 I'm Ashley Rockwell, the Public Interest Data Literacy Fellow at Georgia State University Library. I'm joined by our wonderful PIDLIT student assistant, Nahimea Shifra. The PIDLIT initiative is focused on building and expanding programming that promotes data literacy for the public good and builds a more diverse pipeline of students interested in increasing their data skills. You might be thinking, why focus on GSU undergraduates? Well, at Georgia State University, we serve one of the most diverse student bodies in the nation. And with our partners at Perimeter College, we are also the largest university in Georgia. By expanding our outreach to first year students, we hope to grow a data-related career pipeline that is stronger and more diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, ability, gender, and social economic status. So you might say, why should we focus on data literacy skills? And why are they important? Well, for one, data is everywhere, yet many students still experience a fear of data and math. Many students, in fact, avoid data-related courses because of their fear or past experiences with learning math. A lack of data literacy means people are more vulnerable to being manipulated by corporations or other entities, and they will fall prey to misinformation. That's why we are working with students to help overcome the fear of data and math. We want our students to see how data literacy relates to their current interests and that becoming data literate can be fun. We believe that our data lessons, data workshops, and data talks will help enable this mission. Furthermore, data skills can be utilized to better understand and address social problems. We want our students to be empowered by what they can do with their data skills, including using their skills to better understand and address many complex social issues. And data is very powerful in that it can easily convey the importance of a social problem. Also, we are living in a data-driven society, which means more jobs require data skills. So in today's world, almost every industry deals with data of some sort. As a result, more and more employers are looking to hire people who understand how to consume data and then transform this into useful information. Thus, having data literacy skills will make a student more remarkable. The PIDLA initiative is working to ensure that students can build these important skills so that students can be career-ready and be more employable. We are taking a three-pronged approach to reach our PIDLA goals by expanding our PIDLA curriculum in our programming with flexible and class data lessons, student-focused data events, and an introductory level data literacy workshop. Our data literacy lessons are designed to engage students in using and critically evaluating data at a level appropriate for introductory courses. The lessons are crafted to be flexible and easily adaptable to maximize use across multiple disciplines, be that the social sciences, arts and humanities, or STEM fields. They also provide detailed instructions for instructors who might be uncomfortable with their own data skills. We have expanded our existing data in the ATL series and created a new data-empowered event series, both of which are focused on the core aims of the PIDLA initiative, including showcasing panelists from diverse backgrounds who are using data to promote public interest efforts and demonstrating how data skills have market value beyond traditional data careers. This semester, we have talks ranging from data literacy as a tool for social justice to the intersection of data and art. We are also highlighting various Atlanta area professionals who are using data to better understand and address housing and equity issues. Developing a data literacy workshop series, which covers core data literacy skills using real life examples and exposes students to a variety of data tools. We have already created a multi-part video series called Data Ready that covers various foundational data literacy skills. After students complete the series, they can build upon their skills through additional workshops. They'll earn a data-ready digital badge through Badger. And this can be shared on social media services such as LinkedIn, so that way students can demonstrate their data literacy credentials to their employers. The Data Ready videos have already been incorporated into GSU's College to Career pre-enrollment course for incoming students and are being used in various introductory level classes. These are just some of our current PIDLA projects and we'll help you join us on this journey as we expand our public interest data literacy initiative. If you'd like to find out more about PIDLIT and Arkeen, you can visit our website at pidlit.gsu.edu or find us on social media at getpidlit.