In 2018, U-M Industrial and Operations Engineering (IOE) faculty set their sights on fully-preparing students for the modern workforce and advanced studies by incorporating computing and data analytics into many existing courses, creating a new advanced analytics course for seniors, and implementing a new help desk to support students.
One of the main changes was to emphasize R and Python in key courses with computational or data analytics components. Previously, many different programming languages were used in U-M IOE classes, and some of them were no longer as popular in industry and academia as they once were.
“By introducing some uniformity, students will have an easier time navigating data analytics and computational tasks across the curriculum, and with these particular tools they will have better control of some key technologies that are commonly sought by employers,” explained Eunshin Byon, U-M IOE associate professor and leader of the faculty group implementing the changes.
