BSDS Course Offerings

Psychology majors, and our future majors in Behavioral Data Science achieve a broad foundation in behavior, thought processes, and emotion. Students learn to think creatively and critically about human behavior across gender, culture, and age, and to relate psychological principles to everyday living. Psychology majors are also trained in experimental design, enabling them to evaluate new research findings and communicate their findings in writing and in oral presentations. Our additional course offerings as part of the Behavioral Data Science Initiative will provide students with interests in data analytics the technical toolkit to tackle the most ambitious data problems around human behavior. Most importantly, the training will provide a critical skillset for the jobs of the future.

A major benefit of integrating data science within psychology is the curriculum is specifically tailored to data and context that is most relevant to psychology majors. Before this initiative, data science and psychology coursework were taught independently, so the student was left to make the connections between the disciplines. Through our initiative and eventually the college major, we will make this connection explicitly, teaching skills that are most relevant to the types of problems, challenges, and data that concern scientists working with human-centric data.

We cannot underscore how unique this opportunity is and we encourage our current and future students to explore what we are doing.