Hey, i'm Elizabeth Bandy. I'm originally from Minneapolis, and I moved to Salt Lake City about two and a half years ago after pursuing a job in marketing. I've been working in marketing for about ten years and the last five years,I've specifically been focusing on websites and user experience design. I wanted to get a little bit more technical, so I started my MS IS program about a year ago. And it's been really great. I've been learning a lot of languages and making a lot of great connections.

There are four different specializations for the MS IS program. I chose Business Intelligence and Analytics. For the specialization, I have taken a couple classes in , specifically data visualization and data warehousing. It's been a lot of fun for me. For my capstone, we're doing a business intelligent project, actually, where we're predicting various factors for Fortune 500 companies. So i'm getting to visualize that using Tableau and sort of advise the company. So it's been a lot of fun. Just how much time per week i'm spending in class, probably eight to ten hours per week in class, and then maybe an extra eight to twelve outside of class. Working on the material, studying, reading, meeting with project members and studying for exams.

I picked the MS IS at the Eccles school because I wanted to learn from a program that offered a cool fusion between technology and business. Having worked in business the last ten years and wanting to pivot into a more technical role. I thought that this program would offer the best from a curriculum standpoint and from a networking standpoint, of all the options that I had considered. So the things that I like about the program, I really like that the classes are offered in the evenings, that's been really helpful as i've been working full time throughout the duration of the program. I liked it that some classes are offered online and that there's flexibility even in the program. If there's a class that you want to take or a language that you want to learn that it's not offered here, you can still take that and just talk to your adviser and have it be taken as a special topics course. So that's been a lot of fun too. And then finally, I actually like all of the group work because it offers you chance to network with different people in your class that maybe you might not have. Other had a chance to talk to you and get to know so you graduate with a lot of connections in the field and you're able to utilize and leverage those connections after you graduate