(459b) Teaching Data Science to Undergraduate Students in the University of Iowa

The Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering (CBE) in the University of Iowa has taken concrete steps to improve and strengthen the teaching of data science to their undergraduate and graduate students in the past 3-5 years. The include:

– an addition of a numerical data analysis course that integrates classic numerical methods with modern programming/computing

– a statistics course taught by CBE faculty that is hands-on and programming-centric for data analysis

– revision of the process control course that brings Python programing and modern software/sensors to incentivize students’ learning of data science.

- an addition of machine learning and data analysis course that is of high interest to many high level undergraduate students and graduate students

In this presentation, we will share the progress made and lessons learned in through these courses. For example, we found the teaching is more effective when the projects are hands-on or have a self-design component or when the datasets are more tangible to people’s daily lives. Students are more interested in problems that require the integration of theory (including statistics), numerical methods, and programming.