MCDC is a collaboration of non-profit or community organizations and data science students and experts from several Chicago-area universities addressing challenges and opportunities around extracting insights, deemed relevant by the community, from data.
We aim to:
Facilitate the transformation of data into knowledge that is inspiring for and actionable by a community organization
Contribute to an agile, representative, and inclusive data-science workforce via designing and implementing cross-disciplinary training:mentoring and opportunities for diverse students to acquire broad and transferable analytical skills,
Build a community of educators, researchers, and students that can work with communities to discover and disseminate best practices in data science,
Facilitate access to data, real-world data-science projects, and data-science training materials for the common good.
Each summer project consists of a primary contact at the community organization, two to four undergraduate students, an expert faculty mentor, and optionally an expert co-mentor who is studying in a Master’s program. Teams are assembled so they have appropriate and complementary experience and expertise.
Community Partners can also work with a practicum course at one of our dedicated universities throughout the school year. There the learning will be facilitated within the classroom by the mentor with a larger number of students. These projects fall within the schedules of the universities with which they are paired. We strive to encourage early communication around these projects so that there is ample time to prepare for the course needs and structure.
We welcome communities with data challenges in health sciences (for example related to COVID-19), environmental sciences (for example related to sustainability), or social sciences (for example related to equity).
