The for-profit sector has embraced data and analytics as a means to increase efficiency and grow the bottom line. The government and non-profit sectors are next in line. The Master of Urban Spatial Analytics is a one year graduate program that teaches students how to use spatial analysis and data science to address the most pressing public policy and city planning conundrums of our day. We are teaching the next generation of civic technologists. The one-year MUSA program combines coursework on GIS, spatial analysis, data science, statistics, R and python programming, data visualization and web-based mapping with world-class urban content coursework from across the University of Pennsylvania. The program is administered jointly by the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design and the Penn Institute for Urban Research.
For more information on the program contact Program Director , Elizabeth Delmelle
Program Requirements
- Five courses in spatial analysis and GIS
- Two courses in a selected urban content area
- One elective course
- One capstone project course - Check out the MUSA Practicum where students work with cities on actual data science projects.
Prerequisites
Having some basic familiarity with GIS and related software is helpful but we do offer a GIS Bootcamp course right before the fall semester begins to help further prepare incoming students.
How the Musa Program runs
The Musa program is now incredibly robust with classes that focus on both analytics and visualization. Check out the course offerings here. In recent years, we have put in three specific fall/spring course pairs to help students organize their learning goals:
Applied data science in the public sector:
Fall - Public Policy Analytics;
Spring - Musa Practicum
Data visualization & web-based analytics:
Fall: Javascript Programming for Planning
Spring - Geospatial Cloud Computing & Visualization
Remote Sensing/Deep learning:
Fall: Geospatial Data Science in Python
Spring: Remote Sensing
Learn About MUSA!
To learn more about the MUSA experience, Penn IUR interviewed students, alumni, and faculty to find out the inside scoop about the program. Watch their short videos here.