# Data Scholars Foundations Seminar

## Overview

The Data Scholars Foundation seminar is a one-unit seminar for students
in the Data Scholars program who are enrolled concurrently in the
Foundations of Data Science course. This seminar meets for one hour,
once per week. Students attend the class and engage with other student
scholars, program staff, and the student instructor weekly. The course
is a blend of instructional support for Data 8, guidance on navigating
the data science ecosystem at Cal, a series of guest speakers, and
workshops.

## Target Audience

The Foundations Seminar is the first of the courses of the Data Scholars
series. Students enroll while they enroll in the Foundations Course. The
Foundations Seminar directly engages with the Foundations coursework,
and Data Scholars are put into a lab or multiple lab sections together.
The grouping of students in the lab creates a smaller community for Data
Scholars to refine their understandings within the seminar.

## Goals

Within this seminar, students will engage in topics of diversity in the
field of Data Science and its unique challenges. The seminar explores
various applications of Data Science and career possibilities. This
allows the student to gain an understanding of the resources and
opportunities available to them. Finally, students receive adequate
support, mentorship, and tutoring to perform successfully in the
Foundations Course.

## Key Pedagogical or Curricular Strategies

-   Mentorship and support from the student-instructor weekly

-   50-minute tutoring session each week (through existing Data 8
     tutoring infrastructure)

-   Academic and professional development support

-   Assistance from seminar student instructor and collaboration with
     peers on the optional 4th project for Data 8, for students
     interested in completing it

-   Information on how to continue to engage with the Berkeley data
     science ecosystem

-   Exploration of applications of data science, through guest speakers
     and workshops

## Key Diversity and Inclusion Practices and Strategies

The seminar is focused on developing the Data Scholars strategies for
completing the Foundations of Data Science course. It introduces
underrepresented students to data science, what you can do with a career
in data science, data science opportunities at Cal, and practice
problems.

As a small group, the students also discuss developing their resume,
reviewing Foundations in Data Science Course topics, and attend
workshops on web scraping, R, and other data science topics.

## Links to Key Documents

-   [[Spring 2020 Foundations
     Syllabus](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EUyagoHDGqWxhYJzENPA-9VRvKDRMMejK1s0PW3E3sE/edit)]

## Program Description

The Foundations Seminar is a one-unit course that supports Data Scholars
in their successful completion of the Foundations course and prepares
them for the two other seminars in this series. Through a blend of
targeted small group support and integration into a smaller data science
community, these students can develop their data science literacy and
network. The Data Scholars program supports URM students in their entry
to data science at Cal and prepares them to use specific tools through
workshops. This first seminar of the three-seminar series is a platform
for further work in the Data Scholars Pathways and Data Scholars
Discovery Research projects that follow.

## Best Practices for Variation Across Institutions

It is essential to be mindful of the specific student body and needs of
students on your campus. The focus of the Foundations seminar is to
closely support students who may go underserved in their data science
work. For other institutions, this could be developed with the main
focus that highlights one area: the development of a small cohort,
beginning a research project, peer-to-peer work, or workshops.