Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE): Discovering STEM at UC Davis – employing data science and the digital humanities to improve engagement.

Forbes magazine ranked UC Davis as the “best value college for women in STEM.” Let’s investigate why, together! In this hands-on Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE), you will leverage computational tools and methodologies to explore, analyze and design solutions to maximize discoverability and engagement with STEM offerings right here at UC Davis. Community-based tools like the UC Davis STEM portal help students and members of the broader community discover and connect with opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math. How do we define STEM, and how do people interface with the diversity of offerings at our university? Through this seminar you will learn about web scraping, text mining, natural language processing, and user interface design as you work on projects to optimize search functionality and increase content management automation for the Portal, which serves as a single point of entry for catalogued information related to STEM initiatives, clubs, programs and events on campus. This research will be used to improve the discoverability and accessibility of our university’s resources, and identify new opportunities for multidisciplinary research and engagement with STEM. The data we collect and workflows designed in this class will contribute to research in the digital humanities and philosophy of science regarding the shape of the discourse surrounding STEM in academia. It will also have a direct application in helping our students and broader community discover new resources and opportunities. Students will be required to work both individually and collaboratively in groups, and to share their learning with each other.

This course is taught by Drs. Carl Stahmer and Pamela Reynolds at DataLab.

For more information about CUREs, see the FYS website.

Enrollment for this course is currently closed.