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Data Science has become an increasingly popular major nationwide. Lewis & Clark followed this national trend with the creation of its data science minor that debuted in Fall 2021. The data science minor has grown in popularity from three graduates in 2022, to thirteen in both 2023 and 2024. The data science minor was the second-most popular minor among 2022-23 graduates, only after health studies. As of Monday, April 21, 56 students across all class levels have declared the data science minor.
It will soon be expanded into a new undergraduate data science major, with an estimated launch date of Fall 2027. As LC looks to modernize their offerings, the expansion of the data science major will bring LC into the future, while keeping its interdisciplinary teaching style. The new major is being spearheaded by Ellen Seljan, professor of political science and department chair of the current Data Science program and minor.
The formulation of the new major began in 2019 with the Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) initiative which seeks to expand both the curriculum and the non-curricular parts of LC in an effort to increase enrollment, which has been particularly low in recent years. Now, six years later, the process is still underway.
“We put together a proposal back then. That is what launched the data science minor, and now we’re moving forward to craft it into a major,” Seljan said in an interview with The Mossy Log.
Creating a new major requires several steps, which Seljan, as a member of the Strategic Imperative Advisory Council, is well-equipped to do. This council is part of President Robin Holmes-Sullivan’s “L&C Advantage” plan for the college’s development, and has been tasked with crafting a report outlining the best ways to move both curriculum and larger projects forward across all three campuses. The council delivered a draft report to Holmes-Sullivan on April 15, which includes mention of a new degree program in data science, and will deliver a finalized version to the Board of Trustees on May 9.
The process of launching the new major has had some holdups since its initial conception. Seljan stressed that because the conversations have been happening for a long time, there are current faculty who were not present at LC for the initial conception of the major that would be affected by the change.
“We want to make sure that the curriculum we put forward is the one maximally supported by everyone. We’re definitely going to be having more conversations next year, bringing in faculty, looking at some mock curriculums and hopefully proposing it to our curriculum committee,” Seljan said.
Another roadblock has been the need to hire staff to support the major. The advisory council is pairing the new staff necessary for the data science major with the proposed Center for Environmental Innovation, hoping to hire faculty who would serve both initiatives. The recently reported budget cuts amid reduced undergraduate tuition revenue have also negatively impacted this process, as LC seeks to cut costs associated with faculty across the College of Arts and Sciences.
“We’re hoping that those (faculty and staff) would be part of … the next big campaign that is launched by our thing, so that people could possibly give us endowed faculty positions that would be funded from outside the existing CAS budget. Because it is just empirically accurate that we would not be hiring from that source of funds in the near future,” Seljan said.
According to Seljan, data science is a useful skill in today’s job market.
“Data science is a really valuable skill set to have, and it can launch so many careers that have a huge impact. The amount of data that society produces is just exponential, and so there is going to be more and more data science work that needs to be done in every field,” Seljan said.
Seljan stressed the interdisciplinary nature that the major will have.
“I want to do data science a little bit differently than it is done at other colleges and universities. At most other programs, data science programs really just focus on the technical skills and the model and the math behind those things. And I want to do that too, but I also want to put at the forefront that data science is an applied discipline, that you’re not really doing in the abstract, that you’re doing real-world data,” Seljan said.
The new major will expand upon the current data science minor, offering new classes in natural language processing and AI usage. Seljan is hoping to create AI and machine learning classes that focus on government, political science and environmental science in the future.
The Overseas and Off-Campus Programs office and the data science faculty are working together to add opportunities for students in the data science minor, and eventually, the major. Seljan commented on a potential offering in Berlin the major has launched.
Current offerings within the data science department include the Data Cafe, which offers drop-in peer tutoring for coding in the Watzek Library, and a Data Science Grant from the National Science Foundation awarded to Professor and Chair of Biology Greta Binford in 2021. Greta received a no-cost extension in order to spend the money over a greater period of time, which has sustained its use since it was granted.
Seljan commented on her own excitement for the new major that has been almost six years in the making.
“It is amazing the advancements that data science has brought to everything. And I think ChatGPT and generative AI, those are the algorithms that we’ve been studying in data science for a while, so now they’ve deployed on so much data and can do so many things. So it’s really exciting for me to have students be able to not just use these tools, but really understand how they’re built and able to adapt them to new things,” Seljan said.
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