2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In 2018, The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine identified a need for undergraduate students to have access to critical data science skills development opportunities. Over the next several decades, the world’s reliance on cloud computing and big data will continuously increase, and new data-centric technologies and engineering approaches will be developed. Due to this rapidly developing field, there is a need to track these trends and incorporate the corresponding developments into our current science and engineering curriculum. Besides data science skills already taught in traditional engineering curricula, such as mathematical, computational, and statistical foundations, the National Academies guide discusses that key concepts in developing data acumen include domain-specific considerations and ethical problem-solving.
This work-in-progress (WIP) paper will highlight the foundation of a comprehensive study to explore data science education in two domain-specific programs: material science and engineering and architectural engineering. This project is broken down into the following objectives: 1) facilitate data science education and workforce development for engineering and related topics, 2) provide opportunities for students to participate in practical experiences where they can learn new skills through opportunities in new settings to transform data science education, and 3) expand the data science talent pool by enabling the participation of undergraduate students with diverse backgrounds, experiences, skills, and technical maturity. The paper will focus on the topics, deployment strategies within courses and curricula, establishing data sets, representative examples of work-in-progress efforts and their success.