Ani Adhikari

After weeks of bargaining, UC Berkeley and UAW 2865 remain split on wages, fee remission and hiring levels for EECS and data science course staff. 

About 60 academic workers, students, faculty, staff and Union Auto Workers, or UAW, 2865 leaders convened at Li Ka Shing Center on Wednesday to discuss the impacts and potential redress of cases of staff overwork in EECS and data science courses in a town hall meeting. 

In early May, the Harvard Data Science Review, or HDSR, assessed UC Berkeley’s leadership in the field of data science and UC Berkeley Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society, or CDSS.

Today, we engage in conversation with one of the architects of the program — professor Ani Adhikari. Currently the chair of the Undergraduate Program Committee in the department of statistics, Adhikari has been at the forefront of both designing and popularizing the data science division and major.

Data 8X, the course’s online equivalent, is free to audit, but students must pay in order to take exams and receive a certificate. This certification, however, will likely not transfer as academic credit or satisfy the data science major requirement, according to Cathryn Carson, the faculty lead of the Data Science Education Program.

Despite absorbing 750 additional in-state students this fall, campus administrators have no concrete plans to expand teaching faculty or campus infrastructure, including health resources, custodial services and dining halls.

As part of a fireside chat hosted by Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, about 20 students gathered at University House on Wednesday to give their input on the trajectory of a pilot data science class.

The new four-unit course, “Foundations of Data Science” — cross-listed as Statistics 94 and Computer Science 94 — combines introductory statistics and computational concepts with hands-on work involving hard data that brings “real-world relevance,” according to the program's website.