 HBCU Digest Radio, welcome back. I'm your host, Jared Carter, a previous guest today, Mr. Todd Green. He is the executive director of the Atlanta University Center Consortium. And he is here to talk with us about an amazing new investment from an outside source, United Health Group, partnering with the AUC schools, Morehouse, Clark Atlanta, Spelman College, Morehouse School of Medicine with a $8.25 million investment to create the nation's next generation of data science professionals. So, brother, really an honor to have you on for this tremendous occasion. OK, thank you so much. It's my pleasure for being here and to participate as part of this conversation. So $8.25 million. And this is unique in the sense that we've seen a lot of gifts that will go to a singular institution to specifically invest in professionals in a particular field. But the unique part of the AUC is this is a collection of schools with a collection of missions, a collection of career focuses, or a folk that these schools have. And yet all of them are the target of UH's investment. Can you talk about what helped to cultivate the relationship and eventually the investment in this way? Well, certainly one of the important parts of this initiative is that it's been led by our faculty. So we had an opportunity to really understand that across our various sets of faculty members, whether or not it's in our medical school or at CAU and our comprehensive research institution, where at Spelman or Morehouse at our liberal arts colleges, that there was an interest of our faculty members already in data science. So this is not completely new to us, but it was an opportunity for us to recognize that we do have many kernels of faculty members who are working in this space. And we wanted an opportunity to really bring this together in a way that could be compelling. One important aspect about this is that when you look at the field of data science, there's a tremendous underrepresentation for African-American students in particular. And we recognize that there was an opportunity for us, given the fact that we have almost 9,000 students across the four institutions, to really impact the field of data science in a very powerful way, not necessarily in an iterative way, but one in which that we can be transformative and be the vanguard in data science education and research. And that's truly what this will amount to be, that Atlanta and AUC will be kind of like this national hub for where companies of all kinds of industries will want to go get diverse professionals in these fields. Is that the intent? Well, that certainly is the intent allowed as we think about moving forward with this initiative. Employers are revealing to us that this is an important characteristic or skill set for which they need employees. So for example, according to McKenzie, the need for data science jobs will actually increase faster than what can be trained, with over 200,000 positions going on field. And by the year 2020, there are going to be 2.72 million postings for data science. And by the way, it's important to note that these positions pay very well. And employers have shared that this is a space where those individuals, those employees with skill sets in data science, are going to be advantaged in the workplace. So we felt like this was a great opportunity. On the one hand, this is where the world was headed. But on the other hand, there is a paucity of African-Americans in these fields. Our faculty has had an opportunity to visit with a number of peer institutions, some of the leading institutions who are working on data science. And it's been very interesting for us to see that very few of the students at these institutions are African-American. And then also, the faculty members were very few of them had African-American faculty members. So really, if you look at it on the one hand, this is where jobs are growing. And this is where the future is. But on the other hand, this is a place where African-Americans aren't really represented well. So that was the perfect window for us to really enter into this space to say, what could we do in a transformational way to increase the number of African-Americans with these very important and relevant skill sets? One of the important considerations with respect to data science is that math is a foundational skill needed in order to support data science and data analysis. Now, this is a challenge not only for our sets of institutions, but also for HBCUs across the board because in many African-American high schools, in fact, in about a third of predominantly African-American high schools, calculus is not even offered. So our students may be presenting with opportunities that we need to strengthen math skills, but also exposure to data science, not only in terms of programming languages at the high school level, but also data science as a career option. So one of the important components of our effort is to also work with high schools, not only high school students, but also to reach out to high school guidance counselors, principals, teachers, et cetera, in terms of exposing them to these concepts through webinars and workshops, et cetera, around data science so that we can work on the pipeline, not just for the AUC, but also for HBCU schools across the board. So one thing about data science is that there's a lot of exciting opportunities that it creates for career development, for workforce development, and higher learning and advanced education for students, particularly for black and minority students, right? But there's also to speak to the need that you discussed, the reason for diversity and representation. What do you think that the AUC is gonna be able to offer, not only just in the form of pipeline professionals, but also in the value of diversity, which is representation for black folks and people of color's interests and protecting those interests within some of these new and emerging fields? Well, a couple of things I'll mention. One has to do with, we have a desire to develop an adult burner component where we can offer certificates, for example, for workers who might be already in the workplace. So that's an important component about our school's plan for growth that's within each of our school's strategic plans, and we intend for data science to be an opportunity for that to grow so that individuals in the workplace can come back either online or in person to obtain some sort of certificate or credential in this space. I will also mention that as we think about data science and what's happening around technologies, we've heard a lot about facial recognition, for example, as an enabling technology for efficiency. But with these types of technologies, there's also an opportunity, unfortunately, for bias. And so it's so important that we have African-Americans and underrepresented minorities, not only as users of these technologies, but also developers of these technologies. So as we move forward, it's important for us to be able to grow that type of talent to support that pipeline so that we have people who look like us who are at the table as these technological innovations are being developed and created and rules are promulgated around the use of these. Ethics is a really big issue around that. And one of the aspects of our program is really to get focused on that part as well. Those who may not be familiar with what data science is, a lot of times we hear HBCUs are expert level at STEM training. What exactly is the field of data science and what makes the AUC institutions ready and capable to produce this next generation of black and minority professionals in this field? Well, there are many definitions of data science as a case with many new fields. However, we like to use a very simple definition and that is the ability to extract value from data. So we know about big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence and other advances in aspects like data visualization, allow corporations and small businesses, nonprofits, educational institutions to make better choices through the use of data. We can think of sectors like manufacturing or logistics, healthcare as kind of the obvious sectors that rely on data analysis. However, these skills are also important to small businesses and retail and human resources and law, just to name a few. So data science is really everywhere, it's ubiquitous. So when we think about the Atlanta University Center Schools, we really are further ground for this if you look at the number of companies or the types of companies that are represented just in the Atlanta area from the financial technology companies to financial services, to logistics, to retail to hospitality, for example, all of these industries rely heavily on data science and data analysis. So we felt like with our mixture of our faculty and our interest and our growing knowledge in this space and capability, mixed that with our student population, 9,000 primarily African-American students along with the great need in Atlanta but also in other places that the Atlanta University Center is very well positioned to really drive a meaningful change in where we see African-Americans in this field. Tell us about the time it took to work with each of the institutions to determine the standards for like the curricular and training aspects of this. So it's one thing to have internships, it's another thing to have kind of a career pipeline going to United Health and other partners. But there is also an academic vein to this. So how did you work with each of the institutions to develop what would be the baseline for what students would get as part of this initiative? And I ask that because a lot of schools create partnerships and things like that but they usually pipeline into something else. This is something where there's gonna be a training mechanism behind that. So for everybody who's listening, presidents and provost, how do you kind of work that out and make it cohesive with the funding partner in this? Yes, thank you for that question. And fortunately, we have already a model for collaboration and working together. Within the last year, we have launched an arch history major in curatorial studies minor that was facilitated by also another donor. So that was a template which three of the undergraduate institutions were able to come together to articulate those programs and work together to develop standards regarding what courses would be offered and what would be required in the major as well as the minor. So for the data science piece, we'll be using that model as a template for moving forward with that. Now, a lot of the details are still being worked out. And fortunately, we are looking at other schools in terms of how they've developed. But we also recognize that while we're doing that, we have to look at it and develop something, a curriculum approach, a pedagogical approach that is appropriate for our own context. But I will share with you a couple of things that have really prepared us for this. One aspect is that, as I mentioned, data clients is a relatively new field and only within the last five or so years have institutions of higher education really taken this on through a bore. So with that, our faculty have gone out to visit other colleges and universities to really understand how data science operates and understanding of the approaches that each of these schools have taken. And we've done this by having teams of faculty members representing different colleges, different institutions, to go out as a cohort to meet with their peers. We've had an opportunity to visit with Columbia University of Virginia, Berkeley University of Texas, Ohio State. And our presidents actually had an opportunity to visit the Claremont Colleges. So by working together and having faculty teams, we have a faculty council on data science that meets monthly. So we have an opportunity to work through all of these efforts and I just wanna give a big shout out to our faculty. This is really a faculty led initiative. And I think that's another important component that rather than it being top down, this is definitely something that the faculty is leading, but also maintaining this very student-centric approach and approach that is really consistent with the unique aspects about how these programs should work in an African-American, predominantly African-American environment. One of the big things that came out of the press conference you guys held was that this is going to generate expanded economic opportunities, not just for the students and eventual graduates of this program who are going to get great, well-paying careers, but then the data that you will cultivate in some of the study will reveal trends in and around Atlanta and potentially throughout Georgia that will show pockets of economic disparity and then we will be better positioned to fix some of these issues. What are some of, from your view, and it's like a bird's eye view of the whole consortium working on this, what are some of the economic impact areas that you are excited about that this initiative will create that other corporations may come in and say, hey, we want a piece of that action with those schools too? Well, it definitely has an opportunity to extend across a number of fields. So I'll just mention one in particular, because our grant came from our initial grant in partnership with through UnitedHealthcare, our start, I will start with an example from there, but if you think about what is happening and with African-American populations, for example, as you know, unfortunately, we suffer from many chronic illnesses. And so we have an opportunity when we think about medicine and healthcare outcomes to really think about our approaches more comprehensively. So I'll just use, for example, stroke, that we suffer more from that affliction and hypertension, but if we think about the work that Morehouse School of Medicine is doing in neuroscience, but if we're able to couple that and break that with the work that Park Atlanta, for example, is doing in their social work school, where we know that many of the healthcare outcomes are related to social determinants of health, like where you were born, your income, for example, we're able to really bring those types of elements together in a very data-rich and data-intensive environment to think about solutions that might be more comprehensive than perhaps one that might just emanate from a medical field, for example. So if we're able to expand that level of thinking to lots of other areas, for example, social justice, would be another area of opportunity for which our faculty members are very engaged, then there's an opportunity for us to really extract value and to understand how these data sets can come together to provide insight in a way that could not have been possible and without the insight supported by big data or that are also afforded in an interdisciplinary environment. This clearly is a major investment from a national company into black colleges and particularly in Georgia and Atlanta when the competition is Georgia Tech and Henry and all those places. What is the message that you think this sends to other corporations, to the state government of Georgia, about the growing value and necessity of HBCUs in the state? And what is the foundation that you hope this lays for future and similar investments? So the opportunity for African-American students to participate in this aspect of the economy is great. And as we think about as our economies grow, the state of Georgia is one example, but the nation and even the world, these types of skill sets are going to be very important to our growth and workforce development is a huge component of economic development and economic growth. HBCUs are not anachronisms. We provide a lot of value and we've always adapted to changes in the economy. This is just yet another example, but perhaps in a bolder way and putting it out there in a very front-facing opportunity for our leaders to really understand the value that we have always provided and that we will continue to provide. Now, this is game-changing. This is an opportunity for us to leapfrog into an emerging technology. So it's not just keeping up with what the trends are, but it's also leapfrogging and putting us in an opportunity to make sure that our graduates are not only maintaining in the workplace, but they actually are being in a position to have greater leadership as these skills are emerging and developing. Absolutely, man. And we so much appreciate your hard work, the hard work of the university presidents, the boards of trustees, the faculty and the students for making something like this possible. As we round out, brother, just let us know how we can get more information about what the AUC is doing, where people can potentially donate through the AUC portal and any other place where we can get information and support the work of the consortium. How can we find you guys? Yeah, so please look us up at the Atlantic University Center website, which is AUCenter.edu.