The New York State Board of Education approved Houghton College to offer data science as a major in December, 2015. Since then, faculty have been hard at work developing the program into something that has experiential learning as a foundation for the program, as well as integration with various other academic disciplines. This semester Houghton’s first Data Science Consulting Group was in action using real data and analyzing it for a real client. Additionally, this summer Houghton will offer its first online data science course taught by Philip Martin, a data scientist for SumAll.org.
This Consulting Group will be a common component of the data science curriculum. Carmen McKell, President of Basemetrics Inc., said “the CDSA (Center for Data Science Analytics) is receiving about one request per week for future data consulting projects,” demonstrating that there is significant demand from organizations who want to get more value from their data. In the fall of 2016 she hopes to accept three of those requests. Through applications from students interested, there will be three student-run consulting teams.These teams will consist of a diverse team in order to help replicate the real-world work place.This semester’s team consisted of students from psychology, data science, mathematics, biochemistry, and communication majors. This is to provide the consulting team with an atmosphere as close to real world situations as possible. The teams will have real deadlines and deliverables to present to the client. These consulting groups will be slightly different from what Houghton College has done in the past in the sense that students and faculty involved will receive a stipend for their work. These consulting teams have the chance to establish long-term relationships between students and clients that may lead to internships and future jobs. This has been shown in this year’s consulting group in which a couple of the students have been asked to continue research for the client throughout the summer.
As of April 19, 2016 there were 50 prospective students that have declared interest in Data Science at Houghton, 12 of which applied, and four that have committed to Houghton. Ryan Spear, Director of Admission, expects the numbers to be much better by May 1. Also, Spear stated, “For a program that is new, not just to Houghton, but to higher education in general, it is very encouraging to see this kind of demand within the first year of the major being approved.” There are about three current students that have declared their major as Data Science along with about six confirmed minors in Data Science. The current students majoring in Data Science only consist of current sophomores and first year students because juniors and seniors do not have the ability to major in Data Science given time constraints and course requirements. There is expected growth in numbers of students involved for next year given that the major was only approved four months ago and Houghton College is one of the first liberal arts colleges in the country to offer an undergraduate degree in data science. “Houghton College is the first Christian liberal arts college to offer any sort of degree in data science,” said McKell.This is projected to be the largest growing job field in the United States.This is a monumental step for Houghton College, because there is an 18.7% projected increase in data scientist jobs between 2010 and 2020.