The NSF's Accelerating Discovery: Educating the Future STEM Workforce supports efforts that can position the future STEM workforce to make bold advances in the NSF Big Ideas (www.nsf.gov/about/congress/115/10bigideas.jsp). This Accelerating Discovery project will support the Harnessing the Data Revolution Big Idea by developing a new interdisciplinary workforce training program in Data Science. This program will include course work, research projects linked to emerging data analysis needs in the public and private sectors, and career development for undergraduates in mathematics. The overall goal of the new data science program is to increase the numbers of math majors, including students from populations that are underrepresented in STEM, who enter the data science workforce. California State University Northridge enrolls nearly 40,000 students, 78% of whom receive financial aid. For many of these students, college is a pathway to employment and economic security. However, many math majors feel unsupported in career options other than K-12 education or graduate studies in mathematics. This project will help them explore how data science can lead to careers in industry, government, and non-profit organizations. This project has the potential to help grow the national data science workforce.
The proposed data science program will target STEM undergraduates, particularly applied mathematics and statistics majors. The project has four goals. 1) Develop a data science course, given in flipped-format. Class time will focus on learning technical skills needed in industry. 2) Develop a year-long data science research experience for students. 3) Develop career workshops, seminars with data science practitioners, and links to data scientists employed in industry or government agencies. 4) Enhance interaction between mathematics faculty and local industry and government agencies to define the skills needed for employment. This interaction will help create an employer network interested in hiring the graduates and a student tracking system for industry careers. Over the longer term, this engagement with industry will support a development of an internship-to-career network. The student tracking mechanism will become part of the department's review process. Research on how this program improves student recruitment, retention, and entry into the data science workforce will provide new knowledge about building data science programs that link to potential employers.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
