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#
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.