By Philip Yates (DePaul University)
Information
Established and funded by an NSF grant from 2021 to 2024, the MCDC is a collaboration of data science students and experts and community organizations from multiple Chicagoland universities (Northwestern University, DePaul University, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago State University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign). The goal of the MCDC curriculum is to advance the development of data acumen through experiential and project-based learning while providing flexibility for implementation in different institutional contexts. This poster presentation will discuss the course sequence structure that leads to the students’ summer research experience using data and projects generated by local non-profit organizations, the structure of the MCDC itself in working with community data, brief examples of some of the research projects students worked on during the summer of 2022, and finally talk about assessment results based on student, faculty, and community partner experiences and their perceived gains from participating in the program. The broader impact of this work is for USCOTS participants to see the infrastructure established by the MCDC and how it can be deployed at their institutions and in their communities with the potential development of a nationwide data science corps (Bailey, Conroy, Janeia 2017)