Stipend information for curricular implementation

We believe that curricular innovations that bring experiential data science learning into the curriculum will lead to sustainable long term impact at the partnering academic institutions and in the larger Pioneer Valley region.

The Summer Faculty Development Workshop was designed to help new instructors—especially those at community colleges—teach data science at their institutions.

We designed the DSC-WAV Summer 2021 Faculty Development Workshop to help address one of the main aims of the DSC-WAV project:

to distill a set of best practices that can facilitate incorporation of meaningful real-world data science experience into programs ranging from research universities to community colleges.

The grant proposal also noted the importance of connections with two-year colleges:

“The movement to align community college instruction in data science with the best practices followed by the Five Colleges will result in a stronger foundation for data science education in Western Massachusetts.”

We’ve appreciated having the chance to work with you this week to help you build on your existing foundations in data science and to work to identify a specific curricular implementation that you can bring to your institution.

The next step is for you to continue your work that you’ve started this week.

This document is intended to provide an outline of what is expected.

Deadline

We encourage you to try to complete work on your implementation plans over the next few weeks, but understand that you have many competing demands on your time.

We also acknowledge that it may not be feasible for you to integrate your curricular innovations in your courses this fall, although that is encouraged whenever possible.

  • We want to provide your second stipend as quickly as possible.

  • Curricular innovation reports submitted by December 30th, 2021 will be processed in January, 2022.

  • Curricular innovation reports submitted by June 30th, 2022 will be processed in July, 2022.

All reports must be submitted by August 30, 2022 to be considered.

What completion looks like

The completed curricular innovation report shall consist of:

  • an updated implementation plan (if there were changes from what you created during the workshop) and a summary of those changes (if any)
  • the curricular materials (e.g., .Rmd and .pdf files, Jupyter notebooks, datasets, etc.) along with other teaching materials
  • brief (1-2 page) reflection on the process of creating the materials and a brief summary of how the implementation went

The materials should be submitted to Andrea Dustin (Smith College).

Supports

We have organized drop-in hours (by request) by our student TAs for the week of June 21–25. Please contact Emma and/or Sunni via Slack to set up an appointment. Other support is available by request after that date. Slack will be a great way to share questions and make requests.

Questions

Please reach out to Andrea, Nick, or Ben with any questions.

Last updated: August 3, 2021

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