In 2006, NC State launched an initiative to pioneer the world's first M.S. degree in Analytics (MSA). An interdisciplinary group of two-dozen faculty from a dozen departments in six NCSU colleges participated in the creation of an innovative program "in both content and structure" that has yielded tremendous outcomes in terms of student learning and success. Computer Science faculty play a significant role in the Institute and the emerging field of Analytics. In this talk I will provide an overview of the Institute and MSA degree and discuss future opportunities for Computer Science faculty in Analytics education and research.

Michael Rappa is the founder and director of the Institute for Advanced Analytics at North Carolina State University, and the originator of the Master of Science in Analytics, the first such degree program of its kind in the nation. Rappa began his teaching career at the University of Minnesota, where he earned his doctorate. Prior to joining NC State as the Alan T. Dickson Distinguished University Professor in 1998, for nine years he was a member of the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A study published in 2006 in the British journal R&D Management identified Rappa as a leading scholar in the field of technology management, ranking him in the 99th percentile among over 9,000 authors in terms of research productivity in top journals over the past 50 years. His research has been selected by the Academy of Management on three occasions as an outstanding contribution to the field, and his pioneering work on business models is one of the most often cited and widely read publications on the subject.

Rappa is perhaps best known as the creator of Managing the Digital Enterprise, an innovative and award-winning educational Web site devoted to the study of management in the digital world. Launched in 1999, originally as the foundation for a course he taught, the site is a valued resource used by several million learners and hundreds of university instructors from around the world.

Prior to establishing the Institute and conceiving the Master of Science in Analytics, Rappa led the development of the university's interdisciplinary E-Commerce program, and helped establish the Computer Networking degree and served as its management area coordinator. An early advocate of open courseware, he established the Open Courseware Lab in 1998 to promote the creation of openly accessible educational resources on the Web. Rappa and a team of his students are credited with creating OpenSeminar, an award-winning open source platform for hosting collaborative courseware.

In addition to his usual duties at NC State, Dr. Rappa currently serves as General Co-Chair of the 19th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2010), to be held in Raleigh, North Carolina from April 26-30, 2010.