, and that’s that’s the timeframe of a module. So you have your your lecture content, your lecture content.

Jim Baldo: You have possibly knowledge tests, and what I mean by that is in between. You know, you have a short video or a short soundtrack

Jim Baldo: It depends on the instructor in the course. And then there might be a knowledge test. Hey? You know, test your knowledge.

Jim Baldo: There may be some actual quizzes that you have to take. Usually there’s some assignments. Some of these courses are set up where they have projects.

Jim Baldo: and some have exams. Okay? And so all of that is run will be run online in a platform in a learning platform called canvas.

Jim Baldo: We have just made this transition from blackboard to canvas. So

Jim Baldo: when you so please, if there are any problems, please get back to us right away. But so far canvas is a very stable platform. In fact, a lot of my colleagues who have used it in the past say it’s much easier to use, and much friendlier and better for the students than blackboard. I can’t comment on that.

Jim Baldo: I don’t have a lot of experience with canvas but but we have experts. From Rise Point or from our online folks that that take care of of all that for us.

Jim Baldo: but my guidance to you folks on the online, and everybody learns differently. But with an online course, especially when you’re working, I I recommend that you allocate some time during the week.

Jim Baldo: you know, maybe a couple of hours in the evening, or, if you can afford it, some evenings more hours.

Jim Baldo: To to focus in on the module.

Jim Baldo: Okay? So

Jim Baldo: maybe in the beginning you want to get through the content, the lecture content.

Jim Baldo: you, you may want to take a quiz or 2. It depends. You might have one quiz that week. You might have 2 or 3, you know. Take your take your quizzes

Jim Baldo: good. Make sure you’re working on your assignments.

Jim Baldo: And the reason that I say that is because

Jim Baldo: I always encourage students

Jim Baldo: not to wait until the weekend. It’s tempting to do that, you say? Hey? I got you know. I’ll spend 8 h on Saturday as a 60 h. Normally you need to spend a good 15 h to 20 HA week on a course, especially an 8 h. Course, these are condensed courses. Normally, they’re they’re across a 15 week time period. So you don’t wanna sort of find yourself.

Jim Baldo: you know, waiting till the weekend to do this. And secondly, if you run into some problems like with an assignment or something. Don’t beat your head against the wall

Jim Baldo: make sure that we have discussion boards. You can use the Discussion board to go off and talk with some of your other students. Say, Hey, I’m having a little bit of problem with this particular assignment. you know.

Jim Baldo: not saying to have them give you the answer. You don’t wanna do that? No, but maybe somebody might be willing to give you a hint or something like that. And and clearly you can reach out to your instructor instructors, although, it’s not synchronous where we’re gonna have you meet 1 1 night, usually a graduate class on campus. You’re gonna be. You’re gonna be there for 3 and a half hours for one night on campus.

Jim Baldo: You’ll see the instructor. But you can always reach out to the instructor. You know. Send an email. Say, Hey, I need. I need to talk to you about that. So I I normally recommend when I teach like Cs 5 0. 4 is, if you’re having a problem with a particular assignment, you know. Spend some time on it.

Jim Baldo: 1520 min. But you’re still not making any headway.

Jim Baldo: Start to reach out for help.

Jim Baldo: Okay, there’s nothing wrong with doing that. In fact, that’s why you’re in. The university is to is to get assistance and and and help, and how to how to solve a particular problem.

Jim Baldo: Okay, so that’s that’s my big, my big recommendation there. So that is where I see. Sometimes I see students run into that problem where they sort of wait until the last minute, because sometimes it might be hard, especially if everybody waits till the weekend

Jim Baldo: your instructor gets inundated with with questions.

Jim Baldo: that makes it pretty difficult. And so, you know, you’re there’s gonna be deadlines. We need to get your assignments and your quizzes completed, and things like that. So

Jim Baldo: try to, you know, set that rhythm up for yourself

Jim Baldo: if you can.

Jim Baldo: Okay, with that.

Jim Baldo: I think the next slide Denise, is.

George Mason Online Admissions: Yes.

Jim Baldo: So apply, I’ll turn it over to you. Thank you.

George Mason Online Admissions: Thank you, Director Baldo, so I will go ahead and walk you through the admissions process. So the 1st requirement is that you have a bachelor’s degree with a minimum of a 3 Gpa.

George Mason Online Admissions: you will need prerequisite courses. So one calculus course and one statistics course and computer programming course. Those are the 3 prerequisite courses needed

George Mason Online Admissions: along with that bachelor’s degree, and a minimum of a 3 point O. Gp. We’ll also need all of your official transcripts for any undergrad or graduate schools you have attended.

George Mason Online Admissions: If you are a Gmu alumni we will pull those for you.

George Mason Online Admissions: If you have unofficial transcripts, we will accept those in order to review and see if accepted. But, once accepted, we will need all of your official transcripts. We’ll also need one letter of recommendation.

George Mason Online Admissions: and we’ll need a personal statement.

George Mason Online Admissions: We usually provide you with, like the prompt for the personal statement. But just to give you an idea, it should consist anywhere from 750 to 1,000 words you normally would just touch on. Some of your personal qualities, your experience, your background, your reason for choosing this particular program, your reason for choosing George Mason, and anything else that you would like to provide on there.

George Mason Online Admissions: All applications are viewed by faulty.

George Mason Online Admissions: It’s not just like

George Mason Online Admissions: overlooked anything. Everything is important. We are here to support you every step of the way. If you have questions with the application. If you need assistance with submitting the application, there’s always someone that is available to help you.

George Mason Online Admissions: I will go ahead and move on to the next slide, which is going to just provide you the phone number and email address and the website. And there’s also a bar code. If you would like to go ahead and apply. Now I will leave that up there, and if you have any questions, please feel free to put them in the QA. And I will go ahead and read those. Offer the director ball.

Jim Baldo: Yeah, so don’t be. Don’t be shy. Feel free to ask questions.

Jim Baldo: I’m more than happy to to answer any question that you have here about the program.

George Mason Online Admissions: You guys can go ahead. Either put it in the chat or you can put it in the QA. And I will go ahead and ask

George Mason Online Admissions: director. Bottle your questions.

George Mason Online Admissions: So, Dr. Baldo. The one of the questions is, is there a limit on classes that may make it difficult to choose the classes that you want.

Jim Baldo: So I think this question is referring to

Jim Baldo: I’ve taken my my core courses, the the 4 core courses that are there are the 4 foundation courses.

Jim Baldo: and then you want to take an elective the next session.

Jim Baldo: And I think the is this, and I wanna make sure I understand the question, is it possible that that course I want to take is not going to be offered? Is that the the question.

George Mason Online Admissions: Yes, so is there a limit on classes. How how many students per class.

Jim Baldo: Oh.

Jim Baldo: well, okay, good question. Great question. Yeah. So what we do at at George Mason is that we, the we set limits. Usually, I think it’s around 25,

Jim Baldo: the instructor cause we like to keep those classes

Jim Baldo: small so that the instructor doesn’t get overwhelmed, or that we have to bring a ta in, and you’re dealing with the ta rather than the instructor. So normally they’re 25. Sometimes we, the instructor, is asked if they can add some folks, because it’s a very popular class.

Jim Baldo: and they might boost it up to 30. But what we normally try to do is if we if like, for example, Denise finds out

Jim Baldo: the some, the session before this course is gonna be offered, that she has 40 people in the online program that want to take a particular course.

Jim Baldo: We’ll work with the department who owns that course to maybe open up another section, but we try to keep them around 25

Jim Baldo: these courses here for the online.

Jim Baldo: And that again is just to make it so that you have access to that instructor. You can do one on one with that instructor. The, you know some. Unfortunately, some of the on campus courses like with our Cs. 5 0, 4. You might have a hundred or

Jim Baldo: 150 students in the class, and then you got one instructor. But you may not have it. You may not get much access to the instructor you might be having to deal with. Ta, the teaching assistant.

Jim Baldo: I hope that answers the question.

George Mason Online Admissions: Thank you, Director Walter, one of the other questions. Are you only ever taking one class at a time or some semesters? Do you take multiple 8 week courses.

Jim Baldo: Okay? Great question.

Jim Baldo: When I, when we 1st started the online program.

Jim Baldo: we spend some time with

Jim Baldo: professionals who had run online programs for many, many years.

Jim Baldo: And when they assess, and there’s various types of metrics that people use

Jim Baldo: for a condensed 8 week program. In other words, we we can press these programs from 15 weeks down at the time was 7 and a half. But now it’s 8.

Jim Baldo: We would only let people in the online program. Take one course at a time.

Jim Baldo: Now

Jim Baldo: that rule is somewhat still in place, but

Jim Baldo: we have situations where somebody has now taken some time off from work

Jim Baldo: or they decided to. Just in some cases we’ve had some people where they decided to

Jim Baldo: hub

Jim Baldo: terminate their their position because they wanna go

Jim Baldo: to school

Jim Baldo: full time as a career change

Jim Baldo: and so

Jim Baldo: we will talk to the online advisor. If it looks like you have enough

Jim Baldo: if we feel comfortable

Jim Baldo: cause. The thing is, we don’t want you to sign up for a core scope

Jim Baldo: before we send to the semester and then lose your money where you need. It’s too much for you, and you have to drop it. So you work with the online advisor

Jim Baldo: and we try to assess whether you’ll have enough time to do it. And so we’re starting to allow that to go on working full time on taking 2 of these courses is

Jim Baldo: is a lot on your plate. It’s tough, it’s really tough cause. Remember, these courses were the con. This content goes is set up for a 15 week on on campus course and condensing it to 8. You gotta really move. It’s it’s a. It’s a lot of work. You gotta go through all the content. You gotta take the quizzes.

Jim Baldo: the homework, or maybe you know some of them have a midterm and a final

Jim Baldo: you know. So and you wanna be, you wanna do? Well, I mean you. You wanna do well in the program. So we try to work with you to make sure that we understand. And you understand that you’ll have enough time

Jim Baldo: to take 2 in one session.

Jim Baldo: I hope. You know, I’m not trying to scare anybody away from trying to do that. Of course, if you you feel like you’re in a situation where you know you, you wanna try to accelerate and go through the program.

Jim Baldo: We’re more than willing to work with you.

Jim Baldo: But at the same time we don’t want you to to fail either. We want you to be an alumni definitely want you to be an alumni. We want you to to get through our program.

George Mason Online Admissions: Thank you. I have another question. Are there any call up opportunities available within the program?

Jim Baldo: With the online program.

Jim Baldo: I don’t

Jim Baldo: haven’t worked that through yet with the online program. So when you say Co-OP, like, sort of like an internship.

Jim Baldo: Just say yes or no? Is that which is is that similar to what you’re talking about here

Jim Baldo: like an internship?

George Mason Online Admissions: Yes.

Jim Baldo: Okay, yeah. So the the internships.

Jim Baldo: I think we could work something out on that. But those internships we don’t have. You don’t get credit for that. So like I have, I’m running the internship program for the data analysts program on the on ground program this summer. I have probably like 15 students in it. Some of the students are getting. They they get 0 credit for it. But but they get that. They get this experience that you’re looking for. So some of them

Jim Baldo: they’re full time students. There’s some of them are.

Jim Baldo: I got 2 in Texas. I got one out in California. I got another one in Idaho, one up in New Jersey, a couple in the in the Virginia, Maryland, DC. Area.

Jim Baldo: some work remote. You know they don’t have to go online, but but it’s 0 credit.

Jim Baldo: but it’s you know. It goes down your record that you have the internship. So what I find most people using those 4 in our program. And it’s a good thing to do. Did you put that down on your resume? That you know you had this experience working and not an internship here.

Jim Baldo: Yeah.

Jim Baldo: that’s what we have to offer at the moment. And I’ll work with the advisor here to see if we could extend that into the online program as well.

George Mason Online Admissions: Thank thank you. Professor Baldo, there’s no more questions. I don’t know if you have any takeaways, anything you want to leave the students with before we go ahead and end our session for tonight.

Jim Baldo: Yeah, so on.

Jim Baldo: but a final note.

Jim Baldo: One of the things that that I firmly believe in is that when you enter a graduate program like this one, regardless of what the graduate program is.

Jim Baldo: you’re at at this level at this point in your career.

Jim Baldo: You’re building upon already. You already have an undergraduate degree you’re building upon that. In this, in this part of our program here, most of our folks in the many of our folks in the online program are working full time. So you’re already building upon that rich experience. That, you have

Jim Baldo: as an employee in industry. And so the this program, you need to think about it in terms of the value that it’s giving you. So we’ve tried to make it flexible

Jim Baldo: to add as much value those core courses.

Jim Baldo: I will tell you that I think all 4 of those core courses are gonna add value. There. There are courses that as you take them. When I was in graduate school, working full time, wasn’t online had to come on campus. I wish there. I wish there was online at that time when I was going to school. But

Jim Baldo: WI was being able to apply some of the things I was learning in the classroom the next day, I mean was that that transition and application of knowledge was that fast?

Jim Baldo: And I think that’s why employers like that, when you know you have a

Jim Baldo: a very dedicated student, plus

Jim Baldo: the other thing that it gives you.

Jim Baldo: And again, you you ha! It’s you have to be motivated to go through any graduate program, you have to really want it. The masters

Jim Baldo: in this program here.

Jim Baldo: from an industry perspective is gonna open up doors for you. There’s no question about that. You will have other opportunities

Jim Baldo: that at the after you get this diploma you will have other opportunities that you didn’t have before you started.

Jim Baldo: and and I would suspect that even while you’re in the program you’ll have additional additional doors, opportunities will come up for you, allowing you to practice the way you wanna practice as a data analytics engineer. I do not discourage people. So you come in here and let’s say you have a

Jim Baldo: a degree in biology.

Jim Baldo: I do not discourage you from from throwing all your knowledge away from that. You learned with your bachelor science or Bachelor of Arts in in biology. In fact, I say, continue to work in that domain. But now you have these analytics skills that you can apply to that particular domain. So we have lots of people that come in with

Jim Baldo: a degree in another domain, you know. Non engineering.

Jim Baldo: Non-computer science.

Jim Baldo: I have mathematicians, chemists, biologists, geologists.

Jim Baldo: We have people that come in with education degrees. We’ve had a couple of people that have come in. I I think 2. If I recall correctly that had Phds that

Jim Baldo: that wanted a degree in that that actually were in the online program.

Jim Baldo: So this is a very, very

Jim Baldo: applicable set of skills and knowledge that we give you in this this program. I like the way it’s J, it’s a general type of program. So it’s very, very broad, very, very diverse.

Jim Baldo: and.

Jim Baldo: you know, gives you all those opportunities

Jim Baldo: to grow. And and as I was saying, earlier I’ve been in. I’ve been in technology for a long, long time yeah, 46 years, and I have never seen it move this fast at the same time, I have never seen all these educational tools, abilities to learn these technologies. So

Jim Baldo: you know, being a lifelong learner, which is what I’ve been which I am.

Jim Baldo: It just allows me to really sort of move along with all these interesting applications that are coming up applying. You know, you know, working on problems. Solutions that I’m coming up with problems now are totally different than what they were just 2 or 3 years ago is absolutely amazing to me.

Jim Baldo: So I think it’s an exciting time.

Jim Baldo: It’s gonna be more exciting for you folks cause you’re gonna be around, you know, 30, 40 years, and maybe even more and I think it’ll provide you with a a very, very nice

Jim Baldo: you know you don’t. As I always say, I don’t work for a living. I learn, I learn. You know there’s a small part of my job where I do have to work like here. You know I have to

Jim Baldo: help set up courses and things like that. But but even setting up courses is is interesting. It’s motivational. I learn a lot when I do that. Maybe some of the drudgery time cards and things like that. But maybe those agents I was talking about are gonna help me out.

Jim Baldo: Yeah. So. Those are my final words. I I strongly encourage you. You know, if you’re if what you heard tonight was a great interest. If you, you know again, reach out to the online program. If you want to reach out to me, feel free to do that as well. I’m always willing to meet with with people. I always find it interesting. And I’m I’m willing to talk to you about the

Jim Baldo: program your career where you want to go and things like that. So thank you again. Thank you very, very much for giving me this opportunity to talk to you this evening.

George Mason Online Admissions: Thank you so much for discussing everything with us. Director, Volta, if you guys have any questions again like he mentioned, do not hesitate to call the online admissions department. You can send us an email. You can go on the website. You can call. You can even text us if that works best for you, and we’d be more than happy to elaborate on anything that comes up. If you have any questions, even after we end our session tonight. Thank you so much for joining us.

Jim Baldo: Thank you, folks.

Jim Baldo: best of luck.

Jim Baldo: hey, Denise? So you’re gonna you have it recorded and.

George Mason Online Admissions: Sorry. Yes, it’s just.

Jim Baldo: So you have it recorded. Okay, cool, cool. So did we have. I know. I guess I counted this one in Uk. So we had like about 6 people.

George Mason Online Admissions: People. Actually join. Yes, 7 people. Sorry. 7 people. Actually joined.

Jim Baldo: Okay, that’s good. Well, you know, it’s not bad. And and even if we had 70 people it doesn’t really matter. I’m I’m more than willing to talk to, you know

Jim Baldo: one or 2, if if they’re interested in the program.

Jim Baldo: I think these these these are very, very good. It. It allows the students to get an opportunity to meet me, you know, meet you as well.

Jim Baldo: and understand a little bit about the program. So very good. I thought you guys did a great job with the slides, and we kept it, you know, under an hour, about an hour, which was good.

Jim Baldo: So.

George Mason Online Admissions: Thank you so much. If you need anything from us, don’t hesitate to reach out. Thank you for everything. You have a wonderful evening.

Jim Baldo: Yup, you, too. Thanks a lot, Janice. Bye, bye.

George Mason Online Admissions: And bank.