Florence Hudson knew she was on to something when more than 700 people registered to attend the inaugural event held by the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub‘s new initiative, the National Student Data Corps (NSDC).

The target audience for the February 2021 online career panel was young people who may not have access to a data science curriculum, or cannot afford to go to school right now, and could benefit from free online data science education and a community of support. The virtual event was designed to inspire learners from all backgrounds to “see themselves” in data science careers and featured a diverse group of professors, researchers, and data science professionals.

“I wanted to build a mission-based program that delivered data science awareness and education to all, with a specific focus on underserved and underrepresented students and communities,” said Hudson, who is the Hub’s executive director.

Today, NSDC provides aspiring data scientists with free online data science education, mentoring, and career and networking tools, including live virtual events and YouTube videos. The program’s more than 2,000 participants represent 355 institutions across the U.S. and 19 other countries, including Australia, Botswana, Canada, Ecuador, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Lebanon, Mali, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands, Nigeria, Philippines, South Korea, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

Community, diversity, equity, and inclusivity are core aspects of NSDC and student suggestions initiated the program’s expansion into a chapter system and its upcoming Data Science Symposium, which is accepting submissions for Fall 2022.

“We listen to the students, and we follow them,” Hudson said. “It’s a lesson I learned from marketing—when you follow your customers, your customers follow you.”  

Prioritizing Student Leadership

Before joining the Hub as a student assistant in October 2020, Columbia University senior psychology major Haleigh Stewart didn’t know much about data science beyond what she learned through her social science prerequisites.

“I had an idea that data science was a very rigid industry that had a very strict career trajectory that didn’t align with my own because I’m really into the social sciences and media, and I didn’t know where those crossroads were,” said Stewart, who was one of NSDC’s founding committee members and an organizer of its career panel series. “Organizing these panels and hearing about all the different ways that people have used data science in their careers inspired me to learn more…I can show attendees that you don’t have to be from a certain background in order to have this be valuable for you.”

Student assistant Benjamin Sango, a Columbia senior economics major, was drawn to the Hub’s work due to academic and professional interests in how data is used to make decisions and understand behavior. While these tools are important to him as an economics student, they will be even more valuable to his family’s retail business in Ghana. 

“I’m beginning to see how data science is applicable to every aspect of our lives,” Sango said. “It’s possible for anyone to get involved as long as the right resources are available.”

Sango, who has been selected to serve as a senior marshal during Columbia’s 2022 commencement, is an active user of the services he helps provide to other young people. He has taken advantage of the free data science courses available through the Hub’s Learner Central and leveraged his new skillset to develop dashboards to track community engagement analytics.

“When I started at the Hub, there wasn’t a good picture of the demographic and geographic parts of the U.S. and the world we want to reach. We wanted to understand, ‘Who are our audience and where are they from?’”

As part of the Hub’s student leadership team, Stewart and Sango collaborate with other Columbia students on the Hub’s many activities and projects, including the Research Experience and Leadership (REAL) Program, which is open to students and professionals wishing to pivot or advance their careers.

More than 90 volunteers from around the world have helped develop educational resources, assisted with programs and events, and even contributed research. Along the way, they gain professional experience and soft skills, according to Hudson. “Part of our mission is to give students these types of opportunities. We bring them in, we validate them, we nurture them, and we help them grow. That’s what we do.” 

A Broader Mission

While NSDC is situated within the Hub’s education and data literacy focus area, the programs it offers and the population it serves are relevant to the broader mission of the entire Big Data Innovation Hub network.

Founded in 2015 by a National Science Foundation grant, the Big Data Innovation Hubs are a nationwide network of institutions committed to accelerating innovation in data science and strengthening the big data ecosystem through knowledge sharing and collaboration. Each hub is based at a university and represents constituents of one of the four regions of the U.S.: Midwest, Northeast, South, and West.  

Hudson joined the Hub as a member of its steering committee and advisory board in 2015 and became executive director in 2020. She and Jeannette M. Wing, Columbia’s executive vice president for research, are co-principal investigators at the Hub. 

Hudson would like to see NSDC become its own nonprofit organization to address equity and inclusion in data science.

“I’d like to see the NSDC program become an advocate and catalyst for change like the Society of Women Engineers, which has grown to have tens of thousands of members, as we cultivate a community of all genders and people interested in data science from around the world.”

— Karina Alexanyan, Ph.D.