Mind: Data Analytics & Digital Humanities

Mind: Expand Data Analytics and Digital Humanities Across the Curriculum

Rationale

Technology, data, and artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming increasingly important in our academic and everyday lives. They are transforming how we see the world around us, from our understanding of the impacts of policy to our visions of the ancient world. In this new landscape, students need to think critically and creatively in a world transformed by data and technology. At the same time, training in data analytics and expertise in digital technologies are becoming increasingly valuable skills for college graduates entering the workforce and are a major point of emphasis in recent university initiatives. The ability to use data analysis and digital forms of communication are critical for addressing global problems and becoming active citizens in a democracy.

Description

Data analytics and digital humanities are two distinct but related fields that have wide applicability across our curriculum. Data analytics integrates research tools and methods from statistics, computer science, and related fields that can be used to conduct research in various domains, including the social sciences and the humanities. Meanwhile, digital humanities involves the use of digital resources and technologies in humanities research, as well as critically analyzing such usage.

The University’s successful DataLab shows the untapped potential for such programming on this campus. In providing students with a project-based learning program over the summer, DataLab allows students to work with government and nonprofit partners in applying data analytics to real-world problems with social impacts. It is now time to promote data analytics and digital humanities throughout the school year and across our curriculum. In doing so, our students will gain practical training in digital technologies and develop critical understandings of the promise and limits of a digital future.

As a liberal arts institution, the College strives for all members of its community to think critically, inquire, and create in a world transformed by digital technology and data and by the rapid expansion of AI. This vision will be realized through a program and process that will:

• Equip students, staff, and faculty across the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences with digital and data-informed approaches.
• Enhance digital and data-analytic approaches by building and enhancing domain knowledge and humanities-informed analysis.
• Address pressing contemporary challenges through the use and critique of digital and data-informed approaches.
• Facilitate the coherent, clear, and credible use of data and digital technology in scholarship and communication as well as the ethical use of technology and data.
• Integrate data analytics and digital humanities in both the curriculum and co-curricular activities.
• Support the use and understanding of data and AI on the part of students, faculty, and staff.
• Enhance interdisciplinary collaboration across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities.

Supporting Tactics

• Create a Center for Data Analytics and the Digital Humanities where faculty, staff, and students can find resources to help them plan appropriate data and digital humanities projects in their classes, in capstone projects, and in co-curricular programming. The center will also be a space for conversation among faculty about the role of technology and data in general education, across the curriculum, and in society in general. We envision the following components being important in the creation of this center:
  • The appointment of a faculty expert as director of the center with a staff made up of practitioners in data analytics and the digital humanities.
  • The provision of the computing resources necessary for data-intensive projects.
  • The creation of a program of student “data and technology fellows” who will tutor students and faculty in the fields of data analytics and the digital humanities and will work on projects generated by the center.
  • Postgraduate fellowships for graduates of the University of the South to stay on and work for the center.
  • A faculty fellows program to prepare faculty to offer courses and assignments in support of this strategy, modeled after the programs offered through the Office of Civic Engagement and the Center for Speaking and Listening.
  • Coordination with the Library and Information Technology Services Division to provide guidance and potential staffing for the center.
  • Coordination with the School of Theology’s Office of Contextual Education to provide assistance with its teaching on congregational data and neighborhood data.
• Consider creation of an interdisciplinary data analytics major and/or minor.
• Add appropriate data analytics or digital humanities classes as one of the possible choices in the G5 general education requirement.
• Expand the DataLab program in the summer, and explore ways of continuing its research projects into the school year.
• Develop courses in the curriculum on the ethics of digital technology.
• Explore the creation of a summer program for high school students that introduces data-analytic techniques and opportunities at the University of the South.