Northwestern University is building students’ data literacy while providing unique experiential learning opportunities to drive social good.
Launched in September 2021 and powered by funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Metropolitan Chicago Data-Science Corps (MCDC) empowers undergraduate students from five local universities to apply data science skills to real-world opportunities and challenges local nonprofits face. Where it’s easy to be consumed by theory, sophistication of algorithms, or a seemingly endless array of curated data sets, MCDC arms students with data skills they can put into action with projects they’re passionate about.
“MCDC is designed to get students from all types of backgrounds, perspectives, and skill levels working together on data management, curation, modeling, and assessment to help community organizations advance their respective missions,” says Suzan van der Lee, Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor and Director of Computing at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences.
Northwestern’s Weinberg College and the McCormick School of Engineering participate in the collaborative, as well as the University of Illinois’ School of Information Sciences, DePaul University, Northeastern Illinois University, and Chicago State University.
A win-win effort
Northwestern students can enroll in a practicum course – the signature element of the MCDC program – after completing three basic data science courses providing foundational data literacy skills. The practicum topics come from community partners who need help handling, collecting, and managing data to inform their efforts.
After that, faculty lead the practicum courses, tasking teams of students to work on distinct parts of the partner organization’s needs and develop their data acumen. For instance, students set up research questions, source and procure data, draft an analysis plan, and create visually rich presentations and assets before presenting their results to the community partner in a final showcase.
Andy Papachristos (Sociology), Robert Voigt (Linguistics), Bennett Goldberg (Physics), Elsa Anderson (Environmental Sciences), Arend Kuyper (Statistics/Data Science), Lizhen Shi (Statistics/Data Science), and Katherine Amato (Anthropology) are among several Weinberg College faculty members who have either led practicums, organized more in-depth summer projects, or participated in other MCDC activities, such as steering committees or the annual conference.
“The practicums are great because they get students working with real-world, sometimes messy data, for social good, and in a range of disciplines and areas of society,” says Van der Lee, who led the MCDC’s initial NSF grant proposal with help from the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO) and Northwestern’s Office of Research Development.
Yet more, van der Lee continues, the practicums propel students’ creativity and challenge them to apply their learning to new situations. They also foster critical thinking about the most helpful information data provides, broaden their perspectives, cultivate ethical problem-solving, and enhance collaboration skills in and beyond the classroom.
“Students not only get well versed in data science but also benefit from seeing theory applied to something real and in Chicago,” van der Lee says. “They begin to see how data can be a tool for social good.”
Turning data into positive impact: Environment and Equity
Anderson, an assistant professor of instruction in Weinberg College’s Program in Environmental Sciences, has directed three practicums designed to help students use data to address environmental challenges and promote thoughtful solutions.
In one course, Anderson’s students worked with The Nature Conservancy and the Nachusa Grasslands, a nature preserve about 100 miles west of Chicago. Students sifted through an imperfect, 12-year-old database of prescribed fires across Illinois to understand big-picture patterns and inform advocacy efforts for prescribed fires as a land management tool.
In another Anderson-led practicum, students teamed with Women for Green Spaces, a Chicago-based organization devoted to improving green space quality and access in the city’s Pilsen neighborhood. Students leveraged data, including publicly available GIS data, to uncover environmental challenges and opportunities in Pilsen, such as tree coverage and impactful tree-planting strategies.
“In these practicums, students become adept at hands-on work with messy data and begin to understand how they can put data into action,” Anderson says.
In his practicum, Arend Kuyper, associate professor of instruction in the Department of Statistics and Data Science, and students explored equity and access in Chicagoland micro-transportation – namely, Divvy rental bikes – alongside Equiticity, an organization devoted to making the city’s neighborhoods more livable for minority populations. Student work included collecting, processing, and cleaning data from Chicago’s open data portal, analyzing the data in different geographical groupings, and creating one-page primers and visual graphics to help Equiticity contextualize the issue for stakeholders and partners.
“The big value for students is they get to put their skills to work for the community around them and use data for a positive impact,” says Kuyper, who considers data “essential to policy, social science work, and making the world a better place.”
However, MCDC’s efforts to connect data science and community impact extend beyond the practicums offered at Northwestern and its academic partners.
After completing a practicum, students can apply for a summer internship with any MCDC institution. To reinforce learning and communication, interns from different MCDC-affiliated universities work as teams throughout the summer on a data opportunity or challenge for a community agency.
Leaders in the collaborative are also working with Oakton College to develop a data science and machine learning program at the community college located in suburban Des Plaines. The aim of that effort, Van der Lee notes, is to drive workforce development in data science and expand the field’s impact on the public good.
“Faculty are developing each other as we’re supporting students and our partner agencies, so learning is happening at all levels,” she says.
“The public benefit of giving a data project back to the world motivates students and gives them clarity on how these skills can be used in the future,” Anderson says.
Van der Lee hopes the program’s experiential learning model in a relatively new and fast-growing scientific discipline becomes a standard fixture in higher education to advance learning and spur positive results in society.
“We’re taking a new discipline at the cutting edge of science and sharing it with our students and beyond for social good,” van der Lee says. “The benefits and impact of this work can only grow.”