Data Science and Gender Studies Come to AUC

By: Basant Samhout

@basantsamhout

AUC recently began venturing into new areas of studies with the Data Science undergraduate program, the first in the region, and the Gender Studies minor, for students in fall 2019.

After a three-year process, the Mathematics and Actuarial Science department introduced the Data Science major, offering an introductory course this semester that will later be expanded to include the full four-year program as students progress through the major.

The Chair of the Mathematics and Actuarial Science department and Director of the Data Science Program, Ali Hadi, explained that Data Science is an “applied field,” that can be utilized in many domains.

“Students will learn to utilize different tools from different fields to be able to extract knowledge from data and provide the appropriate information to professionals for decision-making processes later,” he said.

Data Science, which may be better explained as ‘data mining,’ is the process of developing different methods to be able to analyze data and efficiently extract useful information.

This process offers insight into the data, whatever its type may be, making data science applicable in many fields.

Among the courses required to complete the major is a capstone course, in which students can experience the broadness and flexibility of the major.

“The [data science] capstone will allow every student to incorporate their field of interest in their work; and data science can be applied in almost every field,” Hadi explained.

This means that students taking the data science capstone will get to move beyond theory and delve into their field’s practical work. For example, if a Data Science student is interested in politics and policy making, they will get to sort through that particular data set.

The university’s catalog markets the program saying, “Data Science is experiencing very rapid growth due to the availability of huge and complex real-world data.”

Prospective employment opportunities include consulting firms, statistical and mathematical research centers, as well as business analytics and intelligence.

“The major only has the capacity of accepting no more than 20 students. Although the demand is currently high, we need to make sure that students who graduate from the program are able to find jobs,” Hadi explained.

To declare Data Science, students must complete the required courses, including the introductory course and have an overall GPA of at least 3.3. Then students must complete an interview with Hadi, after which he will determine if a student will make it into the major or not.

Along with the Data Science program, AUC also introduced the Gender Studies minor for undergraduates, usually a post-graduate field of study.

“The minor is a collective effort of multiple departments. Gender studies are already incorporated in some undergraduate courses,” said Martina Rieker, assistant professor and director of the Cynthia Nelson Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies.

The 15-credit minor is meant to provide students with a broader knowledge of various gender concepts and theories, analyzing each from different perspectives.

Students who want to graduate with the minor have to take a selection of sociology, anthropology, literature and film courses as well as a capstone course taught by Rieker herself.

The minor has been in the works since last spring and was approved by the university to be offered starting this fall.