Work experience alone isn’t always enough to advance your career in a changing industry. Tuan Tran has worked in the property and casualty insurance industry for nearly twelve years. He knew he needed to acquire data analysis skills as part of his professional growth. Tran earned a promotion to a data analyst position on the operations team at his employer after completing several courses at UMKC.

“I have seen how data analytics has grown within my industry,” Tran says. “I knew the future of property and casualty insurance was very data driven and I wanted to be a part of that future.”

Rather than study industry-standard courses on his own, Tran enrolled in a series of data analysis courses at UMKC taught by Dr. Brett Never and other instructors.

“Some of the technical skills such as SQL, R, and Python were hard to learn on my own,” Tran says. “The instructor was very helpful in my learning of these technical skills.”

Through the UMKC Data Analytics Workshop Series, participants can learn data science and analytics skills that are in high demand in many fields. Participants may enroll in one course, such as Introduction to Data Analytics, or take up to seven courses in the series. People who attend a series of three data analytics workshops earn a non-degree certificate from UMKC TalentLink.

Tran put his newly acquired practical skills to work. “SQL was the technical skill I learned that helped me the most. SQL experience is something employers look for in data roles, but it is hard to get experience without being in a data role,” Tran says. “The SQL course gave me the experience to get more SQL exposure to land my new data role. The Tableau course was helpful for data visualizations.”