New Functional Data Analytics Program Offered Through World Campus

Project RESOLVE Strategy Advances

As part of its land-grant mission, Penn State Behrend has long been a driver of economic development in the Erie region. Our newest initiative, Project RESOLVE, represents the most visionary effort yet to strengthen the competitiveness of Erie’s manufacturing base.

The project centers on a strategy for shifting the region’s plastics, metal-casting, and transportation industries to a circular economic model to address plastics and waste pollution that ultimately affects the health of freshwater sources such as Lake Erie. Companies in these three sectors represent 17 percent of all manufacturing jobs in the Erie region.

Project RESOLVE was proposed by Behrend at the encouragement of Erie County Council as a task force of Council members and community leaders was developing a framework for allocation of American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds.

As the management and use of data continues to grow in importance in our society, professionals who are fluent in data analytics are becoming more and more in demand. Positions in the data analysis field are expected to grow 36 percent between 2021 and 2031, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

To help meet that need, Penn State Behrend is now offering a new 122-credit undergraduate degree program online through World Campus that combines communications, problem-solving, and technology to prepare students for data analytics work in the professional world. The program will also be offered in person at Behrend beginning in the fall of 2024.

The program aims to prepare students with interdisciplinary skills in math, science, communication, and computers to understand and present data in written, visual, and spoken formats. The program centers around core data concepts and techniques and allows students to customize their applied learning paths through concentrations and a two-semester capstone project.

Students will be taught by faculty from all four of Behrend’s academic schools: Black School of Business, Engineering, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Science.

“The challenge was to identify a project that could create a multiplier effect, catapulting the economy forward,” said Dr. Amy Bridger, senior director of corporate strategy and external engagement. “Project RESOLVE builds on our decades of experience engaging with business, industry and community partners. Leading a coalition of about 80 partners, we envision this effort will transform a significant portion of our local manufacturing sector.”

With funding from Erie County and Pennsylvania’s Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program (RACP) and an investment by Penn State, the first phase of the project—the construction of a Center for Manufacturing Competitiveness—has begun. The center, to be located in Penn State Behrend’s Knowledge Park, will include plastics and metal-casting research labs and a heavy-haul battery testing facility. To learn more about Project RESOLVE, visit behrend.psu.edu/ resolve.