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Technical Mentors

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Technical mentors for the Data Science for Social Good Summer program are Stanford graduate students or Stanford post-doctoral scholars who guide participating Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) student fellows on projects with societal impacts. DSSG student fellows will spend ten weeks working full-time, on campus, on data science projects that have been solicited from partners who require data science help on projects that have a social good oriented focus. Each team of participants will work closely with their partner, meeting weekly, and their work will culminate in a final project handoff and presentation. DSSG fellows will be mentored on their projects by faculty and advanced graduate students or post-docs (technical mentors). The program will also include some technical training and discussions on project-related and data science topics. Read about last year's program here.

The technical mentors will participate in the review of student fellows applications, the selection and scoping of projects,  designing learning activities and preparing the technical infrastructure. They will also participate in group building and training activities. During the summer, technical mentors will support the fellows in advancing the projects and in their learning as well as serve as coordinators with the project sponsor.   Examples of activities include: working with the teams on a project roadmap; side-by-side coding; and running interactive training sessions on data science skills. As a result, being a technical mentor requires at the same time strong competencies in at least one foundational discipline in data science (ex. Statistics, Computer Science, etc),  an enthusiasm for education, and the ability to take a leadership role. Technical mentors are supported by faculty and professional research scientists and will receive training in team management and effective teaching.   

Technical mentors work during the spring quarter to help prepare the program (approx 40 hours) and ten weeks at 20 hours a week during the summer (approx. 200 hours). SDS pays competitively by the hour.

For more information, see the FAQ, or the call for student fellows

Please contact ds4socialgood@stanford.edu with any questions. If you’d like to receive updates about the program, please subscribe to our mailing list.