Following national trends, Pomona College to introduce new data science minor

Beginning in the fall of 2024, Pomona College will join Pitzer, Scripps and Claremont McKenna Colleges in offering the option of a data science minor. The introduction of this minor follows a marked increase in student interest in data science, both at the colleges and at higher education institutions across the nation.

Students who decide to pursue the data science minor must take six courses in the following fields: computer programming, introduction to statistics, foundations of data science, ethics and justice, linear algebra and one upper division course involving data, data ethics or data driven decision making. Additionally, students must complete a capstone project. 

Shannon Burns, assistant professor of psychological science & neuroscience and part of Pomona’s data science faculty, noted in an email to TSL that one benefit of an academic background in data science is that it can help students in the job search process. 

“A lot of students are concerned with getting a good job right after college, and the Data Science minor will teach skills that help with that,” Burns said in an email to TSL. “Data management and programming are increasingly relevant in many fields and knowing how to do those things well will help graduating Sagehens across a large variety of job paths.”

According to Lingurn H. Burkhead Professor of Mathematics Ami Radunskaya, beyond teaching students skills for future careers in the field, the data science minor aims to provide them with a new angle towards data.

“I think the hope was to have a way for students to engage with data in a deeper way and kind of a more informed way,” Radunskaya said. “We’re really encouraging students to think about how data is used in the world.”

However, Radunskaya explained that while the data science minor was initially introduced due to significant student interest, she feels that it is not something that aligns with a traditional liberal arts education, noting it is more pre-professional than most other disciplines. 

“This is the opinion of the school in general,” Radunskaya said. “They feel like data science is a career … so it’s not a field of study. It’d be more like training.” 

Radunskaya suggested that data science is typically associated with a direct career path.

“If it were a major in data science … you go out and get a job as a data scientist, whereas [Pomona College doesn’t] see our mission as training people for a job so much as training people to learn and become inquisitive citizens,” Radunskaya said.

The introduction of the data science minor has been in the works for several years now. Radunskaya explained that its addition was spearheaded by mathematics and statistics professor Johanna Hardin and that the decision to add the minor was influenced in part by the other 5Cs.

“[Other 5Cs] have data science majors … and so there [was] some pressure from students,” Radunskaya said. “So [faculty] got together and talked a lot and looked at what other liberal arts colleges were doing.”

According to Burns, there is no cap on the amount of students who can complete a data science minor.

“Currently there is no formal cap to the number of people who can minor, because we don’t know what our capacity is yet,” Burns said. “In these first few years we will learn how best to maximize the availability of the minor while still ensuring we can teach it effectively.” 

Elizabeth Newman PO ’27, a prospective politics and math double major, expressed her excitement about the new minor and echoed earlier sentiments. 

“[A] data science minor would help me with my major partially because it might mean that I don’t need to double major in math to get the experience that I would need for data analytics,” Newman said. “I hope to gain knowledge of coding and data analytics that’s more advanced than I would simply gain from a statistics track.”

Newman noted that data analysis is closely aligned with her academic and career interests. 

“I’m interested in a data science minor because I’m interested in data analysis, particularly in how it relates to politics, and I feel that data science would really help me with my ability to enter the workforce,” Newman said. 

Students interested in minoring in data science can reach out to a member of the data science minor steering committee, such as Hardin (Mathematics), Burns (Psychology/Neuroscience), Charlotte Chang (Biology/Environmental Analysis), Radunskaya (Mathematics), or Pierangelo De Pace (Economics) to inquire further.