In teaching, Carrie’s classes focus on the mathematical and computational language for today’s questions in key social justice issues, with an emphasis on STEM education, environmental sustainability, and policy. She has a passion for teaching about the digital, quantitative and computational in an interdisciplinary and inclusive way. To have a solid foundation in understanding your field, our future leaders need to have model and computational literacy.
Photo credit: Phyllis Graber Jensen.
Upcoming courses – Fall 2023
DCS 105 – Calling Bull (link to syllabus)
Q: What is the programming in this course?
A: This course is designed as a gentle first introduction to R and data visualization. However, equal time will be spent on reading and discussing current events and science and information as a field as learning computational approaches and language to explore data. As an “Integrated Core” DCS course, students interested in the philosophy of DCS courses will find this course to be balanced in both examination of digital-social issues alongside the introduction of programming to further explore such issues with agency.
Q: Why might students want to sign up for this course?
A: One reason to sign up is that students are looking for an introduction to R before moving into disciplinary-based statistics course. Another reason to take this course may be because students are interested in the way we visualize and communicate data to make arguments. This course is listed as a QR and SR satisfying course and does not have prerequisites.
Q: Is there anything else I should know about this course?
A: It adapted from the course “Calling Bull,” created by a Information Theorist, Jevin West, and Biologist, Carl Bergstrom, at University of Washington. Students can look over the website, callingbull.org, for some idea of what will be in the course. There is no textbook cost – some suggestions are provided at the bookstore if you are interested in following up on any of the themes.
Updates since last offering: News coverage of this course can be found here: https://www.bates.edu/news/2019/03/28/the-bull-is-in-their-court/
DCS/MATH 316 – PIC Math
Q: What is the programming in this course?
A: The programming in this course will depend entirely on the needs of the courses partner projects. The prerequisites are either programming or mathematics or community-engaged learning, and students can develop personal goals building on and contributing any of their strength areas, and/or they can choose to explore new techniques.
Q: Why might students want to sign up for this course?
A: PIC math is a course whose focus us on using mathematical, computational, and/or statistical methods to solve problems in partner organizations from industry, government, non-profit, and other sectors. The goal of this course is to understand how to design solutions in teams with partners, practice old and learn new skills to achieve insights and solutions, and communicate results. If you want to know the messiness of real-world problems – this is the course for you! Students will be encouraged to integrate their products into their website, GitHub, or other forms of professional portfolios.
Q: Is there anything else I should know about this course?
A: While the partners are not confirmed yet, some possibilities currently include environmental data/GIS, data scraping, analysis, and visualization support for social justice non-profits, web design, and education/K-16 data analysis partnerships. This list may change as it gets closer to fall and partners are confirmed.
Current courses
Dr. Diaz Eaton is currently on sabbatical at the University of Chicago and Brown University for the 2022 – 2023 academic year.
Past courses at Bates
DCS 304 – Community Organizing for a Digital World
Q: Why might students want to sign up for this course?
A: This course will discuss how online communities create social change. It will provide frameworks for organizing and encouraging online community formation and discussion. It will also provide insight into how social media and networks are a crucial part of digital organizing, and thus should be of interest to social science majors in particular. This course should also be of interest to any student interested in science, math, social science, education, and activism. This course will be completely driven by a community-engaged learning partner project. The Community Engaged Learning project is being determined, but will likely build on hashtag movements like #ShutdownAcademia, #ShutdownSTEM, #DecolonizingDNA, and #DisruptMath which seek to re-imagine a decolonizing and anti-racist higher education. Because of the nature of this work, students are encouraged to have prior course work in critical studies (either from DCS or other programs such as Africana or American Studies). DCS courses are included in the explicit pre-reqs, but students can email the instructor regarding prerequisite waivers for other courses.
Q: What is the programming in this course?
A: This course will have very little to zero explicit programming instruction. It will be primarily focused on design of equitable digital spaces and leveraging them for civic action. However, students with programming experience will be encouraged to contribute their skills to analyze engagement data.
Q: Is there anything else I should know about this course?
A: I am designing this course to be run completely online with limited full-class synchronous work, exclusively on Zoom. Therefore any student who cannot be on campus should be able to comfortably participate in this course. Group work will be a crucial part of this course, and groups will be encouraged to meet during pre-allocated class meeting time.
Updates since last offering: The partner will change each time this course is offered, and for that reason may be slightly different in content area (link to 2019 syllabus).
DCS 375 – Network Analysis (co-taught by Hanson Shrout and Diaz Eaton)
Q: What is the programming in this course?
A: This course will engage students in data cleaning, visualization and other tasks using the open source (free) programming language R. Prior programming experience is expected. This can be through a DCS course such as Data Cultures or Calling Bull or through a course in another department that uses R, such as Political Statistics. If you do not have prior R experience, having enough programming experience in other languages so that you understand the basics of a new language is important.
As an “Integrated Core” DCS course, students interested in the philosophy of DCS courses will find this course to be balanced in both examination of digital-social issues alongside the introduction of programming to further explore such issues with agency.
Q: Why might students want to sign up for this course?
A: Students who are interested in programming in real-life application areas which confront social justice, racism, and equity are encouraged to sign-up for this course. Students who have also declared the DCS GEC may use this course to meet an upper level DCS requirement.
Q : Is there anything else I should know about this course?
A: This course will be project based, will require group work, heavy reading, handling real data, and will engage students in real-world issues with open-ended questions and goals. This is the first time this course will be offered. As such the prerequisites will be set as “instructor permission.” Students eligible for permission will have 1) prior programming experience and 2) prior experience in courses which emphasize critical inquiry. Please send an inquiry to Dr. Diaz Eaton (cdeaton@bates.edu) and Dr. Hanson Shrout (ashrout@bates.edu) which speaks to your interest and prior course experience prior to registration.
DCS 108 – Introduction to Computation for Science and Mathematics
Q: What is the programming in this course?
A: This course is designed to expose students in science and math to the use of programming in those fields as it relates to numerical and visual exploration of mathematical concepts and models in science. It starts programming with visual diagramming and spreadsheets. Then we delve into recreating the same and more advanced work using a command-based programming language, Matlab/Octave.
Q: Why might students want to sign up for this course?
A: There are a variety of upper-level courses which delve into the use of programming while also introducing sophisticated concepts in science and/or mathematics. This course represents an alternative pathway to these courses, designed to more gently prepare students to engage. Calculus II is a pre-/co-requisite so that we can computationally explore the mathematical concepts already learned in Calculus I & II, and focus our attention instead on the use of technology to explore them and related applications. Another reason to take this course may be for students that have taken BC Calculus and want an alternative to calculus in order to complete the Quantitative Requirement.
Q: Is there anything else I should know about this course?
A: We will also discuss the use of computing to both advance science and mathematics and discuss how the approach to science has been changed by the advent of computing. We will also introduce key figures in early and contemporary computing. Matlab is not necessary to purchase for this course – there is a free version called Octave and both Octave and Matlab will be available for free via a web interface.
DCS 206 – The Past, Present, and Possible Dystopian Future of Computing (link to syllabus)
Q: What is the programming in this course?
A: This course will have no explicit programming instruction. It will be primarily focused on writing about ideas in computing.
Q: Why might students want to sign up for this course?
A: This course will examine in the past, present and future the following questions: “Who is doing the programming?,” “What are the uses and abuses of computing?,” and “Who has the power of computing and to what end?.” To explore this space, we will use both readings and film (as a result there is more class time reserved for watching films together in class), and then reflect our ideas through various forms of writing. This course does satisfy a writing-intensive W2 requirement.
Q: Is there anything else I should know about this course?
A: Writing in digital and computational spaces can take many forms. In the presenting of research involving code, we might be asked to engage in lab research reports and the act of writing code. However, in this course we are exploring the human consequences on computing technology, which might be written for public audiences or be written to have an affective effect on the reader. Therefore, in this course, we will introduce and practice the following forms: Literary Analysis, Personal Narrative, Public Informative Writing, and Creative Writing. To this end, we will be engaged in a learning community with the ARC writing tutor short term class, which will help us support peer-review processes. By the end of the course, each student will develop an ePortfolio with revised written work.
Updates since last offering: I expect to offer this course again in Winter 24. The original version of this course was listed as s22, but since then has been moved to the regular term re-classified under 206.
DCS/MATH 203 – Discrete Structures and Modeling (link to syllabus)
Q: How much programming is in this course?
A: This course assumes prior programming experience, such as DCS 103, 105, 108, or 109. This course will provide programming experiences across multiple languages including Matlab/Octave, Python and R – and students are encouraged to leverage this diversity to strengthen their understanding of the structure of programming languages.
Q: Why might students want to sign up for this course?
A: This course will introduce students to basic structures in programming, particularly in scientific computing and data science, such as algorithmic and computational thinking, probability, logic, vectors, arrays/matrices, and graphs. Topics used to motivate the course are taken from biology, environmental science, philosophy, economics, and geek fandom. For students that have a stronger grounding in one particular programming language, this will provide an overview of a few additional programming languages as well.
Q: Is there anything else I should know about this course?
A: The majority of the class time is spent on in-class projects. Therefore, there will be significant prep assignments outside of class to prepare for project time in lieu of lecture and attendance is extremely important. Discrete Structures and Modeling does not require a mathematics prerequisite, but there will be mathematical topics introduced.
Updates since last offering: I am expecting this course to be next offered in Winter 24. The first iteration was under course number DCS 303, but since then has been revised as a 200-level course and cross-listed with mathematics.
Previous Teaching Experience
| Unity College MA 2333 Calculus I* – Syllabus MA 3343 Calculus II* – Syllabus IC 2006 Summer Bridge Program LR 1113 Elementary Algebra LR 1123 Intermediate Algebra MA 1223 Algebra and Trigonometry/Precalculus MA 2243 Statistics MA 2003 Applications in Mathematics: Populations and Probability IS 4773 Ecological Disease Modelling* HU 1003 Spanish I w/Melora Norman ES Project Assistant/Leader* – Modeling Ecological Disease College of the Atlantic Modeling Continuous Systems with Differential Equations* University of Tennessee Math 598, College Mathematics Pedagogy Discussion Group** Math 598, Mentoring in Mathematics** Math 598, GTA Teaching Development Seminar** Math 152, Mathematics for the Life Sciences Math 110/113, Mathematical Reasoning Algebra I, Project GRAD University of Maine MAT 111, College Algebra Jackson Labs and University of Maine Augusta at Bangor Mathematics for laboratory assistants* *See my work in interdisciplinary mathematics education **see Graduate Student Teaching Professional Development Program. |
Archived page from Unity College website (link)
