School of Data Science and Society launches
The implementation team for the new school outlines next steps and invites faculty, staff and students to contact them with questions.
After years of planning by hundreds of faculty and administrators across campus, Carolina’s School of Data Science and Society has launched.
Stan Ahalt, former director of the Renaissance Computing Institute, was named inaugural dean on July 1. The North Carolina legislature approved $1 million in funding in July.
“The School of Data Science and Society will leverage the talents of world-class faculty across disciplines and focus on the foundations and applications of data science to improve lives in North Carolina and across the globe,” said Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz. “The new school will also prepare students for a changing workplace and help attract and keep competitive employers in our state.”
Stan Ahalt (Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)
An implementation team — Jay Aikat, the school’s senior associate dean, Terry Magnuson, senior adviser to the inaugural dean, and Anna Medley, assistant dean for administration — is setting up the school.
“This is the result of many years of different committees looking at all aspects relative to a new school at Carolina and its relationship with existing schools and the College of Arts and Sciences,” said Magnuson, former vice chancellor for research. “There’s a lot of enthusiasm across campus by faculty in all disciplines.”
The school’s interdisciplinary approach will be reflected in a pan-University advisory council to be named this fall. “The goal is to get input and engagement from the different schools and the College,” Aikat said.
Jay Aikat (Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)
Carolina faculty, researchers and administrators have been working together to create the school for about a decade, said Aikat, who has been involved from the beginning, along with Magnuson. “Terry was vice chancellor for research in 2017 when he charged the first committee to start thinking big about data science at UNC, which turned into the idea for a data science institute and, ultimately, a proposal led by former Provost Bob Blouin to create the school.”
The team’s next steps include:
- Building out academic affairs, starting with a curriculum.
- Establishing faculty affairs such as guidelines for hiring new faculty, for establishing joint appointments and for promotion and tenure.
- Focusing on incorporating approaches developed by faculty and applications of data science to address societal problems and policy issues on the state and national level.
- Enrolling students and hiring staff.
Terry Magnuson (Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)
Over the next few months, the group will define research clusters based on the subject areas on which the school will concentrate. “We may have three-to-five research clusters to begin with,” Magnuson said. “And these research clusters will be interdisciplinary, involving people from different schools on a major challenge that needs to be solved.”
Aikat said that establishing the curriculum is among the group’s most important goals. “We’re well underway on building the online master’s degree program. A minor in the College already exists, and we’re working on both the BS and BA for students coming in. We’d like to be positioned to graduate the first class in June 2026.”
The implementation team projects that the first three years of a startup phase with hiring faculty and staff and launching degree programs will move the school into a steady state of operations in five to seven years. A brick-and-mortar location will come at some point when the school is on solid footing.
Anna Medley (Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)
“The SDSS leadership team is in the process of building out infrastructure regarding curriculum, academic and faculty affairs, student enrollment and student mentoring” Magnuson said. “Additionally, discussions are underway with units across campus to develop a strategic research roadmap for data@Carolina.”
“The collective expertise we need is already present on this campus. The SDSS will grow this pool of expertise and provide a focal point for collaborations,” Ahalt said. “Carolina is a unique institution that practices the credo of collaboration across disciplines. We will focus on the science, methods and technologies that anchor data science as well as applications that have an impact on society.”
The team members and Ahalt are open to hearing from faculty, staff and students who have questions about the school’s next steps and how they can get involved. Email sdss@unc.edu with questions.
Aikat compared the new school to a building starting from the ground up. “The foundation of this building depends on its foundational connections to the rest of our campus,” she said.
