Welcome to computational data science Wiki page. We are a multi-disciplinary group at McCombs. We meet weekly to discuss recent papers on computational data science and applied machine learning. In this Wiki page, we share information about our schedules, group members and other resources (e.g., relevant online seminars, grant opportunities, and conferences). 

Meeting 

Time: 2:00 – 3:30 pm CST every Wednesday. 
Zoom link: https://utexas.zoom.us/j/93173905628

Schedules

• September 9: Maytal, Maria and Yan will share their research. 
• September 16: TBD

People 

Resources 

Other online seminars 

• UT Explainable AI (XAI) group meeting: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~ml/xai/

Funding opportunities 

• NSF National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Institutes: https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=505686
• Facebook Fellowship: https://research.fb.com/fellowship/

Subscribe to us

https://groups.google.com/g/ut-computational-data-science

The National Center for Teacher Residencies has compiled a set of resources with specific explanations of how the CARES Act impacts students and teachers:

National Public Radio’s visual representation of how the $2 trillion will be allocated shows Education relief lumped in with “Other” for an estimated $43.7 billion. Kelsey Snell’s NPR story identifies the bill’s support to student loan borrowers, to college students forced to drop out before year’s end, and to work study programs. (Legal descriptions of the Student Loan provisions in the CARES Act, including the suspension of collecting payments through September 2020, are outlined by the National Law Review.)

• Laura Waters at Education Post distills the CARES Act’s K-12 education implications, including related funding for SNAP and Child Nutrition Programs benefits, in a helpful Q&A blog.
• The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) summarizes education-related measures included in the CARES Act, including the $30.75 billion granted to Governors through the Education Stabilization Fund and an extra $3 billion in the Governors Emergency Education Relief Fund, in a two-page publication.
• Jane West for AACTE’s EdPrepMatters blog outlines the legislation’s intended outcomes for higher education and K-12, including new waiver authority under The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). 
• An EdWeek blog by Andrew Ujifusa also describes the new waivers for which states and Native American tribes can apply, and an appeal to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos for a freeze on mandatory state testing and other accountability measures, such as those mandated for achievement schools.

And AACTE provides this summary of the bill's impact on K-12 and higher education here: https://edprepmatters.net/2020/03/third-federal-stimulus-package-education-provisions/

Dear Colleagues,

UTeach is a very connected community of amazing educators. We are drawn together by our work to empower all people with a deep, rich understanding of STEM. The need for STEM literacy for all is very apparent in these challenging days. For many years now, the UTeach community has illustrated that we are all in this together. The recent sharing of ideas and resources on listservs and emails is an outstanding example of how when confronted with challenging times we can draw strength from this community.

Today we are launching a wiki for the UTeach community to support ongoing efforts to share resources as we face the challenge of implementing UTeach in the age of COVID-19. Here you will find resources being shared to support online learning, discussions specific to individual UTeach courses, and more.

To make this as easily accessible as possible, it’s an open wiki – editable to all who have the link. You are welcome to log in using your UT EID (the same log in you use to access the UTeach Members Website) before you post, and if you do so, your comments and posts will be attributed to you. If you’d prefer to post without logging in, your posts will show as “by anonymous” so be sure to sign your entries with your name, UTeach program, and email address. We would like to keep the focus on the UTeach community and our particular challenges related to the shifting context of STEM teacher preparation. We particularly hope that you will share best practices, unique challenges, and engage in thoughtful discussions about the range of approaches being considered and implemented to address these challenges. We hope you will all contribute and use this resource.

Brian Cox gave a lecture some time ago where he created a metaphor drawn from physics. We can quibble with the physics in this metaphor (some of it is wrong) but I find it to be an empowering metaphor for our challenges.

“So here’s the amazing thing: the exclusion principle still applies, so none of the electrons in the universe can sit in precisely the same energy level. But that must mean something very odd. See, let me take this diamond, and let me just heat it up a bit between my hands. Just gently warming it up, and put a bit of energy into it, so I’m shifting the electrons around. Some of the electrons are jumping into different energy levels. But this shift of the electron configuration inside the diamond has consequences, because the sum total of all the electrons in the universe must respect Pauli. Therefore, every electron around every atom in the universe must be shifted as I heat the diamond up to make sure that none of them end up in the same energy level. When I heat this diamond up all the electrons across the universe instantly but imperceptibly change their energy levels.”

Tremendous challenges are always accompanied by tremendous opportunity. We are all experiencing significant changes to how we work, how we teach, and how we communicate daily. Our collective approach to preparing UTeach educators is also likely to change. We are really curious about what we will all learn as a result and how we will then come together to further improve the work that we all do to strengthen STEM teaching and learning.

Warmest Regards, 

Steve Case

USEA President

UKanTeach Co-Director

 

Kimberly Hughes

Director, UTeach Institute