Online Program

Reflection on the Master's Program Fusing Geosciences and Data Science (310005)

Keywords: climate, environment, geoscience, data science, higher education

In 2018, I founded the Geodata Science for Professionals (GDSP) Master's Concentration in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University. GDSP aims to create a highly competitive workforce that can harness weather, climate, geophysical, and environmental data for decision support in the public and private sectors. The program is designed with clear learning outcomes and objectives for the students. These include the ability to select and retrieve relevant data when given a practical problem, select the appropriate analysis approaches, carry out computational solutions for a range of data analysis problems, extract useful information from the data supported by domain knowledge, design and perform prognostic model simulations and predictions by incorporating the information extracted from the data, and appraise the predictions and analysis results professionally. The program integrates rigorous academic coursework, high-performance big data-science computing environments, and practical research and work experiences. In this e-poster, I reflect on the lessons learned from directing this program, its future, and the opportunities it creates for women.