First-year students, James Westwood and Jon Powers, have recently begun collaborating with the Center for Applied Research and Engagement (CARE) on campus. The mission of the center is "Analytics for Good," and will be focusing on Educational Attainment Analytics, Human Resources and People Analytics, Sustainability Analytics, and Health Analytics. CARE engages faculty, staff, and students from all over campus including individuals from the College of Business, Department of Psychology, College of Health Sciences, and Information Technologies.
James and Jon are involved in developing an analysis framework for Gear Up, a major grant given to the university to help students in grades 7 – 12 stay in school and ultimately engage in higher education. The vision of Gear UP provide information to decision-makers about students, predicting educational paths they may take, and ways those paths may be influenced positively. The project involves a number of interventions, one of which would be to use a variety of analytic methodologies to extract data from things like writing samples, social media profiles, and college application portfolios.
While much of this semester is being used for preparations, the majority of the number crunching work for the project will be done next year. James is working under the direction of Dr. Joseph Cazier, the Director of CARE, and with faculty from the College of Health Sciences to develop the theoretical models behind college matriculation and dropping out of high school (e.g., what combinations of variables best predict when high schoolers are going to drop out or apply to college). Jon is working under the direction of Dr. Shawn Bergman to determine the hardware and software logistics for evaluating these theoretical models and how to provide actionable recommendations derived from the analyses. Jon and James will also be helping CARE determine out how to conduct a number of analytic techniques (e.g., text analytics) and the type of data that needs to be analyzed.
We are very proud of the work being done by our students and know they will continue to excel within the program!
- Written by Jessica New
James Westwood and Jon Powers
