Steffy Jibikilay thought she knew exactly what she was signing up for when she chose data science at California State University, Long Beach.
Then, at a conference for women in engineering last fall, the first-year student announced her major to the organizers.
“Oh my god,” the woman said. “Oh my god, that’s amazing!”
Jibikirai stopped. “I was confused by her reaction.”
What Gibikirei didn’t know, but will soon find out, is that CSULB’s applied data science program has only been open for a few weeks. Out of more than 6,000 students in the College of Engineering, only 23 shared her field of study. She didn’t just enroll in the major, she helped launch it.
“I was like, ‘Wait, what?'” she said. “I was very shocked.”
CSULB’s computer science program is one of the university’s most sought-after and fastest-growing majors, but until now there has been no dedicated data science program. But as artificial intelligence redefines the way people work, teachers added: applied data science An interdisciplinary major that combines data analysis, computing, and real-world applications to prepare students for new careers leveraging AI and data-driven decision-making.
“We live in the era of big data,” said program advisor Associate Professor Wenlu Zhang. Department of Computer Engineering and Computer Science.
Dean and professor Shadnaz Asghari said the small number of students was a strategic choice. The plan was always to lock the curriculum in place before expanding.
“We focused first on building a high-quality, rigorous academic foundation,” she said. “Now that we have the infrastructure in place, we are ready to scale.”
Unlike traditional data science degrees, CSULB’s new program is designed to connect technical skills to specific fields of study. Other than the general education requirements, the curriculum for this major is segmented. Approximately 65% of the coursework is in core computer science, with the remaining 35% devoted to specialized courses.
We live in this era of big data.
Currently, the program offers two tracks, computational linguistics and health analytics, but Asghari predicts more will follow.
“We want to give them flexibility in addition to specific expertise,” Asghari said.
In healthcare, for example, data science is already changing the way doctors diagnose and treat patients. Rather than relying on trial and error to find the right treatment, future systems will be able to analyze genetic data to predict what will be most effective for each individual.
“Things are becoming more personalized,” Asghari says.
In areas focused on language, data science is powering tools like chatbots, translation systems, and voice recognition, technologies that shape the way people communicate on a daily basis. All these systems rely on large datasets and computing power.
AI is a tool. The same way the calculator was invented, or the knife was invented.
“It splits the workload into smaller subtasks across different processors,” Asghari explained of the distributed computing process. Then, once the tasks are completed, merge the results to get the final solution. ”
That’s the kind of work that excites Gibikirai.
In high school, she worked on a research project analyzing bacterial levels in hand dryers, collecting samples, tracking patterns, and presenting the results.
“It’s definitely a sense of storytelling and pattern recognition,” she said. “We need to think more broadly.”
She finds herself participating in the launch of this program and begins to understand how the dataset can be applied to different fields. An avid reader and with excellent English skills, Jivikirai is also interested in applying AI in other fields, but leans toward computational linguistics as her chosen career path.
“It can be used in a lot of different places, including businesses,” she said. And that’s exactly the point. In fact, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in data science is expected to grow by 35% over the next 10 years, far more than most industries.
While AI still dominates the conversation, Asghari tends to look at it from a practical perspective.
“AI is a tool,” Asghari said. “Just as the calculator was invented, so was the knife.”
How it is used and who knows how to use it is what comes next.
