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A new data science major and minor made its way to Washington College this semester, courtesy of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science.

The program was officially put together in 2021 but was only approved last year, according to Assistant Professor of Mathematics Dr. Jordan Tirrell.

This is our first semester that its actually a major and theres very little written about it so far. I would love to get more people aware of it, Dr. Tirrell said.

This new major and minor were in the works for several years. Dr. Tirrell said it was something he hoped to get running at the college, ever since he was hired.

This is my first fourth year at WC and when I was hired, I was really interested in doing stuff with data science programs, Dr. Tirrell said. I taught a lot of statistics for data science in the past and Id worked in data science in the past and the college was really interested in getting something like this running.

John W. Allender Associate Professor of Ethical Data Science Dr. Kyle Wilson, who oversees the program, received a grant from the Maryland E-Nnovation Initiative Fund which is a matching fund with the goal of supporting endowed chairs at Marylands higher educational institutions, according to Marylands Department of Commerce website.

The endowed chair thing basically lets me focus my time on starting the student data science program, so my courses will mostly turn into teaching data science courses. All of the administrative nonsense that goes with starting a program becomes my responsibility. Also, I have responsibilities to promote the program and talk to people about it, Dr. Wilson said.

According to Dr. Wilson, there is no one way to define data science.

I would see [data science] primarily as a tool for inquiry. As a discipline, its not very useful because it mostly provides tools for seeking answers to bigger questions that often come from elsewhere. I really encourage data science students to pursue a variety of interests, Dr. Wilson said. I think thats just great as a human being, but it also makes them better data scientists, trying to apply technical tools to problems without domain knowledge tends to lead to us very confidently saying very stupid things.

Despite data science being a difficult subject to define, both Dr. Tirrell and Dr. Wilson agree that it has a myriad of educational and career opportunities useful to WC students.

Junior Parker Hayden took a data science course last semester that he said was fun, and inspired his decision to look into declaring a major or minor.

Hayden said that data science was appealing to him because I think its effective. Its similar to computer science, and I fell in love with computer science, but it has that feel of math, my actual major, and I think it just combines and in a way that seems interesting.

Dr. Tirrell said that data science is a fairly new field, and when he was working in the field in 2008, there was not even a name for it yet, but things have changed in the last few years.

Data science is one of the hottest fields right now, sograduates with data science degrees are in extremely high demand, Dr. Tirrell said.

Dr. Tirrell stresses that this new major and minor is beneficial to those outside of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science.

The data science majorgoes really well with a lot of other disciplinesWe would really like to see people who might not consider a math or computer science major to consider a data science major. Especially asa double major or as a minor with whatever theyre doing, because data science is really involved in basically every field, even something you might not think of as quantitative, like English, Dr. Tirrell said.

According to Sports Editor for The Elm sophomore, Jack Poleto, who already declared a data science major, Data science is one of the most versatile degrees you can get. Theres data science in everything and every industry.

Despite the versatility of the degree, there are currently only five declared majors and minors, according to SGAs state of the major survey results.

I just hope [the program] grows in general because theres only a few of us right now. Theres next to no one in the major. So as long as it grows, Im happy. [The major is] very well outlined right now, its not like a terribly difficult major to complete, Poleto said.

Dr. Wilson believes that all students can benefit from the new major and minor, even those who do not declare.

We want [students] to have some exposure to one of our [data science] classes either by taking it or by having a friend take it and say actually You know, I didnt think I would like this. I never thought Id be a computer person or spreadsheet person, but I do have interest and I do have questions, and this is relevant to those, Dr. Wilson said.

The program was created from the ground up, giving the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science a chance to experiment and add their own special touches to it.

We created this data science major ourselves, and [data science] is new enough that there arent really like national standards on what should go into data science major. We spent a lot of time looking at other programs and trying to come up with what it should look like here. I think what we came up with is really pretty cool and somewhat unique. We have a particularly large number of courses custom-built for the program, but we also were able to work in ethics emphasis throughout, Dr. Wilson said. I think our program has an interdisciplinary feel to it, that a lot of other programs havent been able to pull off. Im proud of the work we did I think itll be a good experience for the students.

Elm Archive Photo

Photo Caption: Students looking to expand their areas of study or focus on data science specifically will now have fresh opportunities to do so.

Read more from the original source:

Data Science is formally approved as major The Elm - blog.washcoll.edu