If you know how to wrangle data sets, you can enter an exploding field in today’s data-saturated global workplace. If you know how to analyze and communicate your findings effectively—and how to apply a deep and widely informed understanding of the phenomena driving the data—you’re positioned to contribute much more profoundly.

That idea lies at the core of the Data Science Initiative, one of four Revolutionary Challenge winners. Drawing from Dickinson’s leadership in liberal-arts education, it proposes an interdisciplinary data-analytics program that would support and enrich multiple academic programs, helping students in every major learn to understand, critique and construct data-driven arguments that drive decision-making.

Since earning approval from the President's Panel on Innovation and the Board of Trustees, the initiative has already generated a new data analytics major and Department of Data Analytics as well as donor support.