RIT faculty receive NSF award to develop a data science curriculum for non-computing majors

Computer Science faculty members, Xumin Liu and Rajendra Raj, have been awarded an NSF grant that supports them to create Data Science coursework and make it both hands-on and accessible to non-computing students, regardless of their programming background.

Data Science is intrinsically used within a variety of application domains and ramped up the demand for data science education outside computing and mathematical disciplines. However, it is challenging for non-computing students to take data science courses due to the long chain of prerequisite courses, especially in programming, data structures, and introductory databases, as well as relevant mathematics/statistics. To address this challenge, this project aims to develop a hands-on data science curriculum will make learning more readily-accessible to non-computing majors.

This funded project will lead to a Data Science Principles (CSP) course that will be available for students outside GCCIS, who have taken CSCI 101 or ISCH 110. It was also provide data science components to strengthen Computer Science Principles (CSP) courses offered at the high-school AP and college levels.