DS4SJ Ecosystem

The Pitt Seed-funded Data Science for Social Justice (DS4SJ) Ecosystem project was a one year $75K funded project that demonstrates the G2A model of creating student pathways to engaged learning is scalable and can:

  • deepen Pitt’s social impact
  • improve connections across departments
  • provide students with meaningful workplace-relevant training in multidisciplinary teamwork

At this time, CAASI has concluded our year-long participation in the University of Pittsburgh Pitt Seed project.

This project proposed a novel infrastructure to deepen Pitt’s impact in DS4SJ, improving connections across units and providing workplace-relevant student training in multidisciplinary teamwork. We proposed a coordination of capstone classes across disciplines and semesters to scope, develop, implement, and deploy data science projects out of community requests, supported by a diverse ecosystem of faculty, staff, community members, and student leaders. A core faculty/staff cohort integrated takeaways into the norms, policies, and curricula in their respective units and shared their experiences in public workshops.

Fall 2022 Cohort Activities

Social Impact Career 101

This team, Natasha Williams (Assistant Director of Career Services & Diversity at GSPIA), Ivy Chang (412Connect project manager and BS student in Economics and Finance), and Zarah Glaze-Williams (MPA student in GSPIA), had organized a career talk and brochure to expose undergraduate students in business, social science, and CS to possible social justice careers. They also held a panel discussion on Social Impact Careers on November 14th 2022 with career/experiential learning specialists from SCI, KATZ, and GSPIA. This was followed by a Social Impact Resume workshop on December 5th 2022, led by Natasha Williams (GSPIA).

Information Ecosystems Podcast on the DS4SJ Project

Over the course of the 2022 Fall semester, the Information Ecosystems podcast introduced the DS4SJ Fall cohort and the projects they’re pursuing with their teams. Host Grace DeLallo (PPW ’23) began by establishing the goals of the Data Science for Social Justice seed project, informed by what data science and social justice are independently, and how a DS4SJ framework implemented at the University of Pittsburgh could be achieved. Each individual project within the DS4SJ project exemplified how that mission can be achieved, and the hope is that the podcast can act as an additional way to illustrate that. Click here to listen!

G2A Affordable Housing Working Group

During the fall 2022 semester, this collaborative effort with the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center (WPRDC) was a brand-new project at CAASI, and as such, the research questions were yet to be fully fleshed out. We explored bringing students into a direct relationship with practitioners, starting small at first (analyzing data based on a request), then moving into larger projects as relationships were established. Some proposed topics were: creating an early warning system for properties with Allegheny County Health Department or HUD inspection violations, or providing intelligence on housing investors. This project was led by Magda Gangwar (Masters student in GSPIA) and Bob Gradeck.

Software Engineering for Social Justice CS Capstones Projects

Nick Farnan, Faculty in Computer Science (SCI), ACPP volunteer tech lead Patrick Gavazzi (Tufts University CS), Palash Sharma (MSc student in Information Science) worked to improve and expand CAASI's ACPP platform, while extracting insights on best practices to organize CS capstones for sustainable, multi-semester development of social justice projects for the community. This project examined the functionality of the ACPP police accountability tool and found implementable ways that it could be improved. This included improving access to the search bar, restructuring the search function by categories, enhancing the functionality of the search bar, using preview test when searching, and fixing test parsing errors.

Institutionalizing DS4SJ

Eleanor Anderson, Assistant Professor of Research Practice Partnerships in the School of Education, Ashlyn Salvage (Education Policy PhD student), and Marialexia Zaragoza (Higher Education PhD student) worked to identify organizational structures that make interdisciplinary, practical data science for social justice work challenging to accomplish at Pitt and documented how the DS4SJ team is working to change that. They led the data collection & analysis, including pre/post surveys, interviews with stakeholders, and observations/artifacts from DS4SJ meetings and events. By the end of the term, the research team was well underway with data collection and had started preliminary analysis. They conducted 17 interviews with a variety of project participants, from staff to faculty to external partners, and have collected pre-survey responses and started a preliminary social network analysis of the group prior to participating in the project. Marialexia Zaragoza created a detailed annotated bibliography to provide research context and literature background for this kind of work in higher education that was shared at the last cohort meeting.

DS4SJ Event Planning

Eleanor (Nora) Mattern, the chair of Pitt’s 2021-22 celebration of the Year of Data and Society and a faculty in Library Sciences (SCI), led and organized Pitt Seed events with Kiara Jimenez (Undergraduate student in English and Psychology). They focused on creating events that build a collective understanding of the goal of the project (to build pathways for student participation in Data for Social Justice work), what our landscape currently looks like, and where we would like it to lead. Their Data Science for Social Justice Project Workshop event took place on December 9th, 2022. After working with Eleanor Anderson’s institutionalization worksheet and the data from the Pitt Seed Kickoff Event, Nora and Kiara identified three of the most relevant barriers to engaging in DS4SJ work: the Labor and Reward System, the Stewardship of Projects and Community Relationships, and Student Barriers. This event focused on not just identifying current barriers to DS4SJ work but on articulating actions and paths that can make this work more accessible and sustainable for students, faculty, staff, and community members alike. The event began with an introduction to DS4SJ work by Sera Linardi and was followed by CAASI student and ACPP Project Manager Emmaline Riall’s perspective on their own personal experience and growth through DS4SJ work. Afterwards, Damon Woods, the Director of Racial Equity Alliance at the XPRIZE foundation joined and spoke at the event, since CAASI was announced as one of the winners of the XPRIZE Racial Equity Alliance Ideas Competition. It was a real honor to have him and everyone there identifying new ways to close the gap to DS4SJ work!

Spring 2023 Cohort Activities

The Center Directors Integration Project

This team will include Gabby Yearwood (Managing Director of Center for Civil Rights and Racial Justice at Pitt Law), Michele Reid (Director of Center for Ethnic Studies Research at UCIS), Ron Idoko(Associate Director of Center for Race and Social Problem, at the School of Social Work), and CAASI student leaders Hannah Genovese (GSPIA ’23) and Blair Mickels (GSPIA ’22). The goal is to create a process for center directors to support recruitment of students to the DS4SJ initiative and promotion of DS4SJ projects that invert power dynamics between community-academia. This group explored the creation of a joint initiative that would combine academic research in ethnic studies from Center for Ethnic Studies Research with CAASI’s social justice/community engaged projects and student funding opportunities from Frederick Honors College.

The Community Partner Conversations Project

This team will include Nora Mattern (Director of Sara Fine Institute at SCI), Bob Gradeck (Director of Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center), and CAASI student leader Emmaline Rial (GSPIA ‘24). This group aimed to create templates that can be used in developing partnerships between University faculty and community members for data projects. During the Spring ‘23 semester, this group held discussions with DS4SJ project managers and faculty involved in community-engaged pedagogy, in order to identify desired guiding principles to follow when engaging the community. Such principles included, but are not limited to: ensuring bidirectional benefits, equitable partnerships, shared decision making and control of processes/outputs, and a long-term investment of time and commitment to the community. This group built off of existing work to create a planning tool to ensure that projects follow the above principles - view the Community Checklist here.

The Experiential Learning Curriculum Project

This team, lead by Kay Shimizu (GSPIA professor) and supported by GSPIA Director of Innovation Trupti Sarode and CAASI student leaders Kiara Jimenez (English ‘23), Ivy Chang (Econ ’23) and Palash Sharma (MS Info Sci ‘23), found new life for the CAASI scavenger hunt platform 412Connect as a pedagogical tool for humanities and social science classes. A scavenger hunt with class-specific goals can be a valuable experiential learning tool for students. Students will learn to identify how classroom concepts play out in real life and then document that as pieces of a mapped out scavenger hunt. Dr Shimizu will feature the creation of a scavenger to have students experience the multiple facets of food justice in SP’24 PS 1357 Food Politics. Also in the AY 23/24, Dr. Tyler Phan (Anthropology/Goldman Institute) plans to teach anthropology and ethnographic methods by having students plan and create a scavenger hunt of Pittsburgh’s Asian food establishments.

Student Resources

This group is a collaboration with the Johnson Institute for Responsible Leadership to connect, celebrate, and listen to social justice student leaders in Pitt and beyond. Group leader Julia Stantucci and student leaders Ivy Chang and Zarah Glaze organized the Social Justice Student Leaders Summit, which took place April 10th 2023. This summit aimed to engage undergraduate and graduate students across campus in order to: (1) elevate student leaders working to advance social justice across campus and in our community; (2) create a forum for them to network and learn from each other; (3) better understand the skills and characteristics these students believe are most critical to their success, potentially identifying topics for future leadership development trainings. Faculty, staff, and students could nominate student leaders they saw actively engaging in social justice work to address a challenge on campus or in the community, regardless of whether they hold a formal title or leadership role. We’d like to thank all of our student leaders for their participation in the Summit!


Institutionalizing DS4SJ

This group, led by Eleanor Anderson, Assistant Professor of Research Practice Partnerships in the School of Education, continued their work from the Fall 2022 semester. By analyzing group meetings and interviews of cohort members, they looked to understand the process of institutionalization and how to undergo this process in a successful manner. In the Spring, they conducted a second round of data collection and found emergent themes across their research.

Who was involved the DS4SJ project?

Over 20 faculty/staff/community members were part of the grant, but activities in each semester were driven by a cohort of 6-12 Pitt faculty/staff & student teams. In total, we connected over 130 Pitt students, faculty, staff and administrators through our Data Science for Social Justice (DS4SJ) Pitt Seed pilot.

Fall 2022 Cohort Members

Alison Langmead (Digital Humanities), Bob Gradeck (WPRDC), Natasha Williams (GSPIA), Nick Farnan (CS), Nora Mattern (SCI), and Eleanor Anderson (School of Education)

Spring 2023 Cohort Members

Gabby Yearwood (Anthropology), Ron Idoko (Social Work), Michele Reid-Vazquez (Africana Studies), Trupti Sarode (GSPIA), Bob Gradeck (WPRDC), Nora Mattern (SCI), Eleanor Anderson (School of Education), Julia Santucci (GSPIA), Kay Shimizu (GSPIA), Nick Farnan (CS), and Eleanor Anderson (School of Education)

Student team Members

Celeste Hall (GSPIA ‘24, Law ‘25), Zarah Glaze (GSPIA ’24), Hannah Genovese (GSPIA ’23), Blair Mickles (GSPIA ’22, Social Work ’22), Emmaline Rial (GSPIA ‘24), Kiara Jimenez (Psychology, English ‘23), Colin Griffin (CS ‘22), Ivy Chang (Business, Econ ‘23), Patrick Gavarazzi (CS ’24), Ashlyn Salvage (Ed. PhD Student), Marialexia Zagarova (Ed. PhD Student), Grace DeLallo (PPW ’23), and Emily Nissley (Psychology, Sociology ’23)

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