Data Science Education and Workforce | South Big Data Innovation Hub

DATA SCIENCE EDUCATION & WORKFORCE OVERVIEW

The ability to utilize and understand data is an increasingly critical skill for the evolving 21st century workforce, as espoused in studies and reports by National Academies and Federal Agencies. Because data literacy at multiple levels is now needed in almost every technical and business sector, there is a severe shortage in skilled workforce to meet current and emerging demands. To combat this shortfall, an all hands on deck approach is needed. K-12 systems, colleges and universities, including community colleges, underrepresented groups, and women must be engaged in data science training for the modern workplace.

IMPACT

$280,000+ in funding for students to gain real-world data-related career experience
Data science training workshops at 7 minority-led, -serving, primarily teaching institutions, community colleges and four-year liberal arts colleges
100+ direct and indirect learners who benefited from workshops/bootcamps, modules, and courses taught by DataUp trained faculty members

VIEW ABOUT OUR WORK IN DATA SCIENCE EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

DATA-POWERED WOMEN & GIRLS

Pilot Datathon for Women of Color | Spring 2022

SMART-DART: Health, Climate, and Social Equity Cohort

The South Big Data Hub will join CODATA-RDA, Microsoft, and AIM-AHEAD Southeast Hub at Morehouse School of Medicine to host a 10-week Health, Climate, and Social Equity Researcher Data Science Training Program through a mix of virtual and in-person instruction.

Past Data Science Education & Workforce Working Group Speakers

The Data Science Education & Workforce Working Group is an open monthly professional working group for data science educators and program leaders to talk and hear from other programs around the country, as well as learn about resources for connecting with data, tools, industry partners, and research. Review our past speakers and if you're interested, visit our YouTube page to watch their presentations.

The DataUp Workshop—Instructor Training: Inspiring Professional Development and Capacity-Building

Society is increasingly becoming more data-driven and data-literate. It is vital every institution has the capabilities and infrastructure to engage and develop learners prepared to interact and succeed in such a society. On Nov 6 & 7, 2018, The DataUp program welcomed participating institutions for the instructional training. During this instructional training workshop, faculty teams engaged in a pedagogy intensive to learn best practices concepts for data science education. During this instructional training workshop, faculty teams engaged in a pedagogy intensive to learn best practices concepts for data science education.

DataUp Workshop—Old Dominion University: A Melting Pot of Learners and Perspectives Creates an Impactful Workshop

Learners, instructors, and 'workshop helpers' from Old Dominion University receive a collaborative and engaging 2-day workshop with shell, git, R, and JupyterHub. This workshop was apart of the 2018 DataUp Program.

2020 PEPI-G: Program to Empower Partnership with Industry and Government

The Program to Empower Partnerships with Industry and Government (PEPI-G) supports data faculty members, research scientists, postdocs, and graduate and undergraduate students (rising juniors and seniors) from across the country in working on high level problems for the federal government. The overarching goals of the program are three-fold to (1) support academics in developing relationships with industry and government for research collaboration and career success; (2) increase the capacity of students to enter the workforce landscape in data science, computing, and Big Data; (3) provide real-world impact through hands-on experience in data science.

Reducing Uncertainty in Risk Projections for Statewide Hospital Capacity in COVID-19

This project was an awardee of the 2020 South Big Data Hub SEEDS Program - Southern Engagement and Enrichment in Data Science. It is one of three awards funded in the Seed Grant's small-range category of <$10,000. The PIs seek to study homeless data for the State of Delaware and model demand for beds in the statewide hospital capacity in response to COVID-19 data from Delaware.

Education and Workforce Working Group

An open quarterly professional working group for data science educators and program leaders to discuss education and training in data science, curriculum development, training collaborations, and workforce development.

DataUp Workshop - University Puerto Rico—Rio Piedras: Students Buzz with Excitement for Data Science

The South Hub created the DataUp program to enable researchers and educators to teach data science students and prepare them for future data-intensive and data-enabled environments. On August 18, 35 learners packed the room, at the University of Puerto Rico- Rio Piedras (UPRRP), to participate in a hands-on workshop focused on data management and analysis for genomics research. Students learned best practices for the organization of bioinformatics projects and data, use of command line utilities, use of command line tools to analyze sequence quality and perform variant calling, and connecting to and using cloud computing. This workshop, taught in English and Spanish, created such a buzz that a waitlist was created. The waitlist included 13 individuals!

Integrating Biological Big Data Research into Student Training and Education

The project is a collaborative effort among the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, Tuskegee University, Spelman College, and West Virginia University to integrate and automate biological big data into student training and education. The project will offer training workshops, engage faculty and students in developing a protocol to automate field data collection, and will prototype automated methods to enhance plant digitization.