July 07, 2022
Chancellor Christ (center left) and President Morris (center right) with Tuskegee Scholars at the Berkeley-Tuskegee Data Science Initiative
Reception at University House on June 21, 2022. (Photo: KLCfotos)
Contact:
Anna Morrison, UC Berkeley Division of Computing, Data Science and Society
Thonnia Lee, Tuskegee University Office of Communications, Public Relations and Marketing
Tuskegee University and UC Berkeley recently announced the Berkeley-Tuskegee Data Science Initiative, a multi-year partnership to develop curriculum and collaborative research opportunities for students and faculty at both institutions.
On June 21, Charlotte Morris, president of Tuskegee University, met with Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ to discuss the new initiative. In a reception at University House, Chancellor Christ greeted the Tuskegee delegation, including four faculty and staff representatives and the first cohort of Tuskegee Scholars, 13 students in residence at Berkeley for eight weeks to take Data 6 or Data 8 courses.
Jennifer Chayes, associate provost for Berkeley’s
Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society,
& Tuskegee Scholar Bianca Alcéna. (Photo: KLCfotos)
“We’re excited to create our partnership with Tuskegee around the theme of community – community in the classroom, how we teach our students community in our research, how we explore challenging issues and fields at the intersection of data science and society and community at the university level between UC Berkeley and Tuskegee University,” said Chancellor Christ.
President Morris noted Tuskegee’s pioneering legacy as a top historically Black college and university (HBCU), including a track record for excellence in STEM fields. “We want to go beyond that legacy and take Tuskegee to the next level in terms of technology, in terms of what’s going on in the world today, so that our students will be marketable when they go across that stage at graduation,” she said.
On June 28, faculty at both universities discussed the collaboration at the National Workshop on Data Science Education in both online and in-person sessions on the Berkeley campus.
The Berkeley-Tuskegee Data Science Initiative events this summer are the culmination of two years of conversation and planning. In 2021, Google contributed $5 million to Tuskegee University in support of STEM initiatives, including the development of a data science program. The initial phases of the initiative are funded by part of this contribution.
Deborah Nolan, emeritus professor of statistics and associate dean for faculty at the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS), was involved in the project from the outset. She and collaborators at Tuskegee and Berkeley have been exploring what shape educational and research collaborations could take between the two universities. Nolan said the initiative’s events last week were both a launch and a celebration of this shared endeavor.
Strengthening social science contexts in Data 6
Nolan has met weekly for a year with faculty in electrical engineering, computer science, sociology and bioethics to collaborate on the course “Computational Thinking for Data and Society,” an updated version of Berkeley’s Data 6. Her collaborators include Berkeley’s Lisa Yan and Charis Thompson and Tuskegee’s Vivian Carter, Mandoye Ndoye, Yasmeen Rawajfih and Stephen Sodeke.
Vivian Carter, head of the Department of Psychology and
Sociology at Tuskegee University, speaks at the National
Workshop on Data Science Education. (Photo: KLCfotos)
Data 6 was conceived of as another on-ramp to Data 8 – a foundational course for the data science major – that would engage students with real-world examples, give them practice with computing and also satisfy the social science breadth requirement. Many at Berkeley …….
Source: https://www.tuskegee.edu/news/tuskegee-university-and-uc-berkeley-data-science-partnership-announced