Hutton’s Career gets a “Turbo Boost” with MSBA

Author: Marshall King

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Business Analytics Degree

Randy Hutton’s career was speeding along, but got a turbo boost with a master’s degree in Business Analytics from the University of Notre Dame.

Randy Hutton – ND Alum

Hutton started working for CME Group in the winter of 2019 after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in economics from Ohio State University. He was on the market regulation team for the CME Group, which operates a number of financial markets, including agriculture, energy, and equity futures, as well as cryptocurrencies. He noticed how the organization was using data and wanted to be part of that.

He was interested in a role that focused more on data at CME, which creates a lot of dashboards and tools in-house. “I thought it was time to get my foot in the door,” he said.

He surveyed master’s programs to amp up his data skills. He considered other programs offering night classes, but found the MSBA program at Mendoza College of Business. He got approval to take every other Friday off work so that he could, to use his words, “crunch out a master’s in 12 months.”

Hutton’s Current Place of Employment

“It’s not for everybody, but it’s the way to get it done fast,” he said. “As long as you can handle it, it’s the way to go.”

Prepared, Thanks to MSBA Program

In late 2022, just a few months before he finished his degree in December, a role opened in the internal audit department that is focused on tracking key performance indicators and executing audits for the company. Hutton said he was easily able to transition into the role and quickly catch traction.

“I felt really well prepared by Notre Dame’s MSBA,” he said. The theories and tools he’d learned in classes were easily applied.

“Overall, my experience in this new role, combined with my education, has been two puzzle pieces that fit perfectly together,” he said.

Return on Investment

He was on campus in March 2023 to talk to students in the undergraduate “Conveying Visual Data Insights” classes, taught by Brandon Erlacher, Assistant Teaching Professor for the IT, Analytics & Operations Department (ITAO).

Hutton showed students how his master’s has helped him on a daily basis in his role at CME Group. He uses Tableau to build dashboards.

He’s working with Google to migrate CME’s systems, including their markets and how they’ll be traded, into Google Cloud.

Though he’s only been doing this job a short time, he feels the return on investment for his degree has already happened — just three months after he finished. “I do gush about the program,” he said.

Learn more about how Mendoza’s Undergraduate and Masters Business Analytics programs can prepare you for success.

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