Image
UVA, C4K Team Up to Make Data Science ‘Accessible’ to Local Students
For a group of middle schoolers in Charlottesville this summer, data science wasn’t just a subject to be studied — it was one to be experienced.
The Starr Hill Pathways program, run by the University of Virginia’s Equity Center, offers students from Charlottesville and Albemarle County the opportunity to explore different fields through hands-on activities, guest speakers, and mentoring, with nearly 200 young people participating this summer in activities inspired by a wide range of disciplines.
For the second summer in a row, UVA’s School of Data Science offered a two-week pathway program that introduced data science to a group of nine rising eighth-grade students through the lens of sports, specifically basketball.
It is part of an effort to bring the field to life for young people, show them the vast career possibilities it can offer, and perhaps most of all, promote a sense of belonging in data science for students who may have never envisioned that it could be a field they could be a part of.
“To get them to actually do data science, which sounds really scary, but in a really accessible way, I think will help empower them to explore the subject further and to see themselves doing it and feel successful at it,” said Emma Cox of the School of Data Science.
Cox serves as program manager with the School’s Office of Equity and Inclusion, which coordinated the data science pathway with support from faculty, staff, and doctoral students. Much of the curriculum from last year’s program, which was developed with help from the Sports Analytics Club Program, a group committed to promoting STEM education and careers for young people through the platform of sports, was once again used.
This summer, after learning a bit about the field, student participants set out to apply data science concepts on the basketball court by taking various kinds of shots, recording data on their performances, and analyzing it. They then used that analysis to devise a strategy to see if their shooting improved. They also presented their analysis and findings. The idea is to create an experience that resembles the actual work of an NBA data scientist.
“For most of them, the strategy did improve their score,” Cox said. Students also heard from various guest speakers over the two weeks, including Ed Tapscott, a longtime NBA executive and current scout with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Programs like Starr Hill Pathways highlight how the School of Data Science is working to implement its Inclusive Excellence Plan, which emphasizes the importance of the School being an engaged partner with the region and promoting data science opportunities in the community, among other priorities.
A critical component to achieving these objectives is building relationships with community organizations who do this work every day and exploring ways where the School of Data Science can support their mission.
For this summer’s Starr Hill experience, the School of Data Science collaborated with C4K, a Charlottesville nonprofit, which hosted the group for activities at its clubhouse.
C4K has worked with young people in the Charlottesville area for 25 years, evolving from a computer-based mentoring initiative to one focused more on STEM-based programming for middle school and high school youth.
“I think the hope in general for C4K and all of our programs is that the youth see data science and STEM-related fields as something that could be for them — that it’s not something that’s just for different people in their class that might be farther along in math,” said Colin Learmonth, C4K’s director of operations.
The approach of the Starr Hill program, with its emphasis on interactive activities and exposure to professionals in the field, is, in many ways, a natural fit with C4K’s mission.
“It’s really trying to make things more accessible, more understandable, and more interesting in terms of the broad applications of data science or technology,” Learmonth said of C4K’s focus.
C4K’s clubhouse served as a home base for a number of Starr Hill activities, with many technological resources available to students — from 3D printers to green screens, the latter of which student participants used one morning as they mimicked different basketball moves.
Image
“They have a ton of incredible technology at their fingertips,” Cox said of C4K, tools she hopes students will take advantage of after the summer program ends.
“They have a lot of great folks here and a lot of great resources to utilize, and it’s all free,” she said. C4K membership and the after-school programming it provides is free for any Charlottesville or Albemarle Country students who are in grades six through 12 and who live in households with an income that is less than 80% of the region’s median family income.
Not all this summer’s participants will go on to pursue a career in data science, but that’s not the overriding goal of the Starr Hill program. It’s about highlighting possibilities, giving young people the chance to imagine themselves in whatever profession inspires them, and demystifying fields like data science.
“The next time they hear data science it doesn’t sound like a faraway, unknown term to them,” Cox said, when asked what she hopes students take away from the experience. “They actually have a vision of what that looks like.”
