Active projects highlighted, *undergraduate student co-authors
Social Justice and Data Science
Supporting and foster diverse data science communities oriented towards justice: Initiatives include EDSIN (Environmental Data Science Inclusion Network), Data Science for Social Justice research communities at ICERM (2022, 2023) and IMSI. Affiliated with QSIDE Institute.
Press: ICERM 22 Highlight; Building Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Environmental Data Science
Publications: Lauer et al Scientific meetings for all.
Community-driven computing and data science: Working with WRWC and Nuevas Voces in Providence , RI to development VECINA (Visualizing Environmental and Community Information for Neighborhood Advocacy).
Press: IMSI Podcast Carry the Two, Carrie Diaz Eaton on Community-Driven Data Science.
Social Justice and STEM Education and Policy: Mixed methods analysis of the STEM community, its culture, and its policy detecting signals of change towards justice.
Press: IMSI Podcast Carry the Two inaugural episode June 2022, NPR Short Wave’s 8/8/22 interview with Carry the Two’s host Sadie Witkowski (policy work mentioned at minute 6) . “Diversity Statements divide mathematics community” Science Magazine.
Publications: Topaz CM et al Comparing demographics of signatories to public letters on diversity in the mathematical sciences; Roca et al. #DisruptJMM: Themes of online social justice advocacy and community building in STEM; Buckmire et al. On definitions of “mathematician”.
Networks for change in STEM Education
PI and Director of Strategy and Advancement RIOS Institute: Since 2019, RIOS Institute has helped the leaders in STEM and Open Education center conversations of equity and justice in their work through peer support, minigrants, and supporting high-level discipline-based policy progress (formerly the SCORE-UBE Network).
Press: Bates coverage on the RIOS Institute co-sponsored UBER GRC
Policy documents: Aboufadel et al. Creating Opportunities in Mathematics through Equity and INclusion (COME-IN) Department Self Assessment Guide; Aboufadel et al Guideline Statement #6: Best Practices for Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.
Publications: Diaz Eaton et al Sustainability Challenges for Open Resources to promote an Equitable Undergraduate Biology Education; Diaz Eaton, *Zhao, and Taylor Centering connections and collaborations in the evaluation of STEM education transformation.
Partnerships Director, QUBES (Quantitative Undergraduate Biology Education and Synthesis, qubeshub.org)
Press: Bangor Daily News, MBPN radio and “Online Hub Feeds Biology Faculty Resources” in Campus Technology
Publications: Donovan et al QUBES: A community focused on supporting teaching and learning in quantitative biology; Akman et al. Building community-based approaches to systemic reform in mathematical biology education.
Project Director, Math Mamas Current activity is led by Emille Davie Lawrence (founder of the FB group) through the FB group.
Publications: Special Issue in JHM, AMS Blog, AWM website
Interdisciplinary STEM Education Research
Critical Digital and Data Science Education: Gentle introduction to data science, Calling Bull (adopted from callingbullshit.org for Bates), community-engaged data science education, critical mathematics and data science education.
Press: “Misinformation is everywhere. These scientists can help you fight BS,” in the Washington Post & Bates News.
Publications: Alexander et al Beyond Ethics: Considerations for Centering Equity-Minded Data Science; Diaz Eaton Teaching Machine Learning in the Context of Critical Quantitative Information Literacy; Shrout and Diaz Eaton Bates College: An Integrated Data Science Curriculum: Networks, Cultures, and BS in Data.
Biocalculus: Initial development of biocalculus for wildlife biology, biology, environmental science, then subsequent research on with Marine Biology and SUMMIT-P
Press: To save corals, study science, math, and writing in Yale Climate Connections
Publications: The case for biocalculus part 1 (quantitative) and part 2 (qualitative), marine biology and mathematics; Humanizing biocalculus
Computational and Mathematical Biology
Disease modeling: Wildlife disease modeling, COVID modeling, modeling the Humans vs Zombies game – agent-based modeling, ordinary differential equations, and discrete difference equations
Press: Bangor Daily News; Coverage of Wildlife Biology major, Kari Lemelin winning mathematics research award for zombie research (2013): US News, Bangor Daily News, WABI-TV, and WABI-TV, Oct. 20, 2015.
Publications: *Simeonov and Diaz Eaton Modeling the Drivers of Oscillations in COVID-19 Data on College Campuses; *Simeonov, *Lemelin, *Driscoll and Diaz Eaton Zombies vs Humans: Data-driven modeling of disease spread.
Co-evolutionary mutualistic networks and complex adaptive systems: Plant pollinator systems research.
Student Opportunities
I often employ grant students for communications work (social media, building online communities), and most semesters have a student tutor for one of my courses. I am also open to employing students interested in educational data analysis.
Education Research
Our research lab, funded through the RIOS institute are taking on computational and qualitative research projects related to inclusive and interdisciplinary STEM education research. Some projects include computational text analysis of educational documents and using network science to understand change.
Former Lab at Unity College Operation Paperless
(Left to right):
Alexis White, Educational Impacts
Carrie Diaz Eaton, Advisor
Kari Lemelin, Web Design
Jake McGinley, Sustainability Science
Thesis advising options
At the moment, DCS does not have a major (there is a GEC!), but I also willing to advise and/or co-advise theses in other disciplines. I am accepting thesis students interested in research related to online communities, hashtag activism, equity in stem education, interdisciplinary education, building computing modules for educational use, mechanistic modeling of social systems and ideas, and evolutionary networks.
If you are interested in education research, consider taking courses from the Education GEC, an upper level statistics course, and appropriate multidisciplinary courses around equity.
If you are interested in worked related to online communities, please take my related course on DCS 303 Online Community Building as a methods course, DCS 104 Calling Bull, and Dr. Hanson Shrout’s courses DCS 10x on GenderTechnoCulture and DCS 20x Data Cultures as preparatory courses.
If you are interested in evolutionary networks, consider taking DCS 303 Discrete Structures and Modeling, MATH Stochastics, DCS 30x Network Analysis and BIOL Evolution.
If you are interested in mechanistic modeling of social systems and ideas, take DCS 303 Discrete Structures and MATH Modeling courses.
News coverage of student research
- Unity Wildlife Biology major, Kari Lemelin (pictured above right), wins mathematics research award for zombie research (2013): US News, Bangor Daily News, WABI-TV,
- Additional Humans vs Zombies coverage WABI-TV (Oct. 20, 2015)
- Unity Math Minor Joey Moran: BDN Aug. 31, 2016
