At the Information Quality Graduate Program we strongly believe that staying connected with our Alumni is a top priority. Thanks to Social Media, we can maintain this connection with our graduates.
Within this context, we are posting this interview with one of our IQ Graduates, Purviben Parmar. Purvi shared a glimpse of her life and her experience with the IQ Program with us and we -in turn- are sharing her experience with you.
IQ Program: Purvi, we are very pleased that you accepted to answer our interview questions.
Purvi: Thank you for giving me this great opportunity to share my experience as a graduate of the INFQ Program.
IQ Program: First of all, we would like for you to introduce yourself. We would like to know about your background e.g. where did you grow up? Where did you go to college? Any personal information you would like to share with us?
Purvi: I’m originally from India, particularly State of Gujarat. I had finished my undergraduate studies in STEM Sciences and earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Pharmacy. I also had the opportunity to work for around three and half years as Quality Analyst with an Industrial Pharmaceutical Company, mainly handling projects that connected the Global Pharmaceutical Industry with integrated solutions. I came to the USA six years ago, where I started my journey as an International student by enrolling in the MBA Program. However, regardless of what I was doing, I always had a strong passion for Information Quality and I was always looking for something that could connect healthcare, business analytics and data quality together. I always think outside the box. I also love challenges. I am detail-oriented and creative, which lead me at first to the Graduate Certificate in Technology Innovation, then to the Master’s in Information Quality at UALR.
IQ Program: From which IQ program (s) are you a graduate? What year were you graduated?
Purvi: I graduated with a Master’s Degree in Information Quality in December 2014.
IQ Program: How did you find out about the UALR IQ Program? And how did you become interested in IQ? What made you decide to enroll?
Purvi: Well, my spouse and I moved to Arkansas in 2010. I found at UALR some courses that interested me. I began with the Graduate Certificate in Technology Innovation where I got a very good idea about how Business and Technology can be closely connected. As I was about to finish up my Technology Innovation Certificate, I wanted to start the job hunting. However, at that time, I was somehow in a dilemma of whether to keep looking for a job or to pursue a Master’s degree in something that would help me fulfill my dream of finding a program related to Data Quality. I still remember the day when I met Dr. Talburt for the first time. He gave me an excellent idea about Information Quality, its dimensions, its depth and its connection with several technological and business aspects. Finally, I decided to apply for the Master’s in Information Quality and later on became an IQ Graduate. I am still thankful to him for that day and I am even more thankful for helping me to decide how to proceed and what to study. I started my journey as an Information Quality Graduate Student and now I am a Data Quality professional. I started my IQ studies by enrolling in the IQ Graduate Certificate program and completing IQ core courses and later on I enrolled in the IQ Master’s program with such a great enthusiasm. I remember very well all the data quality issues that we had to discuss and to solve. I’m thankful to my life partner, family, friends and my little 2 year old daughter for their unbelievable and invaluable support.
IQ Program: Were you a full/part time student and were you a local or remote student?
Purvi: I was a local full time student living off campus in West Little Rock.
IQ Program: What was your experience with the program?
Purvi: I should admit that the program exceeded my expectations. What attracted me most is how each course was laid out, how the syllabi were detailed and how the different projects and research scopes that we had to deal with were presented. We had excellent faculty who always communicated efficiently with the students and who always kept them up-to-date with the latest trends in the industry. I enjoyed all the IQ core courses the most. Being an INFQ Students, I learnt various techniques such as:
- Data Quality and Data Management (SAS-DataFlux, Pentaho, Talend, Profiling, Informatica, DQ Score Cards, MS SQL Server, ETL tools etc.)
- Data Analytics (data visualization, mining, algorithms, big data – Hadoop, R-Commander, WEKA)
- Data Governance (Strategies, workflows, roadmaps, policies, standards applicable to any Organization, People and processes)
- Big Data (Hadoop, other Big data advanced tools, Social media analytic and techniques )
- System development and analysis
I would also like to convey my best regards to all the faculty members, specially, Dr. John Talburt, Dr. Elizabeth Pierce, Dr. Nitin Agarwal and Dr. Xiaowei Xu as well as faculty members of Technology Innovation, Dr. Gary Anderson and Dr. Joe Bell for mentoring me and for helping me gain the necessary skills for better career opportunities. I wish I could still go back to UALR to stay up-to-date with the latest research, technologies and theories.
IQ Program: Who is your current employer and what is your job title?
Purvi: My current employer is Vestcom International. I’m working as a Process Quality Assurance – Testing and Quality Engineer. Vestcom is a shelf edge marketing company for the retail industry. The company identifies opportunities and develop strategies to deliver the most innovative shelf edge media. I am involved in interacting with Process Quality Assurance processes and other engineering groups to define documents, analyze, perform, and interpret tests for software products, application code, system processes, or do the modifications to these software processes. We also identify the functional problems, suggest solutions to responsible preprocessor, or set up developer as well as client experience team. In addition, we also assist with the definition of internal quality control standards and the maintenance of reliability programs. We develop, maintain and analyze test cases and provide regular progress reports/ critical success measurements.
IQ Program: How have you applied what you learned in the IQ Program to your current position or your professional career in general?
Purvi: The short answer would be Principles of Information Quality and their dimensions, and the long answer would be how Principles of IQ cover the various aspects of facts/processes/test cases/business scenarios/systems and how those individual quality dimensions affect on-going processes. The most important aspect is how to convince organizations that they have to consider data as an asset and to make their data accurate and available for the appropriate utilization at any given time to get the right outputs.
IQ Program: What is your advice for current or prospective students?
Purvi: Please open up yourself to the research and theory-based IQ principles and apply them to different practical scenarios. I hope that this might open up new doors for you so that you can deal successfully with data quality issues in any organization. This will also help you to deal with the verbiage/challenges of data complexity effectively. Also, I would say understand what you learn, do your homework and project assignments truthfully, especially capstone projects which will make you confident enough to meet any real-world data quality challenges.
