Data Science for Social Impact in Higher Education: First Steps
06
Events and Activities
The CAN consortium explored additional ways to provide data for social impact opportunities to students that go beyond curricular and co-curricular programs. In this section you can learn about other structures used to generate interest in data science such as workshops, expos, and other short-term experiences.
Data Science for Social Justice Week: Howard University
On February 23, 2023, the Data Science for Social Justice Week celebration was launched at Howard University. The week provided a platform for scholars across the campus to showcase interdisciplinary, innovative, and influential research in data science from academia, industry, and government. The celebration was highlighted by the announcement of:
The data.org-sponsored HELLO BLACK WORLD curriculum
DuBois Data Portraits 3D Visualization Exhibit, which included a focus on financial inclusion
The MasterCard-sponsored Inclusive Growth Speaker Series
Hello Black World
The Hello Black World curriculum targets students of African descent in 9th grade and above, focusing on individuals from the diverse backgrounds of the African diaspora. Specifically, emphasis is placed on Black women and girls as well as students from low-socio-economic backgrounds.
In 1973, Brian Kernighan, author of “C Programming Language,” referenced the standard “hello, world” program, which developers use to test systems. This program typically acts as an introductory lesson for students learning a new computer language. Within the “Hello, Black World” curriculum, learners are encouraged to approach coding with a focus on the Black World. By intertwining African history with coding, the curriculum’s initial lessons showcase the rich diversity of culture, mathematics, gender, and music within the Black diaspora. Teaching printing and commenting skills in Python using African-centered examples provides an engaging and culturally relevant approach to programming education.
The first activity introduces learners to Python’s print function, employing African proverbs to illustrate how printing conveys and shares wisdom. This not only imparts technical coding skills but also emphasizes the wealth of African heritage. Transitioning to the second activity, students delve into learning about variables.
HELLO BLACK WORLD: DuBois Data Portraits 3D Visualization Exhibit
The HELLO BLACK WORLD: DuBois Data Portraits 3D Visualization Exhibit represented an artist’s interpretation of Howard University’s interdisciplinary, innovative, and influential approach to data science and Analytics. Using historical 3D data visualization by W.E.B Du Bois combined with current data and commentary by influential scholars, the exhibit showcased the application of data science to solve real-world problems. Viewers had the opportunity to explore the power of data across various fields such as sociology, music, economics, history, journalism, criminology, law, and health, through the lens of Du Bois. The exhibit placed a special focus on representing Black wealth equity, emphasizing historical patterns of Black economic growth, housing and property ownership, youth and adult employment, and access to business opportunities.
Jasmine Hope, NC State alum and Data Science Career Expo participant
Career Expo: North Carolina State University
Inspiration to start the activity
When the Data Science Academy (DSA) was established in July 2021, there was robust infrastructure and support for career services at NC State University. It was a primary goal of the DSA to network data science people and initiatives from across the university in interdisciplinary ways. We expected students from across the 10 colleges of the university to be interested in the growing number of data science-related career pathways.
To connect students with career information and preparation as well as build relationships with organizations offering internships and jobs, we began to explore the idea of running a career expo that could attract students from every major and program of study on campus.
Our target student audience was undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs who were seeking information, internships, and jobs. Our hope was that students would attend the fair to practice interviewing and to find out what kinds of jobs are available in advance of the time they needed to secure a position.
Putting social impact opportunities front and center at our career expo has opened student minds to a world of job opportunities that can align their work with their values.
Rachel Levy, PhD, Executive Director NC State Data Science Academy
Activities Example
Our first in-person career expo was a one-day event held in a foyer and two large rooms in our library. Being in the library helped signal that the career expo was for the whole campus instead of a college, department or special interest group.
In one room lunch was provided for exhibitors. This room was also used for a photographer to take headshots. In the other room, tables were set up for each presenter. In the foyer, students registered and/or signed in for the day. At the entrance to the exhibitor room, we had a large vertical banner that communicated the idea of Data for Social Good.
Inside the exhibit hall, we had a table devoted to Data for Social Impact. The instructor for the Internships for Social Impact course was there to recruit students for the course. Our undergraduate Course Collaboration Leaders and the students who had attended the Chicago CAN summer program were also at the table to share the student experience.
We worked to recruit employers from business, industry, government, and non-profits. We charged smaller companies and non-profits less to recruit.
Note that as we are a public university, we also needed to set up an appropriate fund in advance so that any profit from the Career Expo could be used for a variety of different career development activities. Because the Expo was profitable, we did not need all of those funds to go back into funding the Expo.
In the second year we expanded the Expo to two days and on the second day organized a career panel during a dinner. This included representatives of several graduate programs in Analytics on campus in addition to representatives from industry.
The first year in Fall 2022 we had 25 employers and 208 attendees. The second year in Fall 2023 we had 27 industry employers with 321 students. The second year at the Data Science Career Graph Dinner we had six panelists, including three from industry and three representing graduate departments in analytics, data science and business analytics and 41 undergraduate and graduate students present.
Support: At NC State, the Director of Employer Relations in the Career Center was able to introduce the DSA to an array of career services already available to students. These included a number of college-organized career fairs, delivered with assistance from the Career Center both in person and online (through a platform called Career Fair Plus).
Support: The Director also connected the DSA with a regular meeting of career fair organizers from around campus. Before the DSA advanced plans to hold an all-campus data science career fair, it was important to go to that group to make sure it was OK with the other colleges around campus. We didn’t want to be seen as detracting from their efforts or competing with them for employers. We were encouraged to go ahead and have the fair, which was a great sign of cooperation across the institution.
Support: As another example of this cooperation, one of the colleges who had a program of affiliation for businesses, paid for some companies to attend our Spring 22 Career Expo even though they also run their own career fair. They recognized that the companies wanted to be able to draw data science students from the different colleges across the universities.
Barrier: Building relationships with organizations and companies takes time. With a good platform, running a virtual career fair is not particularly difficult. There are expenses associated with these platforms so leveraging a license across the institution is helpful.
Barrier: The in-person fair has many more logistics, but the employers like to engage with the students in person. I think the key is to have one or more people who can build the relationships, keep a good database of contacts and results of the communication and lots of follow up to make sure that people who would like to attend register and then set up the schedule for interviews.
Work with Career Services to understand the current landscape. What is already being offered? What is needed? Who will be affected by anything new that you do? How can you build collaboration and cooperation? Include career services professionals on your planning team.
Meet with other units or individuals who are already running career fairs/expos. What have they learned? What trends have they observed over time?
Generate a list of possible companies and contacts. Leverage your personal networks and alumni connections for the school. Work-related social network sites sometimes shows where people went to school. This can be a great way to reach out to find recruiters and managers and also to build diverse career panels.
In consultation with Career services, consider what type of event will work best, in-person, virtual or a combination of the two. Set modest expectations for the first years. Pick a strategic time of year that is key to employers hiring season(s) and a strategic time of day this is conducive to students.
Establish categories for employers by type and set appropriate registration fees for each (corporate, government, entrepreneurs, etc.). Determine what the employer registration proceeds will support and include that information on registration materials. Establish an account in alignment with your organization’s processes.
Provide additional incentives to students to attend such as assistance with resume writing, providing professional headshots, or career advising prior to the event.
Build and implement a marketing and promotions plan. Provide a small token for employers and swag for students.
Make sure your staff is prepared. Choose a method of registration for student attendees and if desired, include key questions you may want to ask? This allows you to track attendees and assist in evaluating the success of the event. Engage your career services team members (if applicable) in working the event.
Conduct after-event surveys to both employers and students to gather information that may identify improvements or changes for the next event. Identify if students were hired as a result of the fair.
Follow up afterwards with the companies. How was their experience? Did they hire anyone?
Find ways that you can learn from employers and feed that information back to students, curriculum designers and the stuff organizing the fair/expo.
A-ha Moment
Companies are willing to fly in for data science expos.
Introduction to Data Science Workshop: University of Illinois Chicago
Inspiration to start the activity
In Fall 2021, UIC started offering a new data science major with core courses from computer science, mathematics, and statistics, and concentrations in areas such as business, communication, bioinformatics, health, and public policy. Many undergraduate students, particularly those from historically underrepresented groups in computing who have had little exposure to this field, are still unaware of the possibilities offered by this new major, including the opportunity to engage in social impact projects. For this reason, we decided to have a workshop to introduce students to data science and encourage them to pursue a career in this field. This workshop was offered in Fall 2022 and Fall 2023.
Activity Example
This was a one-day introductory data science workshop open to all undergraduate students at UIC. No background in data science, computer science, or statistics was required or expected. The primary target audience were students from historically underrepresented groups in computing.
During the workshop, students got hands-on experience in data science by completing a social impact project using a dataset of socioeconomic variables and public health indicators by Chicago community area from the Chicago Data Portal. Through this project, students learned to explore, visualize, and build models from data. They also reinforced “soft skills” such as teamwork and communication by working in groups of 4-6 and by presenting the results of their projects at the end of the workshop. Additionally, each group of students was assigned an undergraduate teaching assistant (TA) who supervised their work and answered their questions throughout the workshop. These TAs were required to attend a training session before the workshop and were provided a stipend for their work.
An overview of the workshop agenda is shown below.
8:30am-9:00am
Breakfast & Registration
9:00am-9:30am
Introduction to Data Science: What is Data Science? Data Science Major at UIC
9:30am-10:00am
Introduction to Programming Tools: Loading Dataset
10:00am-10:30am
Descriptive Statistics: Computing Mean, Median, and Quartiles
10:30am-11:30am
Data Visualization: Making Bar Charts, Scatter Plots, and Boxplots
11:30am-12:00pm
TA Research Presentations
12:00pm-1:00pm
Lunch
1:00pm-2:00pm
Classification: Training and Testing Decision Trees
2:00pm-3:00pm
“Mini-Project” Presentations
3:00pm-3:45pm
Faculty Research Presentations
3:45pm-4:00pm
Wrap-up & Next Steps
Barrier: The main barrier to overcome when planning the workshop was recruiting students from across different colleges and departments at UIC to participate. We reached out to these students through their respective colleges and departments, by advertising the workshop in 100-level computer science and statistics courses, and through student organizations at UIC that serve students from underrepresented groups in computing. Ultimately, we received more than 100 applications for each workshop. We selected 75 students to participate, the majority of whom were from historically underrepresented groups in computing, and more than 70 attended the workshop each time.
Advertising the workshop in 100-level courses and through student organizations to recruit students from across the university.
Selecting students to serve as undergraduate TAs and role models during the workshop.
Preparing a social impact project using authentic data that is relevant to the students’ experiences.
The undergraduate TAs were essential to the success of the workshop. All the TAs selected were students from historically underrepresented groups in computing who were not only able to help and answer questions during the workshop but who also served as role models for the participants. Additionally, several of the TAs had previously participated in the UChicago Data Science Social Impact (DSSI) Summer Program.
A-ha Moment
Students greatly appreciated the use of real-world data and a social impact project during the workshop and several of them highlighted this in their feedback (“What I liked most about the workshop is using real situations to interpret what’s going [on] in Chicago”, “I liked using what [you] learned and applying it to real-world issues that matter to me”). They also appreciated working in groups and presenting their results (“My table was very helpful and supportive throughout the learning process. I enjoyed the team building aspect along with the learning experience”).
Approach to Social Impact
Recruiting and supporting students from groups underrepresented in data science.
Engaging communities in ways that empower the community to use their own data for purposes they co-define.
Encouraging students to seek, explore and analyze data sets that surface issues of social impact.
Designing educational experiences intentionally and collaboratively to build equitable and accessible opportunities and pathways in data science.
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