SACRAMENTO, CA – The California Education Learning Lab (Learning Lab) announced that it is awarding over $8 million across 13 grants in response to Learning Lab’s funding opportunity Grand Challenge: Building Critical Mass for Data Science.
Learning Lab released the Grand Challenge: Building Critical Mass for Data Science grant opportunity to incentivize public higher education institutions to embrace data science as an opportunity to build new pathways, modernize majors, attract historically underrepresented students into STEM, and deepen both civic and interdisciplinary learning. By funding projects taking varying approaches to data science in higher education, Learning Lab hopes to promote the buildout of a data science educational infrastructure and make California the leader in data science undergraduate education.
Scroll to the bottom of this article to view the funded proposals.
Data Science Grand Challenge grants were awarded in the three categories below (with the respective duration and award amount):
| Pathways Development (up to $1.3 million each to be expended over two to four years) |
| These projects will develop 2-to-4-year pathways (community college to CSU or UC) in data science that result in relevant degrees and certificates that respond to industry needs and opportunities. |
| Faculty Development (between $200,000 and $350,000 each to be expended over two to three years) |
| These projects will increase faculty capacity to teach in the data science field, including approaches such as (but not limited to): enhancing the ability of data-science adjacent faculty to teach data science, incentivizing data-science adjacent graduate students to teach data science, accessing existing faculty development programs, or creating new programs. |
| Interdisciplinary Collaboration (between $100,000 – $200,000 to be expended over two to three years) |
| These projects will explore curricular collaboration between data science and application domains (e.g., business, medicine, natural science, social sciences, or engineering) and/or across domains in the humanities, such as philosophy, rhetoric, history, and literary studies. |
The awards were based on recommendations from Learning Lab’s 2023 Selection Committee for the Data Science Grand Challenge and were approved by Samuel Assefa, Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research.
Nearly 70 unique institutions from the California Community Colleges, California State University, and University of California systems were part of 43 project teams that applied for the Data Science Grand Challenge grant opportunity, and ultimately 34 unique institutions are part of the 13 awarded projects. Projects will commence upon final agreement between the awarded institutions (listed below) and the Foundation for California Community Colleges, which is administering the grants on behalf of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research.
Pathways Development Grants
Faculty Development Grants
Interdisciplinary Collaboration Grants
In addition to the 12 grant awards above, UC Berkeley will receive a $900,000 grant to serve as the Data Science Grand Challenge Cohort Coordinator – a critical role in promoting the sharing of ideas, approaches, experiences, findings, and data; supporting the success of awarded projects; and fostering collaboration and providing critical social connections necessary to accelerate positive systemic change.
To view the full RFP and learn more about the selection committee members, visit the Grand Challenge: Building Critical Mass for Data Science page.
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