Our project, “From Curiosity to Career Readiness: Embedding Data Science in Sociology,” is a 3-year, interdisciplinary collaboration between the computer science and sociology departments at California State University San Marcos. We will design, implement, refine, and institutionalize a pedagogical and curricular innovation that supports (1) an equitable, accessible option for sociology students to enroll in data science courses, and (2) improvements in motivation, perception, sense of belonging, and identity in data science for sociology students. The first year of the project will bring data science to sociology students in their sophomore year through the redesign of the required introductory statistics course. As students’ curiosity about data science is ignited in the redesigned course, second year will offer two new courses to support their exploration of career options and help build foundational programming skills. In the third year, students will build a portfolio of data science projects through a new 1-unit lab course to accompany upper-division sociology courses. A learning community in the third year will support the curricular collaboration between sociology and computer science faculty. Classroom ethnography and pre and post surveys will be conducted to assess the quality of curriculum and impact of our project.
