Sewanee DataLab

Thank you to everyone who helped us make DataFest 2023 a huge success! We had over 150 people join us in person and over zoom. Our five incredible teams of fellows showcased their hard work and detailed the impact of their projects for their partners and the communities they serve. The contents of these projects and the presentations will be made available on datalab.sewanee.edu in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, please enjoy some photos from yesterday and stay tuned to learn more about what all these dedicated fellows have accomplished. Thanks again to everyone who joined us yesterday. We’ll be back next year, and hopefully you will too!

Each day this week, 1 of our 5 DataLab projects will be taking over our Instagram. Today we introduce our Food Security project:

Feeding Futures: Harnessing Data for Zero Hunger on the South Cumberland Plateau

Over 34 million people face food insecurity in the US, including 1 in 8 children. In the South Cumberland region in Middle Tennessee, the food insecurity ratio for kids is even more alarming: 1 in 3. The South Cumberland Summer Meal Program (SCSMP) aims to fight hunger during the most vulnerable time for kids - in the summer, when schools don’t provide lunches - and has served over 110,000 meals since 2015. One of the challenges the program faces is the difficulty in predicting accurately ahead of time the quantity of meals needed every week for every site. As a result, a significant percent of meals ordered go to waste and are also not reimbursed by the USDA, which has a negative impact on the funds available for the following year’s program. To address this problem, the data science project is analyzing the data, gathering insights, and developing a versatile predictive tool using historical data, weather conditions, site locations, population, and local events to enable more accurate meal orders and efficient operations for the program. This will contribute towards reducing the number of food insecure families in the areas SCSMP serves, and also ultimately to the UN's Sustainable Development Goal: Zero Hunger.

Each day this week, 1 of our 5 DataLab projects will be taking over our Instagram. Today we introduce our Student Well-Being project:

Improving Student Well-being:
Plotting the Course to Better Student Wellness

College students are experiencing personal and interpersonal challenges at unprecedented rates. Academic institutions (alongside parents, students, and communities) are striving to understand these challenges in an effort to help students thrive. The University of the South is one of the institutions committed to making evidence-based decisions to promote student wellness, championed by the University Wellness Center. In particular, they are interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the important issues around social isolation and loneliness, suicidality, substance abuse, and sexual abuse. This project analyzes annual student survey data which reflects mental health outcomes, knowledge and attitudes about mental health, and service utilization. The resulting dashboard and reports will make the data and trends more accessible to everyone, provide new insights to the entire university community, as well as help the Wellness Center detect specific patterns and identify gaps and opportunities for effective outreach and greater service utilization. Ultimately, this will result in a positive impact on the students’ mental health and improve their overall wellbeing.

Each day this week, 1 of our 5 DataLab projects will be taking over our Instagram. Today we introduce our Fighting Homelessness project:

Transforming the Path to Housing
From Bias to Balance

There are currently over half a million individuals in the United States facing homelessness. This year, the Chattanooga Regional Homeless Coalition found that there are currently about 1500 people facing homelessness in the Southeastern Tennessee area alone. In our partnership with the CRHC, this project aims to optimize their intake process so that their resources are distributed equitably amongst the unhoused individuals in the area by providing the CRHC an evaluative report. This report, both formative and summative, will uncover where potential biases originate within their tools and processes while ensuring that the process is trauma-informed. This will be a key tool in assisting the CRHC in making homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring.

Each day this week, 1 of our 5 DataLab projects will be taking over our Instagram. Today we introduce our Refugee Assistance project:

Decoding Displacement:
Empowering Humanity Through Data in the Refugee Crisis

In recent years, the global refugee crisis has reached a fever pitch. Approximately 117 million people have been displaced from their homes due to war, economic instability, the ripple effects of climate change, and other similar large-scale events. To advocate for much-needed refugee funding, we are partnering with the USA for UNHCR to compare data on regional refugee movement in recent years with the professed funding needs of nations in crisis outlined in UNHCR’s annual Global Appeals Report. Comparison of this data will help us determine how UNHCR and the refugee serving community can direct their resources in a way that meets refugee needs as accurately as possible.

Each day this week, we will be introducing 1 of our 5 DataLab projects. They will be taking over our Instagram page, so to learn more be sure to head over there and check out our stories! Find us at: https://www.instagram.com/sewaneedatalab/

Today we introduce our Public Health project:

Bridging the Health Care Gap for the Working Uninsured:
Promoting Preventive Medicine through Access to Primary Care

In the US, 33 million people are medically uninsured and Tennessee contributes about 1 million of those people. This is about 12% of TN's population, ranking the state in the bottom 18% of the entire country. Partners for Healing (PfH) is a non profit organization that works to help the working uninsured by providing free healthcare to the local medically underserved population. Promoting primary care helps prevent the escalation of treatable conditions as well as leads to the early detection/intervention of medical issues, resulting in a tangible net benefit to the surrounding community. DataLab is using PfH’s historical patient data, as well as data from the US Census and the TN Health Department, to understand the patterns in current patient treatments and identify communities in high need of PfH services. This will enable PfH to efficiently serve the needs of their existing patients, as well as expand their capacity going forward.

Applications for DataLab 2023 are still open!

- Full time, in-person, 8-week paid summer fellowship
- Open to current university students and recent graduates, from all academic majors and institutions
- Dates: May 29 -July 21 2023
- Location: the University of the South, in Sewanee TN

This is a project-based training program designed to produce responsible data scientists by engaging university students in solving real-world social impact problems in collaboration with governments and non-profits. If you have an understanding, excitement, and passion for solving problems with social impact, this program is for you!

We’re not expecting you to be awesome at everything. Tell us what you’re good at and what you’d like to learn. If you’re passionate about a cause or social issue, tell us about it in your application. If there’s a recent project you’ve done that you’re proud of, we’d like to hear about it. You will be working in teams, so collaborative personality and good communication matter as well.

Past successful fellows have different skill profiles and backgrounds in order to create a collaborative community. Everyone has a passion for making a social impact and some have programming, statistics and data analysis skills as well. Some are stronger at Computer Science and Machine Learning. Others have a strong Applied Math or Statistics background. Some come from a quantitative Social Science, Economics, or Public Policy background. Others have Physics or Chemistry or Geography or Humanities degrees.

Questions? Check out the DataLab website (datalab.sewanee.edu) or contact us at [email protected]

Hope to work with you this summer!

Start your application on https://datalab.sewanee.edu/ or directly at
https://forms.gle/wzCd67JGcSxT1qda9

Let’s make our community a better place by starting with our minds!

This summer the well-being team is working with the Center for Student Success and Flourishing to display five years of Sewanee students’ health and well-being trends.

Check out this dream team at DataFest on July 20th!

Let’s bat around an idea! This is our second environmental team over the summer, and if you want to learn more, then you should come to Sewanee DataFest on July 20th

Did you know Grundy County is defined as a medically underserved area?

Well this summer our ER team is investigating ER overuse to help change that! Join us at DataFest on July 20th to learn more

Stop the payday loan scam! And come check out this phenomenal team at DataFest on July 20th at 5 pm in Blackman Auditorium at Sewanee

The Caves Team will be summarizing conservation data of cave species to allow anyone interested to view the endangerment status of a species in their region. So excited to be able to assist in making data more accessible!

Excited to see what the Syndemic Team will create and discover this summer!

Throughout the week we will be introducing our teams, and we are excited to introduce one of our two environmental projects of the summer!

Check them out on our Instagram today!

The first of many photo dumps of our summer 2022 fellows!

Thank you Xing for joining us last week and showing us how to use Trello!

Excited to have Rayid Ghani join us this afternoon and meet the DataLab team!

Next week! Slowly but surely expect an email from [email protected]

REPLY TO THE EMAIL WITHIN 2 DAYS OF RECEIVING IT. If you do not respond within two days, we cannot guarantee your acceptance.

If you applied we hope to have everyone updated by next Friday! But you will definitely receive an email by the end of Sewanee’s Spring Break, March 28th.

Thank you for applying, and we look forward to working with you soon!

APPLY APPLY APPLY

Happy Valentine’s Day from the DataLab team!

There is one day left for the Sewanee Summer DataLab application! We are a group of fun people looking for more creative and enthusiastic individuals to join us this summer. We want you!

Join us at 11 AM to celebrate our DataLab participants! The students will be pitching about the projects they developed this summer. Projects range from providing internet access to rural areas in Tennessee to promoting sustainable farming practices in Haiti. Zoom link here: https://sewanee-edu.zoom.us/j/84497582770

"The new program is a collaboration between the University’s Office of Civic Engagement, Career Center, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, and Sewanee's Integrated Program in the Environment. Funded by a grant from innovative think tank New America, the DataLab at Sewanee breaks ground in higher education. The university is the only traditional liberal arts college supporting New America’s Public Interest Technology University Network that is developing a career path for undergraduates in data science for the public good." - via University of the South

Sewanee DataLab aims to make a difference in communities Sewanee welcomes students and faculty to campus this summer for the first-ever Sewanee DataLab. Participants will study data analysis in a public interest context to tackle social and environmental problems.

🗣️🌎⁣⁣ DataLab participants pitched their community projects to their peers and instructors yesterday. Students are learning how to use data science skills to solve real community issues in the United States and abroad.
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A few projects for this summer include:⁣⁣
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✅ Promoting sustainable farming practices in Haiti.⁣⁣
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✅ Expanding internet access to rural areas in Tennessee.⁣⁣
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✅ Improving access to medical care in the South Cumberland Plateau (TN). ⁣⁣

Stay tuned for more updates on what the DataLab has been doing! 🙋🏼⁣

It is time to meet our DataLab instructors! 👨‍🏫

Ben and Joe Brew are both Sewanee graduates (University of the South), data scientists, and passionate about teaching data science skills to youth and professionals worldwide. 🌏

They have an extensive work portfolio in the United States, such as initiatives for the Florida Department of Health, the Chicago Department of Public Health, and the University of Chicago's Data Science for Social Good Program.

Abroad, their work includes projects for the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, the Barcelona Public Health Agency (Spain), the Tigray Regional Health Bureau (Ethiopia), and the Manhiça Health Research Center in Mozambique.

Joe and Ben love teaching, sports such as running and cycling, and good pizza. 🚴‍♂️🍕

The DataLab provides data science skills and education to students and professionals in diverse fields of study addressing local and global social issues. 🔍🧠💻

We believe that data skills are crucial to promoting social impact while solving complex issues that affect all of us in the ever-changing 21st century. 🌍

The new program collaborates with the Office of Civic Engagement, the Career Center, the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, and Sewanee's Integrated Program in the Environment. Funded by a grant from New America's innovative think tank, Sewanee’s DataLab breaks ground in higher education. It is the only traditional liberal arts college supporting New America’s Public Interest Technology University Network to develop data science for the public good as a career path for undergraduates.

Stay tuned! 😉

The Sewanee DataLab welcomes students and faculty to campus this week for the first-ever Sewanee DataLab. During the eight-week program participants will study data analysis in a public interest context—tackling social and environmental problems by leveraging available data. Working with real-life data sets to address the expressed need of partner organizations, the program expects to make a measurable impact while training students and faculty from a range of academic disciplines.