Digital & Data Studies (DiDa)
We live in a highly digitized, datafied, networked, and programmed world. Harpur College's new Digital and Data Studies minor provides an interdisciplinary and hands-on immersion into digital literacy and data-inflected thinking, paired with critical and scholarly study.
Click here for more information on DiDa events.
What students can expect
This minor degree complements all of the majors in Harpur College.
The curriculum integrates practice- and skills-based learning in programming, data analysis, computational processes, and web development with critical study, drawing on the college’s long-standing strengths and commitments to data science, GIS, digital storytelling, and media studies. The program teaches its students to be both knowledgeable consumers and engaged producers of content on the internet, as a complex information landscape that provides valuable opportunities for learning and public-facing scholarship, even while it can be wielded to disseminate dangerous misinformation. The program is committed to promoting socially and culturally responsible approaches to technology.
Students will have the opportunity to study computational analysis and data-inflected approaches, drawing cases and applications from the range of disciplines in Harpur College. In addition, students will gain contemporary skills for employment and produce innovative digital work at all levels.
All liberal arts students can benefit from a heightened understanding of computational methods and data-driven processes, along with enhanced information literacy. These proficiencies are useful in professional, academic, and/or creative contexts.
Click here for more information about DiDa minor requirements.
Our commitment
The program is committed to promoting socially and culturally responsible approaches
to technology and an awareness of the impact of data-driven decisions and algorithmic
processes, particularly on communities that are already marginalized.
The varied disciplines of a liberal arts program provide paths to discover, explain,
understand, interpret, predict, and improve the world around us. Likewise, emerging
forms and modes of computing like model-building, coding, and simulation; digital
experiences and interactive media; and connectivity, visualization and digital communication
offer ways to support and extend such types of learning and inquiry.
