What a long, strange trip it's been...

Life took a big turn in August when I shifted from a career in consulting to a career in higher education. I accepted a Teaching Assistant Professor position at West Virginia University’s Chambers College of Business and Economics to coordinate and teach within its emerging programs in Business Data Analytics.

Some things are quite different from consulting, other things are surprisingly similar. For example, I think I attend as many meetings as I did when I was a consultant and the sense of connection and being a member of a team doing important work is as strong as I’ve ever found anywhere.

I get to spend more time doing statistical and analytical work using lots of cool toys—though about half of that time is troubleshooting code with students. But there’s actually nothing more satisfying than seeing the look of delight on their face when they remove that errant bracket or discover true meaning of case sensitivity and the results become crystal clear.

I also have opportunities to step out of my transportation comfort zone and work across multiple fields. Business Data Analytics is a tools-driven field, I can use R and Tableau to approach problems in just about any discipline. Though not being a subject matter expert in agriculture or health care (yet?) means identifying and partnering with those experts to interpret findings. But, on that journey, I’ve made many new friends and learned a lot of new tricks!

More and more I think that Jerry Garcia may’ve been on to something because lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been.