Educators and researchers from across the U.S. traveled to Carroll University recently to begin shaping digital classrooms of the future to train the next-generation workforce at liberal arts institutions.
Carroll was awarded a $100,000 grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to explore, along with 10 other liberal arts schools, how to best teach essential skills in data science and analytics.
“This is about preparing the nextgeneration workforce,” said Dr. Jane Hopp, vice president of the office of partnerships and innovation at Carroll. “This workshop will help design digital learning environments to meet the substantial need for data science and analytics educated professionals, promote equity in learning, and help small liberal arts colleges and universities to contribute to the early development of these efforts.”
“Data science and analytical skills are increasingly in demand across virtually every industry, and we are committed to helping to meet that demand by providing our students with the digital tools to succeed,” said Carroll University President Cindy Gnadinger.
The workshop was just the first step in developing new ways to teach data analytics science at liberal arts institutions. The goal is to form a consortium to create content and tools for digital literacy that can be easily shared. This summer in Washington, D.C., John Symms, associate professor of mathematics at Carroll, will join other NSF grant recipients to share the Carroll group’s work.
Other schools participating are Drury University, Missouri; Emmanuel College, Boston; Franklin University, Ohio; Hiram College, Ohio; LaGrange College, Georgia; Merrimack College, Massachusetts; Pacific Lutheran University, Washington; Presbyterian College, South Carolina; Ripon College, Wisconsin; and Seattle Pacific University, Washington.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. (1824727).