By Alexandra Goldberg
When data science meets social science and humanities, UC Santa Barbara students are eager to explore the ethical side of science and mathematics, says Sharon Tettegah, director of UC Santa Barbara’s Center for Black Studies Research.
Tettegah serves as the Associate Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at UCSB and is one of the core mentors of an innovative pilot program begun last fall to apply knowledge from all academic disciplines to study how data collection and analysis poses ethical questions.
Sharon Tettegah, Associate Vice Chancellor for Diversity at UCSB, is one of the core mentors of the SEEDS program, which expands the scope of data science.
Known as SEEDS, for Student Engagement and Enrichment in Data Science, the initiative currently has 50 students across various majors and is opening up applications for its next cohort on March 15.
“If I were to ask a question about algorithms that are biased and affect certain types of communities, I don’t think people would see the algorithms as the most important thing,” Tettegah said. “Ultimately, people see the human experience as the most important thing.”
In SEEDS, students work with faculty mentors in a range of disciplines to research major ethical and social questions, immersing themselves in the world of data science. Tettegah recently sat down to discuss the program’s goals and impact.
Q: What is the SEEDS program and what kind of students can join it?
A: The program is about exposing students from all disciplines to data science…First, speakers join us to talk about their research. We also host an open discussion where students raise questions about data science or computational disciplines. Also, the students get training with the UCSB Library data carpentry group, where volunteers provide workshops on introductory data science skills like R and Python. Lastly, each student is assigned to a mentor to work on different research projects. It’s a holistic approach to understanding data where the goal of this program is to allow students to gain skills that they can take to graduate school or the workplace.
Q: SEEDS focuses on the intersection between social sciences and data sciences. Why is this important for the field?
A: Data is everywhere and we use it all the time. Data is a human experience and we need both the social sciences and the computational experts to be critical of it. Many decisions are being made without consideration of how they impact humans culturally, gender-wise, and socially, for example. I encourage the students to think critically about algorithms that affect people in a negative way, such as police facial recognition work or with internet and access issues.
Q: Can you tell me about the key role of data ethics in the SEEDS program?
A: Data ethics is core to the program and to the knowledge that students are getting. The students are learning about what is ethically correct and ethically humane in data science.
(Interview continues below.)
East Carolina University education professor Len Annetta told students in UCSB’s SEEDS program that data science can be used to improve education by making better technology available to minority students and those from low socioeconomic statuses.
SEEDS Hears from Data Science Scholars
By Colleen Coveney
Len Annetta, an educator at East Carolina University, began researching ways to make education more interactive when he worked as a high school science teacher.
Education scholar Len Annetta explained how data science helps him use extended reality to improve education.
He realized that most of his students were playing video games outside of school, and figured classic classroom teaching methods would be ineffective at capturing the students’ attention for learning to take place.
Now, Annetta has used augmented reality to create an interactive periodic table which will allow students to visualize the elements and their chemical and physical properties. He hopes that the technology will spark in students a deeper curiosity about science.
“Things are now mobile,” Annetta said. “Regardless of age or learning style, we have to find ways to impact and engage our students through mobile technologies.
Augmented reality technology can make science understandable to unfamiliar audiences, recent SEEDS speaker Len Annetta told UCSB students.
Last week Annetta was the speaker at the bi-weekly SEEDS data science discussion, where he said his experience teaching minority students inspired his research into how to use data science to improve education. Often these students get left behind by an educational system that favors learners from more privileged backgrounds, he said.
Annetta stressed that applying technology to the educational experience can make scientific disciplines accessible to minority students or those from non-privileged socioeconomic groups. Annetta urged schools to alter their curricula to increase student engagement and collaboration in the learning process.
“Education is more about the thinking and the building,” Annetta said. “We shouldn’t be regurgitating onto our learners, they should be constructing their own knowledge.”
Transforming data into an augmented reality landscape is quite complex, Annetta said. His comments on interpreting data so it can be visualized by future scientists hit the mark for the first students in SEEDS, who study data in an interdisciplinary context.
In the new SEEDS program at UCSB, students of all backgrounds work together with mentors from a variety of disciplines, including Black Studies, Chicano Studies, Neuroscience and more, to study the ethics and execution of data science through a diverse lens.
UCSB SEEDS offers opportunities in neurocomputation with Black
Researchers Advancing Intelligence in Neurocomputation (BRAINS).
Q: What are SEEDS faculty and fellows most proud of?
A: I’m most proud that we have all of these students coming together hungry for information. I am also proud that students get research opportunities while advancing their knowledge in many different disciplines. In the future, I want to see a true living and learning community where students interact with each other around big ethical and social problems regarding the use of different technologies.
Q: How can prospective students get involved with the SEEDS program?
A: We take applications for the program. SEEDS is ideally for freshmen, but we have it open to all grade levels. If you’re going to be a SEEDS scholar, you have to show up to the talks, the discussions, the training and be in a resource group so you can really learn from the program.
Alexandra Goldberg is a second-year Communication major at UC Santa Barbara. She wrote this article for her Writing Program class, Digital Journalism.
Colleen Coveney is a fourth-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in Psychology and Brain Sciences. She is a Web and Social Media Intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.