Highlights of the National Academies Report on "Undergraduate Data Science: Opportunities and Options”

In 2016, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine of the United States established the Committee on Envisioning the Data Science Discipline: The Undergraduate Perspective. The committee issued a 120-page report in 2018, setting forth a vision for the undergraduate education in data science. This interview of the co-chairs of the committee, Laura Haas, the Dean of the College of Information and Computer Sciences at University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Alfred Hero, the co-director of the Michigan Institute for Data Science, is conducted by Rob Lue, the co-editor of data science education for Harvard Data Science Review. It provides a succinct summary of the key findings and recommendations of the Report, highlighting the call to equip students with “data acumen.” It also probes beyond the Report, including the possible roles of data science for reimagining liberal arts education in the digital age.KeywordsData Acumen, Data Ethics, Data Science Curriculum, Data Science Programs, Digital-age Education, Liberal Arts Education