Data Science Across Disciplines

This past J-term five faculty colleagues from Biology, Geography, Political Science, Writing & Rhetoric, and Linguistics taught a course providing traditional introduction to data science with immersive project-based applications across four disciplines. Students with no prior data science experience spent their mornings learning how to use the statistical software package R to wrangle and extract meaning from data, and their afternoons applying these skills to research projects on topics ranging from human-environment relationships around protected areas to analyzing twitter data to survey data of Middlebury students’ academic confidence to what predicts conflict events between nations.

The faculty and students from this course spoke about their experiences and findings, and to discuss broader implications for providing all students equitable and inspiring access to data and digital tools.