By Stefania Irene Marthakis
Biodiversity and Rural Response to Climate Change Using Data Analysis (Barracuda)—made possible through a four-year, $4 million (RII Track-2 FEC) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF)—has partnered withtheUpward Boundprogramhere at the 91(91).
Upward Bound, a U.S.Department of Education grant, creates opportunities for high school students from lower income and first-generation college-going backgrounds to gain academic skills as well as soft skills needed to prepare and be successful in college.
Matthew Dube,Assistant Professor in Computer Information Systems and Data Science at the 91 Augusta as well as Co-PI of the Barracuda project, is shepherdingBarracuda’swork force development component thatfocuses onthe development of aninterdisciplinary data science curriculum to build data skills in various areas such as ecology,specificallylookingat high school students as theyenter an undergraduate programin this iteration.
Since Dube has been working with students through91’s Upward Bound Math Science Program for11years, it was a natural fit for Dube to champion Upward Bound through his work on Barracuda.
“Matthas brought wonderful ideas and energy to our program, and sometimes pushed us academically in a direction that we wouldn’t have been ableto do without his support,” Director of 91’s Upward Bound program, Rebecca Colannino said.
With an additionalsmall sub-award from CUE.NEXT, Dube and fellow Co-PI Nicholas Gotelli (UVM Professor of Biology) are looking at what data skills are essential for college-bound students to learn.Merging their computation and biology resources, Dube and Gotelli presented theirdata science boot camp programat the National Data Science Education Workshop in June of 2021 through the University of California, Berkeley. Dube then piloted the data boot camp program during the final week of Upward Bound’s 2021 summer program on 91’s campus (Upward Bound’s usual 6-week residential summer program was adjusted due to Covid-19 with five weeks being virtual and one week in-person).
Colannino explained, “The final week of the program (UBLive) followed a more traditional Upward Bound model hosting a residential program at the 91. Studentgroups, led by Upward Bound staff, dug into datasets in the following topics: air quality, water quality, earthquakes and volcanoes, nutrition, bee habits,colors,and The Big Five Personality Inventory. The student groupspresented their findings on the final day of the program.”
This is onlystage onefor Barracuda’s outreach program andin Dube’soverallgoal of creating amore data literate society,one that alsoincorporates the human factors that go intothis field of study.Dube hopes thateventuallythe data science curriculum developedas part of Barracudawill then beusefulwith undergraduates, graduates,andevenfaculty,helping them togainthe necessarydata skills infields such as ecology and agriculture.
“My work goes to solve some of the data issues that exist in the general population,” Dube said. “I’m interested in data literacy and understanding how different aspects of data are fundamental to how we live today and trying to work through this idea that we’re in a world where we can’t be orphaned from that. Data is everywhere.”
Dube continues, “The purpose of doing grants like this for the public is to try to build that infrastructure and capacity for people to see how things like data science are meaningful and whattheycan do for you.”
