Organizing and Sustaining Data Science Consulting and Collaboration in Higher Education

We will lead a discussion about mechanisms for organizing, leading, and delivering data science research support via consulting and collaboration in higher education. Topics will include robust, inclusive, and sustainable practices for developing policies and infrastructure, including potential strategies, benefits, and barriers to creating a sustainable data science consulting service within an academic environment. Together, we will examine broader organizational issues of data science consulting and research enablement models that have mixed staffing (e.g. faculty, graduate students, and professional consultants), home departments, areas of expertise, and funding sources. We will also explore the training and education involved in using graduate students as consultants. We will share some of the outcomes learned through an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant that brought together a cohort of diverse professionals working in this area. The goal of this discussion is to share and learn from a variety of successful models for consulting/collaboration in an academic setting. We will ground the discussion in an understanding of power dynamics between tenured/tenure-track faculty, non-tenure track faculty, research staff, and students.