Data & Society Minor
Data & Society Minor
Data science is changing the world and this minor — open to all UH students — helps our students engage in that transformation. We begin with the fact that the tools that have driven the new approaches to data all started in practical applications. The data science revolution isn't led by an elite group of believers but by a groundswell of pragmatic approaches emerging together to create a new way of looking at the world. The minor allows students to combine courses from majors around campus, and our expanding list of partnerships provide research and community engagement opportunities that tie the whole picture together.
Society is not a single thing — it's all the ways we communicate with each other and all the ways we convince each other to work together on shared projects. Understanding how data can be used to make an argument, how a representation is convincing or not, how a decision is well-grounded or not, all go back to the pragmatic elements of collecting, analyzing, visualizing, and representing data. The partnership with the Community Health Workers Initiative and its network of researchers and frontline health workers makes the pragmatic data problems in public health available to our students for projects in class and beyond. Other partnerships include educational and ecological data projects, and each student is encouraged to find a place where they are inspired to engage with the problems themselves.
Courses & Requirements
Core Courses:
HON 3350H: Principles of Data and Society
HON 4350H: Data and Society in PracticeApproved Electives:
CIS 4320: Decision Informatics
COMM 4372: Media, Power, and Society
ECON 3368: Economics of Health Care
HON 3397H: American Crime Story
HON 4355H: Engaged Data (Honors Colloquia)
POLS 3312: Arguments, Data, and Politics
POLS 3316: Statistics for Political ScientistsOther Requirements:
Students must complete at least 12 hours in residence, nine hours of which must be at the advanced level. A maximum of six hours of approved transfer credits may be accepted toward the minor upon the approval of the program director. No more than six hours of a student's major may be applied towards the minor. Students must earn a 3.0 GPA or higher in all coursework counted toward the minor.