Rachel Levy

Project Summary Research and Education Training Plans: With data science growing as a career path, professional skill and component of literacy, the NC State Data Science Academy (DSA) is creating a model for training postdoctoral fellows that centers diversity, equity and inclusion. This program will bring together mentors with varied backgrounds, professional expertise and research interests with postdoctoral fellows from groups that are underrepresented in STEM and education (e.g. women, BIPOC) and may have limited experience in data science or education research. The DSA offers a unique environment for exploring data science education. The DSA aims to engage learners at any level and with varying career goals by offering data science courses, analytics consulting and research enablement. DSA courses are based on the All-campus Data science through Accessible Project-based Teaching and learning (ADAPT) model, which is designed to support all learners with low barriers to entry, multiple elements of choice and high probability of success. The DSA is expanding course offerings and its roster of instructors while launching an ADAPT model study. The DSA will train a cohort of four postdoctoral fellows, connecting them with mentors who specialize in education research and can support them in developing their own research. Research and professional development activities will include: weekly mentor meetings, leadership development, teaching meetings, a data science education journal club, brown bag lunches, presentations, workshops and a data science education conference. Fellows may also access NC State professional development programs and funding for travel and professional memberships. Recruitment/Application/Selection Plan: The DSA will implement a communications plan targeted to women, BIPOC and other populations that are underrepresented in STEM and STEM education. The DSA will post through organizations recommended by the Office of Diversity of Institutional Equity and Diversity (e.g. Southern Region Education Board), collaborate with associations that support underrepresented groups in STEM (e.g. SACNAS, NAM), leverage relationships with HBCUs and MSIs and host mentor-led webinars for potential candidates. Applicants will submit a long curriculum vitae and a teaching and research statement describing five projects (e.g. research, teaching, work experience) that demonstrate readiness for postdoctoral work, how their research interests align with DSA goals and how their work advances accessibility, diversity, equity and inclusion. The search committee will include PI Dr. Rachel Levy and the mentors, with input from undergraduate teaching assistants and DSA teaching staff. Selection criteria include mentor match, alignment of career goals with data science or education research and interest in project-based learning. Intellectual Merit: The DSA will identify the necessary components of a model for training postdoctoral scholars that can support researchers with a variety of personal and professional backgrounds and education research interests. The project will provide insight into the preparation of data science education researchers and the interactions between members of a mentor pool that includes women, BIPOC, and other groups who are underrepresented in STEM with a diverse cohort of fellows. The fellows������������������ research will examine the ways that students learn data science, how data science is taught and how DSA courses can support learners of varying identities and levels of experience in data science and related fields. Research on this model offers an opportunity to explore how different settings and modes of learning can work in tandem to support data science education and improve learner outcomes. Broader Impacts: The DSA will create a model for training postdoctoral scholars in data science education research and successfully inducting them into the data science education and STEM-Ed research community. This model will be developed with a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion to support specifically

esearch Data Services + Sciences). To support the development of effective consulting models in academia, the NC State Data Science Academy (DSA) and NC State Libraries will partner with the Academic Data Science Alliance (ADSA) to lead the Models for Sustainable and Inclusive Data Science Consulting and Collaboration in Higher Education workshop series. This series will focus on mechanisms for delivering data science research support via consulting and collaboration models, as well as developing policies and discussing infrastructure that supports robust, inclusive and sustainable practices. The workshop series aims to explore the details, potential strategies, benefits, and barriers to creating a sustainable data science consulting service within an academic environment.

This grant will support the NC State Data Science Academy in facilitating the development, piloting, and assessment of a customized course to fulfill this need in the context of DHHS specific data and data processes. The pilot will focus primarily on staff in the Early Childhood Division and will be developed in collaboration with members of that staff. Course objectives are designed to facilitate participants��� understanding of data, tools, and analysis within the context of their work at DHHS. The topics are designed to relate to customized tools at DHHS and also help participants develop skills applicable to other platforms. This course will provide DHHS participants with the means to be active and proficient participants in the data flow cycle.

The Data Science Academy at NC State Consulting Corps trains an interdisciplinary cohort of graduate students to work in collaborative teams doing cutting-edge data science consulting that enables and facilitates research on campus. This work involves anything from creating a data cleaning and formatting pipeline to analyzing data to organizing and explaining analytic results in the context of the research domain. The DSA will interview, hire, and train graduate students who are available to work a split appointment during the academic year. The graduate research assistants (GRAs) will be embedded in Vontier for half of their working time and in the NC State DSA consulting corps for the other half of their working time. The consultants will receive training, mentoring and guidance from the Data Science Academy and belong to a cohort of consultants who share techniques and approaches. In DSA training, the consultants learn best practices for data science consulting and collaboration, including specific training on interacting with domain experts, documenting processes, and communicating results. Vontier will be invited to submit a project to the larger NC State DSA consulting corps each academic year. Through these interactions, the cohort and researchers also can learn about the partner organization, which can promote recruitment of graduate students from a variety of fields to join the company as permanent employees.

The NC State Data Science Academy will serve as a member of consortium of institutes of higher education to amplify social impact through data science and to create opportunities for students to gain experience utilizing data science for social impact in government, community organizations, and nonprofit settings. This network will include the University of Chicago, Howard University, the University of Illinois ��� Chicago, California State ��� Fresno, Morehouse College. As part of this network, NC State will contribute to developing modular data science social impact courses that will work for NC State as well as different types of higher education institutions by taking into account faculty resources, students, and the local community to attract and support diverse student teams who will go on to apply for internships in government, nonprofits and community organizations. The project will have two focus areas: (1) government and (2) nonprofits and community organizations.