Granite Staters searching for a data science program shouldn’t take New Hampshire (NH) for granted. There is a variety of research and academic activity in the discipline. We’ll explore the emerging tech scene, report back on jobs and professional communities, and even highlight online options.

In 2017, NH EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) produced the New Hampshire University Research & Industry Plan. That plan identified three areas in which New Hampshire universities could leverage existing industries and strengthen them: advanced manufacturing, information systems and biosciences. The information systems component specifically addresses machine learning and data analytics, while the biosciences area looks to biotech. All of that is good news for data science students and professors hoping to acquire research funding.

Health informatics is featured in graduate level studies at Dartmouth College and University of New Hampshire (UNH). For those outside the health field, Southern New Hampshire University maintains its business school roots, and UNH, as the state’s flagship public university, maintains a diverse set of programs and research interests.

Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) is a player in New Hampshire online education. There is also a publicly funded University of New Hampshire, which runs an online certificate program. Students looking for a data science degree with a healthcare focus can turn to a third institution, New England College.

University of New Hampshire’s Online Graduate Certificate in Data Science is geared toward working professionals who hold any sort of bachelor’s degree but have experience in a quantitative field. The four-course program quickly gets technical, requiring students to get comfortable with statistical modeling and teaching them how to program so they can mine data. It’s particularly useful for aspiring business analysts, marketers and researchers, not to mention computer scientists looking for a new skill set.

Southern New Hampshire University offers a slew of online data science programs. The standard is its MS in Data Analytics, a program that blends the technical and managerial realities of collecting and analyzing big data to make organizational improvements. Like all SNHU programs, it concludes with a synthesizing capstone project. SNHU’s MBA in Business Intelligence features some crossover but its analytics features are sprinkled in as individual courses rather than integrated into the traditional MBA curriculum of marketing, finance and management techniques. For meatier data, you might turn to the MS in Marketing with a Marketing Research and Analytics concentration. Or you can crank up the technical material even further and enroll in SNHU’s MS in Information Technology-Data Analytics. That program is aimed at current IT pros who want to branch into big data while gaining the breadth of knowledge necessary to manage an IT department.

Healthcare administrators, meanwhile, can choose between a couple of SNHU degrees to propel their career. The MBA in Healthcare Informatics is a traditional program with just a sprinkling of IT and health-themed coursework. The International MBA in Healthcare Informatics does the same but with a multinational focus attractive for people working in international companies. For a more balanced blend of informatics and business coursework, look to New England College’s MBA with a concentration in Health Informatics. It admits both patient-focused health workers and IT pros trying to move up the career ladder.

If earning a master’s in data science just isn’t in the cards for you, you may want to consider a data science or data analytics bootcamp in New Hampshire. Data science or data analytics bootcamps are relatively short educational programs intended to quickly introduce students to the fields, often via hands-on practice. Some bootcamps in New Hampshire are dedicated solely to data science, the study of how knowledge is generally derived from raw data, or data analytics, the processes by which specific insights can be drawn, but other bootcamps combine study of the two. Use our guides to learn more about whether a data science bootcamps or data analytics bootcamps may be right for you.

New Hampshire is fairly small, but it’s well-connected to other New England states, so you may want to look for groups that hold events across the region, such as the Insights Association New England Chapter and the New England Nursing Informatics Consortium (NENIC). The following, however, stick to Manchester, Nashua and Concord:

If you want a huge conference dedicated to data science, take the train to Boston. Below are a couple of niche conferences that alight in the Granite State every few years:

Let’s look back at the growth areas identified in the New Hampshire University Research & Industry Plan. The first was advanced manufacturing – essentially taking the Granite State’s traditional manufacturing base and updating it for 21st century products. While data scientists may have trouble breaking into that sector, opportunities are available in the other two sectors: information systems and biosciences. Data analysts may find opportunities at Liberty Mutual, a Boston insurer with offices in Portsmouth and Dover.

The tech focus within the state has allowed a host of small to midsize businesses to pop up from Nashua to Conway. Nashua startup Forcivity creates analytic applications for use within Salesforce. To the northeast, Dover’s Athenium predicts the effects of climate on crops and property so that insurers and business managers can take appropriate risks. And Rapid Insight in Conway has its own predictive modeling software, though it primarily focuses on higher education markers such as student retention.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Computer and Information Research Scientists (includes data scientists), took home an average of $126,830 in 2020. The top 10% of jobs paid $194,430.

If you’re looking for information on career paths that involve STEM, see our guides below:

Data Science and Analytics Careers:

Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Information Careers:

Marketing and User Research Careers:

Compare Careers and STEM Fields:

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