Chaminade University of Honolulu

Data Science

Data Science SPICE Summer Institute

For a third year, budding data scientists from across Hawaii and the mainland came together for Chaminade’s Supporting Pacific Indigenous Computing Excellence (SPICE) Data Science Summer Institute.

2021 Data Science SPICE Summer Institute virtual class meeting

The 2021 program, held virtually, included 21 participants and four student mentors. In addition to Chaminade, students hailed from Stanford University, Borough of Manhattan Community College, the University of Hawaii Maui College, College of the Marshall Islands and Northern Marianas College. They also came from a diversity of academic backgrounds, from Nursing to Environmental Studies to English.

The month-long seminar is focused on helping students use data as they seek to make a positive difference in their communities and includes immersive experiences, collaboration and a final project. Institute organizers say students walk away not only with new skills, but with a new appreciation of how data science can be used across disciplines to help spotlight problems and highlight potential solutions.

SPICE is held in partnership with the Texas Advanced Computing Center. Program leader Dr. Kelly Gaither is associate director at the center. Other faculty who helped make the institute possible include Chaminade Assistant Professor Dr. Rylan Chong, director of the University’s Data Science program, and Chaminade Vice President of Innovation Dr. Helen Turner, who is also a professor of Biology.

Students took up all sorts of questions and issues in their final projects for the SPICE institute, from socioeconomic factors linked to heart disease in Hawaii to the potentially positive relationship between video games and social anxiety to the impacts of wildfires in California on chronic diseases.

2021 Data Science SPICE Summer Institute Sarah Carroll's presentation

The overall project and poster winner was Chaminade student Sarah Carroll, who looked into whether the long-term impacts of food security in the United States include higher rates of chronic disease. Using publicly available data sets, she mapped out food insecurity in the US and found a slightly positive correlation between food insecure individuals and rates of arthritis, asthma and cancer.

She noted further study is needed to determine what’s driving chronic diseases in food insecure populations, along with which US ethnic groups have the highest rates of inadequate food access.

There were also three track winners named.

In the healthcare track, Chaminade student Caili Cain took the top prize. She sought to investigate implicit bias in the medical field, including how medical school pedagogy might be endorsing false beliefs about biological differences between Black and white patients. Specifically, she was interested in how official and informal medical school curricula contribute to bias about how patients manage pain.

Chaminade student Rhea Jose was the track winner for Environment, with a presentation that explored whether food availability and consumption in the US can show food loss or waste. She said the next step in her research might include investigating food waste per capita in order to make local level changes. And Chaminade’s Amber Sablan was recognized for her social justice-focused presentation. In her project, she sought to determine whether gentrification on Oahu could be contributing to homelessness by driving up home prices and bringing in new higher-income tenants. She said the lack of available data from 2020 limited her research, but she is interested in furthering her study into the issue. More specifically, Sablan wants to look at the number of unoccupied homes on Oahu along with outmigration rates.

Chaminade University’s “Community First” Approach Sparks an Innovative Data Science Collaboration

A Collaborative Vision: Waianae Coast Community Scorecard and Dashboard Project

As part of an innovative partnership, Data Science students at Chaminade University are teaming up with community groups in the Waianae Coast to develop a Waianae Coast Community Scorecard and Dashboard. This project is designed to be regularly conducted to measure community sentiment and report results that are easy-to-use, meaningful and actionable. The results will shine a spotlight on areas of opportunity and community wellbeing, and will help prioritize initiatives. Dr. Helen Turner, vice president of Chaminade’s Center for Strategy and Innovation and faculty of the Data Science program says, “this project is part of a broader vision that embraces Chaminade University’s ‘community first’ approach and the work done at the Center to foster an Innovation Moku in the Waianae Coast to build a refreshed economic reality that is resilient and fits with community priorities and wishes.”

This project is advised by Dr. Rylan Chong, director of the Data Science program and assistant professor at Chaminade University and by Joseph Lapilio, the executive director of the Waianae Economic Development Council and Waianae Moku Navigators.

Joseph Lapilio says “the Waianae Moku Navigators, made up of more than two dozen community organizations, is excited about the Chaminade Innovation Moku partnership and the prospect of having a reliable—and replicable—tool for gauging public opinion, welfare, wellbeing and key quality of life metrics in the Waianae Coast. A lot of what we do now is based on anecdotes or emotional reaction to issues going on. But actual data,” Lapilio said, “has power that could incite real action.”

The Partnership: Working, Learning, and Growing Together

The Waianae Coast Community Scorecard and Dashboard project was first piloted in fall 2020 and continued through spring 2021. Students enrolled in the Data Science 301: Community-Engaged Computing class worked with the Waianae Moku Navigators and the Waianae Economic Development Council to create an initial scorecard and dashboard.

Lapilio said he’s been “very impressed with how hard Rylan and his students have worked on the project. Rylan has been extremely open to community input,” he said. “Our long-term goal is not only in terms of a scorecard. It is also in terms of—how do we connect community members to data collection so it is more than just us? How do we work together? How do we connect?” The scorecard hasn’t merely been an academic exercise, but a growing experience for Chaminade students and for members of the community. “They need to be able to engage with the community, to see the community as a partner in this work,” Lapilio said.

The next step for this project is launching the initial scorecard to a test group before taking the scorecard community-wide to collect responses. The scorecard incorporates a host of data points, including information on food security, household income, housing, health, feelings about safety, technology infrastructure and acceptance, and a sense of belonging.

The Experience: Hands-On, Collaborative, Meaningful

Dr. Gail Grabowsky, dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Chaminade  says, “real-world projects and partnerships like the Innovation Moku get our students involved and allows them to apply their data science skills in a collaborative environment to address the wellbeing of their communities.” Chong adds, “the Waianae Coast Community Scorecard and Dashboard project is about providing the students with a taste of what data science can actually do and the positive impacts they could have in the Data Science discipline.”

Students participating in this project say the effort has been fulfilling.

“My biggest takeaway from the project was how far-reaching an effect data science can have,” Chaminade Data Science senior Aaron Walden said. He assisted with the effort in Fall 2020 and said it helped him understand how “data science can be used to identify community initiatives.” The scorecard, he said, “is a tool to visually see trends to support prioritization of the community initiatives.”

Senior Hunter Yamanaka, who is majoring in Biochemistry with a minor in Data Science, also participated in the scorecard and dashboard project in Fall 2020. He said “working with the community while digging into the numbers helped him understand how similar efforts could benefit organizations and the public. Data Science has endless ways of improving society,” he said.

“For instance,” says Data Science major Taylor Ishisaka, “data science can turn lists of data points and numbers into something visual and meaningful that everyone can understand. It can shape how we see the world.” Ishisaka, who participated in the scorecard and dashboard project Spring 2021, said “it has been eye-opening to see how much work and collaboration goes into a project like this.” Data science in Hawaii and the Waianae Coast Community Scorecard and Dashboard project is more than collecting data, programming, and analyzing data. When data science is applied to this project, it’s clearly a powerful discipline that can be applied to any field, provide a platform for a community to voice their opinions, inspire discovery and innovation, connect communities, and has the potential to confirm or make ethical societal or policy changes. As Ishisaka and Lapilio said, “when it comes to data science, the possibilities are endless, with real potential for inciting action and implementing positive change in our communities.”

Finding Solutions Through Data Science

Dairian Balai '22, Data Science major

Dairian Balai ’22 peers into data to find solutions. That’s where she found her passion, too.

The Data Science major likes to say that all those numbers—on everything from community health disparities to poverty to race and education—represent people, with hopes and dreams, just like her. She’s on a mission to tell their story (and hers) by spotlighting the data that speaks to real experiences.

“I want to shine a light on the problems we’re facing,” she said.

And even though she hasn’t yet graduated, Balai is already making her mark. Thanks to a series of programs at Chaminade, Balai scored a paid remote internship with a University of Texas lab to research maternal and infant mortality and co-morbidities in Native Hawaiian communities.

She hopes to use data science to spotlight what factors can help protect moms and babies.

Balai grew up in Waiʻanae and graduated from Waiʻanae High. During her junior and senior year, she applied to a long list of potential universities in Hawaii and on the mainland. And she was pretty set on going out-of-state for her undergraduate education. But then her high school counselor told her about the Hoʻoulu STEM Scholarship, which covers 100% of Chaminade tuition and offers support services.

Dairian Balai '22, Data Science major

The scholarship convinced Balai to take a tour of Chaminade—and she’s glad she did.

“Off the bat, I liked how it was a small community. The campus was small,” she said, adding that she later spoke to her high school adviser and realized that the financial support offered through the Hoʻoulu STEM Scholarship far outweighed other aid universities on the mainland were offering her.

“I decided to stay. If I went back in time, I would make that decision again,” she said.

Balai said the thing she appreciates most about Chaminade is the one-on-one support she gets from professors and advisers, who have connected her with key opportunities. “They really make it a point to help you plan out your future,” she said. “They say ‘Chaminade is a family.’ I really believe that.”

Balai originally majored in Biology because she planned to go into healthcare.

But the course of her studies changed after she was participated in Chaminade’s Supporting Pacific Indigenous Computing Excellence (SPICE) program. The intensive, immersion experience, in partnership with the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas at Austin, is designed to help train students to lead in data science and visualization efforts that support social justice projects in Hawaiʻi.

Balai said she learned coding in the SPICE program and worked with other students to create visualizations that helped illustrate her research area—how socio-economic status impacts healthcare.

From the SPICE program, Balai participated in a Computing4Change event in Chicago. The national competition challenges students to use computing for positive social change. Balai said through SPICE and the Computing4Change conference, she learned that data science wasn’t just about highlighting problems “but helping to solve them.” That, she realized, was the career she wanted to pursue.

Dairian Balai '22, Data Science major

So Balai switched majors to Data Science, taking the plunge even though it meant a little more time completing her undergraduate degree. She also started considering how she could eventually bring Data Science home—back to Waianae and the community she loves and eventually wants to serve.

She said Data Science helped her understand that having vulnerable populations doesn’t define Waiʻanae (and other communities with larger concentrations of low- and moderate-income families), but that socio-economic and other factors have a significant impact on the lives of Waianae residents.

She is especially interested in uncovering the factors that contribute to health disparities in her hometown. Data Science solutions to those gaps, she said, will help build a healthier community. And ultimately, that will help build a healthier state and nation, Balai added.

In 2019, Balai was offered a paid internship studying maternal health in Native Hawaiians. She said as a Native Hawaiian, the research feels personal—and all the more important given the healthcare challenges the community faces. She’s continuing that work and hopes to build on it.

In fact, Balai is now planning to go to graduate school.

She’s working with her adviser weekly to consider programs, and on crafting her long-term dream: returning to Waiʻanae to “build a better, a more aware community”—with Data Science.

Islands of Opportunity: First-Ever Virtual DataCamp

In November 2020, the Islands of Opportunity-Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (IOA-LSAMP) and Chaminade University Honolulu partnered to launch an online data analytics proficiency course for university STEM students from Hawai‘i and the Pacific. The DataCamp was run by Chaminade faculty and staff under the supervision of a molecular immunologist and biologist. The program offered a unique opportunity for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students to learn about the data analytics field through hands-on learning modules.

The University of Hawai‘i Hilo was also a participant in the DataCamp. Check out this article to learn more about the professors and students involved. We see bright futures ahead for Hawai‘i’s next generation of data scientists and can’t wait to see them use their newfound skills in our community! IOA-LSAMP includes 10 institutions across the Pacific region: Chaminade University of Honolulu, American Samoa Community College, College of the Marshall Islands, College of Micronesia—FSM, Guam Community College, Hawaiʻi Pacific University, Northern Marianas College, Palau Community College, University of Guam and University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Data and Design: A Powerful Storyteller

Majoring in data science means you spend a lot of your time combing through data, learning to use coding software, digitally mapping data and analyzing results. But at Chaminade University, it also means learning how to tell a story, understanding color theory, learning how to use design software and understanding the principles of visual communication.

Digital Humanities Avatar presentation

Data Science 403: Digital Humanities is a new interdisciplinary course taught by Dr. Junghwa Suh, associate professor of environmental + interior design and Dr. Laura Tipton, assistant professor of data science, that all data science majors at Chaminade are required to take. The course merges the fields of humanities and data science, and teaches students how to turn data into meaningful, visual stories and relate it back to various dimensions of human living.

“We wanted to challenge the more analytic students in the course to think more creatively, both in their presentations and in their topics of study,” says Dr. Suh. “We wanted to show that not every data science analysis is based on a scientific study, sometimes we use data science to analyse classic literature or song lyrics.”

For many of the students, this was their first foray into the humanities and they weren’t quite sure what to expect.

“At the beginning of the semester, I interpreted digital humanities solely as studying the history of data science and technology,” says Trinity Young, a fourth-year student. “But now, after taking this course, I better understand that digital humanities is the study of applying data and technology to analyze and better understand human society and culture.”

Digital Humanities Miley Cyrus presentation

In the first iteration of the course this past fall semester, each student was tasked with choosing a topic for a semester-long project that either brings them happiness or sparks their interest and passion. They then spent the first-half of the semester collecting and analyzing data, and the second half of the semester learning to develop a visually appealing story out of the data and present their findings. 

“[This course] really gave me another perspective in this area and allowed me to see the story behind everything,” says Taylor Ishisaka, a third-year student who used the project to explore how Miley Cyrus’s character has developed throughout various events and albums. “As of now, I truly think that it is necessary to have previous knowledge in humanities in order to understand the digital world better.”

Digital Humanities Australian Wildfires

Lilianna Flynn, a senior who is majoring in business administration and minoring in data science, did her project on the recent Australian wildfires. She used data visualizations and word clouds to determine the causes and consequences of the wildfires and to identify solutions. 

“I believe my word clouds were my best visual aid,” says Flynn. “They displayed the most important words and gave the readers a basic understanding of the news articles.”

But her favorite part was seeing how creative her fellow classmates were in choosing their topics.

“My favorite part of the semester was listening to everyone’s presentations,” says Flynn. “Everyone had different ways of analyzing their data and unique presentation designs. Now, I believe design is even more important to communicate data visualizations effectively.” 

While the course was fun and meaningful for the students, the professors also had a good time with it. 

“I was really excited when I saw this course listed as part of the data science curriculum because it gave me a chance to highlight some of my “passion project” research areas, including dance history and mythology,” says Dr. Tipton. “And it gave me a chance to see what non-science interests the students have.”

On the other side, Dr. Suh was excited to take a dive into the sciences. “I have always wanted to teach a course where science meets art and design, and vice versa,” she says. “I usually don’t have a chance to meet students from other disciplines, so it was great interacting with the data science students.”

The pair is now brainstorming ways to expand the course in the future.

“Now I’m excited to see where this collaboration goes and how we can include students from other majors, like design and other humanities, next year,” says Dr. Tipton.

New Data Science Scholarships

Chaminade University recently received a $1M grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to provide 20 scholarships for new first-year and transfer students who are majoring in data science.

Data science is one of the most in-demand and fastest growing careers in the Pacific region. As industries collect more data, they need more people who can analyze and interpret those data. This new program is part of a larger initiative to build a cohort of data science professionals in the Pacific to help support decision-making across Hawaii’s economic sectors.

“This program is all about access to high-paying in-demand jobs,” says Dr. Alexander Stokes, assistant professor at Chaminade University. “Every business sector in Hawaii, from healthcare to finance to energy and nonprofits, needs professionals in data analytics to provide decision support.”

Data science students at Chaminade participate in hands-on, project-based courses and internships that use real data provided by local businesses, agencies and community organizations. In addition to learning the necessary technical skills like coding and data visualization, students also learn about decision-making, data ethics and how to communicate complex datasets in a clear and concise way, ensuring they are well-versed in all aspects of the career.

“This project will empower students from across the region to find data-driven solutions to challenges in Hawaii and the Pacific region,” says Dr. Helen Turner, vice president for Strategy and Innovation at Chaminade University. “The Pacific faces unique challenges, and we need local students who can use local data to help us understand and address those challenges.”

The grant is part of NSF’s Scholarships in STEM (S-STEM) program, which seeks to increase the number of low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need who earn degrees in STEM fields. The scholarships will be available for new students who are majoring in data science, and preference will be given to students from Hawaii and the Pacific region who meet academic and financial requirements.

The new project aims to accomplish three things: 1) Mitigate the financial and academic barriers for low-income students from the Pacific; 2) acknowledge and address the cultural and non-academic barriers these students face when pursuing an education in STEM; and 3) develop new ways of teaching and supporting student needs, strengths and cultural expectations.

“There is a national need for well-educated STEM professionals from diverse backgrounds and experiences,” says Dr. Lynn Babington, president of Chaminade University. “The support from NSF will help strengthen the career pathway for low-income students and will ensure these future STEM workers receive a high-quality, values-driven education.”

Applications will be reviewed by a panel of Chaminade faculty members and students who are selected to participate in the program will receive a $10,000 per year scholarship. Program participants will also have access to academic navigators, cultural programming, life coaching, professional tutoring, paid internships, retreats and careers preparation.

/Honolulu Star-Advertiser article (9/28/20) >>