Google grant powers AI-driven data science education at NCSSM-Morganton

The future of data science education recently got a significant boost, as the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) received a $408,000 grant from Google.org to supercharge its Data Science Summer Institute and Faculty Fellows programs with cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI).

With this support, school leaders said they will train educators across the state to provide students with the latest opportunities in AI.

“Data on all aspects of our lives and economy is being collected more comprehensively every day,” said Taylor Gibson, dean of Data Science and Interdisciplinary Initiatives at NCSSM. “The rapidly expanding field of data science prepares students to use data to address society’s challenges, both great and small, and this grant enhances our ability to offer cutting-edge coursework.”

Gibson explained the grant will be almost evenly divided between the two programs, both aimed squarely at equipping teachers to expand and improve classroom delivery of innovative programs.

DATA SCIENCE SUMMER INSTITUTE

Scheduled for June 23–27, at the NCSSM-Morganton campus, the Data Science Summer Institute is designed for educators interested in teaching data science at middle and high school or introductory college levels.

The program aims to equip teachers with the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively introduce data science concepts to their students, thereby fostering a data-literate generation prepared to tackle society’s challenges, according to school officials.

This summer’s program will be the fourth session held at NCSSM-Morganton. Gibson said the first three were funded by Cisco.

“We bring in teachers from all over, but we like to have a focus on our North Carolina teachers,” Gibson explained. “The goal of the workshop is to get teachers who are interested in learning how to bring data science back to their schools.”

NCSSM partners with community and college partners, such as N.C. State University, to bring high-level instruction to the institute.

“We have a lot of (N.C. State’s) folks to come out and lead some of the sessions,” he said. “We always love to collaborate with other folks who are doing similar work, so it’s exciting for us to bring them to Morganton to work with us.”

The Data Science Summer Institute is exclusive to the Morganton campus, where classes are held in the historic barn. The grant funding allows NCSSM to pay for teachers’ travel and other expenses.

“We put them up in local hotels, feed them on campus, take them out to dinner one night, and really treat them like professionals,” Gibson stated.

Last year, NCSSM added an advanced track for teachers who participated in the initial program and wanted to come back and dig deeper in data science. There was only one requirement for second-year applicants: They had to bring a colleague from their school or district with them.

“A lot of times with these new cutting edge programs, you’re the only person in your school, or sometimes your whole school district, that’s doing this work,” Gibson explained, “and (it’s good to) to have someone else in your building that you can talk to, to say, ‘I tried this lesson and it just didn’t go well — what could I have done better?’ or to celebrate the wins together.”

Applications for teachers who want to attend the institute are currently available, with a priority deadline of March 3. Apply at https://datascience.ncssm.edu/summer-institute.

Educators from diverse school types, subject areas, and experience levels are encouraged to apply. While priority selection is given to applicants from North Carolina, educators from other states are also welcome and have participated in previous years.

FACULTY FELLOWS

The grant also supports the Faculty Fellows program, which is dedicated to supporting NCSSM faculty in enhancing and updating the curriculum across various academic programs to include data science and AI components. This initiative encourages innovative instruction that can be shared with schools throughout North Carolina, ensuring that students statewide have access to cutting-edge education in these critical fields.

The program is meant to provide professional development and targeted training for faculty across all disciplines, on both campuses, to help them use data and incorporate AI into curriculum, according to Gibson.

Faculty Fellows is exclusively for NCSSM teachers. Gibson said this year, the school began the program with instructors from four disciplines: math, science, humanities, and engineering computer science. Two teachers are based on the Durham campus, one teaches in Morganton, and one participant teaches on both campuses.

“We meet about twice a month for live synchrony meetings where we either do training on a technical idea, like how do you leverage an AI language model to create a chat for your students to use to explore a particular topic or to self-assess their work using a rubric,” he explained.

Gibson said instructors may also discuss topics such as incorporating data analysis into a lesson and pedagogical training, like how to write clear learning objectives, and methods for writing a more effective lesson plan.

“Our physics instructor is trying to incorporate more data analysis AI into the satellite design class, and our humanities instructor is teaching an ethics and AI course,” Gibson said.

“Our teachers share some curriculum or activities they’ve done so everybody in the fellowship gets to see what other areas are doing, and offer feedback and criticism,” he added.

“This incorporates knowledge from all the different disciplines that we have at the table, so we’re trying to break out of the departmental silo that we often get stuck in,” Gibson added.

NCSSM has plans to share the wealth of knowledge garnered from the grant-funded initiatives.

“The goal at the end of the fellowship is that we have this curriculum that they spent a lot of time working on and then we share that out,” Gibson stated. “We’re not just going to keep all the good stuff that they developed here for us; we’re going to give it away to anyone else who wants to try to incorporate it.”