Event Descriptions
Introduction: Thursday, March 18. 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Larri and Maddi (event organizers and current DACSS students) will introduce themselves and go over the schedule for the weekend in more detail. You’ll also start to get to know DACSS Program Director, Meredith Rolfe, who is excited to talk to you and answer questions about the program and the many opportunities and directions available to DACSS students. Additionally, a poll will be sent out during the session to plan the Saturday night social event. Please plan to attend this event, if possible!
Event Link: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/96547875232?pwd=Qi9wb3FKRGVCQXp0UUZ0WldXSVNPdz09
Research Brown Bag: Friday, March 19. 12:00 - 1:00 PM
The DACSS program offers a series of research talks open to the UMass community. Admitted students are encouraged to attend “A new way to get groceries? Ride-sharing services and navigating outside of food deserts” presented by Kathryn Reynolds, a PhD student in the Sociology department.
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://umassamherst.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIlceGorD0pGNDOMoCGPqYbD_zSuREqcjGR
Faculty Meet-and-Greet: Friday, March 19. 4:00 - 5:00 PM
Curious about faculty research? This meet and greet will give students the chance to interact with DACSS faculty members, who will talk about their interests, research, and classes.
Event Link: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/96547875232?pwd=Qi9wb3FKRGVCQXp0UUZ0WldXSVNPdz09
Student Round Table: Friday, March 19. 5:30 - 6:30 PM
The best way to learn about a program is to talk to its current students. This round table will give students the chance to learn about the student perspective from members of the current DACSS cohort, who will speak about their experiences in classes, research, and more.
Event Link: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/96547875232?pwd=Qi9wb3FKRGVCQXp0UUZ0WldXSVNPdz09
Office Hours with Larri: Saturday, March 20. 1:00 - 4:00 PM
Do you have lingering questions about the DACSS program? Larri Miller, the DACSS Student Affairs and Recruitment Director, will be available for drop-in office hours to help you out!
Event Link: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/96547875232?pwd=Qi9wb3FKRGVCQXp0UUZ0WldXSVNPdz09
Social Night: Saturday, March 20. 6:30 - 7:30 PM
In order to accommodate everyone’s preferences for more or less structured conversation, we will be using Gather for Saturday’s event. In Gather you’ll choose a little avatar and will be able to walk around our shared spaces, joining and leaving small group conversations organically. We will facilitate a game/puzzle activity in one of the larger group spaces for anyone who wants to participate. You can join our social event here. The event space will be open throughout the weekend so feel free to check out the platform ahead of time.
Data Science Fundamentals (DACSS 601): Monday, March 22. 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Sit in on a DACSS core course taught by Professor Meredith Rolfe. This is a great opportunity for accepted students to get a feel for the way DACSS courses are taught. Check out the course categories offered in the Fall 2021 Semester here.
Course Description: This course provides students with an introduction to the R programming language that will be used in all core courses and many of the technical electives. There is a growing demand for students with a background in generalist data science languages such as R, as opposed to more limited software such as Excel or statistics packages such as SPSS or Stata. The course will also provide students with a solid grounding in general data management and data wrangling skills that are required in all advanced quantitative and data analysis courses.
Event Link: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/95217517686
Text-as-Data (DACSS 697D): Tuesday, March 23. 10:00 AM - 11:15 AM
Sit in on a DACSS technical elective taught by Professor Doug Rice and get a feel for the ways you can use Data Analytics skills.
Course Description: With the recent explosion in the availability of digitized text, social scientists increasingly are turning to computational tools for the analysis of text as data. In this three-credit course, students will first learn how to convert text to formats suitable for analysis. From there, the course will introduce and proceed through tutorials on a variety of natural language processing approaches to the treatment of text-as-data. This will include relatively simple dictionary approaches for measurement, supervised learning approaches for document classification, vector representations, contextualized embeddings, and more.
Event Link: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/99642249981
Geocoding Lesson: Tuesday, March 23. 2:30 - 4:30 PM
Dr. Forrest Bowlick, a geographer, member of the DACSS faculty, and lecturer at UMass, will lead an informational session and workshop concerning geographic information science for current and accepted DACSS students. This session will explore foundational ideas in spatial data and analysis, discuss opportunities for spatial coursework, and allow for hands on work on a key area of spatial data handling: Geocoding. Geocoding is the process of turning an address into a coordinate, essential for spatial work with address data. Data and analytical walkthroughs will be provided across a number of platforms to practice turning addresses into points, and turning points into a map!
Event Link: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/96547875232?pwd=Qi9wb3FKRGVCQXp0UUZ0WldXSVNPdz09