Speaker
Description
We have developed a program comprising of curricular, training, and mentoring components to build a diverse community of learners. Our first cohort included 32 student fellows, including 28 (87%) women/underrepresented minority students, recruited from the three participating institutes: UC Irvine, CSU Fullerton, and Cypress College (representing the three-tiered structure of higher education at the state of California). During the academic year, all students took data science related courses, including four new courses (across the three institutes) developed by our program. Over the summer, our fellows participated in a bootcamp and research experience at UC Irvine. The bootcamp included: 1) curricular content on topics such as exploratory data analysis, modeling, inference, and prediction; 2) software and computing components including R and GitHub; and 3) student engagement opportunities with guest speakers on ethics in data science, a graduate student panel, workshops on career development, and team-science activities. For the research component, the fellows worked on a wide range of research projects related to neuroscience, cancer research, environmental studies, education, and health. Finally, through seminars and symposiums, we have ensured that our fellows are exposed to real-world problems and have established a network with non-academic partners in order to quickly assimilate in the data science workforce after graduation.
