The Wildcat Data Hub(WDH) supports data-driven research for students, faculty, and the community while offering paid, hands-on opportunities for student interns. By combining academic expertise with real-world projects, WDH is a great way to build skills, gain experience, and make an impact through assisting others with their research.
- Job Title: Data Science Research and Consulting Assistant
- Time Commitment: 9 hr/wk during Spring term
- Wage: Eligible for $17/hr after successful probationary period
- Unit Requirement: 1-3 Units of Math 589
- Requirements: At least one upper division or graduate class in Statistics or Data Science using R or Python.
- Majors: Any
This is a two part internship. After completing a probationary period of 45 hours of unpaid work, a successful demonstration of professional competencies, and a positive faculty recommendation, you will be considered to move into the second, paid portion of the internship for an additional 90 hours.
The Consulting Assistant works under a faculty mentor to assist campus researchers with unique data collection, analysis, and scripting related projects. In addition to working directly with clients, interns will assist the Hub director on development and expansion of the WDH by conducting outreach and recruitment activities and maintaining public communication channels such as the website and social media. Specific tasks will vary depending on the needs of the researchers and the skills of the student assistant.
Example Responsibilities Include:
- Provide drop in assistance on coding problems through Community Coding (similar to math tutoring, but for data science programming languages)
- Providing general technical support: Answering questions about computational, data analysis and visualization tools and techniques.
- Assisting researchers with all parts of the Data Science life cycle including
- Data cleaning and preparation (e.g. removing duplicates, handling missing values, and reformatting data)
- Data analysis (e.g using statistical software to perform descriptive and inferential analysis)
- Data visualization (e.g. creating appropriate charts, and graphs)
- Automation (e.g. writing functions and scripts to perform repetitive or complex tasks)
Note: Like subject matter tutoring services, the Wildcat Data Hub does not accept requests to help with homework assignments.
Example Skills Developed During the Internship:
- Use agile project management tools (ClickUp) to maintain a project timeline with deadlines and deliverables
- Improved solution-seeking skills (e.g. finding answers on places like Google, Stack Overflow)
- Professionally collaborate and communicate within a remote team setting using various communication systems such as email and Microsoft Teams.
- Understand and practice how Statistics and Data Science tools and techniques contribute to the success of student and faculty researchers.
- Improved ability to communicate complex technical concepts to clients from diverse backgrounds, active listening to their needs, and providing timely updates to build strong relationships.
PRIORITY APPLICATION DEADLINE: By 5pm on Dec 13th Click here for the online application link. If you have questions, please contact the Director of the Wildcat Data Hub, Robin Donatello at rdonatello@csuchico.edu