Client

Jen Maclaughlin, Assistant Dean and Director of Career Development, Arts and Sciences
Email: <jlm543@cornell.edu>
Telephone: 607-255-4166

Student contact

Stephanie Shum <ss2972>

Project

The client has suggested two projects. The choice between them will be made by discussion between the client and the project team.

1. Summer Experience Grant

Through the Arts & Sciences Summer Experience Grant, Career Development awards students money to help defray costs of an unpaid or low-paying summer experiences. Last year, we had ~180 students apply and 99 students received funding. There are several different pools of funding, for specific things, such as Journalism internships or government internships, but also funding for first generation and/or low-income students and other “generic” pools of money. Because we have all of these different pools of funding, we have students who could qualify for multiple funds (i.e. Journalism AND first gen). Last year, we tried to figure out the funding by hand, which was a very cumbersome task, and certainly not optimal. This year, we would hope that a project team could help us to create a code where we would put in the amount of money that we have, with the students and amount of money they are requesting, and then it will spit out an optimal formula who should receive what kind of funding and how much.

2. Post-graduate Survey data visualization

Each year, Career Development collects information from the graduating class to determine what they are doing after graduation. We then publish the material, both for the College as a whole, but also for each individual major in A&S (~40). When we publish the information, we have certain restrictions on what we can publish or not, dependent upon the number of responses that we have. For example, if we have 50 or more responses in a given graduating class, then we publish quantitative and qualitative information for 1 graduating class only. There are some majors that don’t have 50 responses in a year, but have 50 responses over a 5 year period, so in that case, we publish that information. Lastly, if there aren’t 50 responses over 5 years, then we only publish qualitative information. Ideally for any major with 50+ responses, we would like charts and graphs.