On Sept. 18, 2019, the School of Data Science became the University of Virginia’s 12th school and the first school of data science in the nation, a moment years in the making that positioned UVA as a national leader in this rapidly growing field.
Guided by the aim of creating a collaborative culture and founded on the promise of interdisciplinary research, it would become the School Without Walls that Phil Bourne and others had envisioned.
Bourne, director of the Data Science Institute, would become the first Stephenson Dean of the School of Data Science, which was made possible by an endowment funded by commitments from Jaffray Woodriff and the Quantitative Foundation, UVA’s Bicentennial Professors Fund, and a newly announced $3 million gift from Scott and Beth Stephenson, which matched an earlier donation of that amount that they made in 2014.
The Stephensons had been longtime supporters of the University, including the Data Science Institute. In a 2019 news announcement about the gift, Scott Stephenson, who continues to serve as chairman of the School of Data Science advisory board, said, “The expanded scale of the School will help fulfill the vision of data science as a domain of knowledge reaching across all parts of the University.”
So, what was one of the top agenda items for a new school dedicated to data science?
“One of the first things we did was really to step back, a bit ironically in a way, and say to ourselves, what is data science?” said Bourne, noting that 10 different people might offer up 10 different definitions.
“We felt it would be really important if we all started off, to some degree, on the same page,” Bourne added.
Out of these discussions came the 4 + 1 Model, an effort to better define data science that was heavily influenced by Rafael Alvarado, an associate professor.
The model lays out four areas of data science — Value, Design, Systems, and Analytics — connected by a fifth area, Practice, which are the activities that occur when expertise from each of the four areas are brought together.
Using that model, the School offered up this definition of data science:
“Data science is a convergent field that integrates expertise from four broad areas of knowledge — value, design, systems, and analytics — with the purpose of extracting information, insight, and value from data in a responsible, authentic, and actionable manner. Data science concerns more than data analysis — it includes the broad and directly relevant contexts in which data analytic work takes place.”
The 4 + 1 Model continues to serve as a cornerstone of the School of Data Science both in education and research.
While in college in Ontario, Melissa Phillips knew she wanted to be a math teacher. “I love working with students,” she said.
“Learning new things is something that I always strive toward, and then being able to impart that knowledge to others and care about people as people who are trying to grow and helping them do that is really rewarding to me,” she added.
Phillips’ journey is reflective of those taken by many in the field, including a number of students at UVA, in that her path didn’t go in a straight line or check any predetermined boxes about what one needs to do to pursue a career in data science.
After a brief stint as a teacher, she went back to school to get a master’s degree in theological studies. She then moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2007 while her husband was pursuing a doctorate degree, then to Charlottesville in 2010 where she resumed her career as a math educator.
While teaching at an independent school in Charlottesville, she decided to explore professional development opportunities in computer science so that she could incorporate it into her math curriculum. Soon, she was teaching her students how to code. It was at this time that she attended a math competition where a data scientist delivered keynote remarks.
“I hadn’t heard of data science until that point,” she said. The speaker described how data science combined elements of computer science, math, and domain knowledge.
“And I thought, that’s exactly what I want,” Phillips said. She discovered the graduate program at what was then still officially the Data Science Institute and enrolled in the residential master’s program in fall 2019.
She found the program and her cohort to be a great fit, and she appreciated the opportunity that her coursework provided to work closely with her classmates.
“One thing I loved about the program is it’s very collaborative, and every class had some kind of teamwork project,” Phillips said. “And so you really have the opportunity to bring your skill set and to allow other people to shine too.”
After graduating she would join GA-CCRi, a firm that works with government agencies and private sector clients to solve problems through data science and other techniques. She continues to work there now.
She encourages other students to consider the field that has become her career. “If you’re driven to find meaning in the world, then I think that data science is one way to get there.”
Phillips opted for the residential master’s program in 2019, in part because forging in-person friendships in class was important to her. While her experience at the School of Data Science began within the walls of classrooms, it would not end that way.
In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic upended all facets of society, and its impact was felt deeply at colleges and universities across the country.
On March 11, all UVA classes moved online, with students encouraged to return home and President Jim Ryan informing the University community that “we will not be holding classes on Grounds for the foreseeable future.”
Like the rest of the world, the School of Data Science, which was not even six months old when the shutdown began, would suddenly be forced to make dramatic adjustments.
“Phil often said during that time, ‘Building a new school is hard; building a different kind of school is harder; building a different kind of school in the middle of a pandemic is damn near impossible,'” recalled Arlyn Burgess.
Burgess added, though, that the School, despite its youth, was well positioned to weather this unprecedented disruption.
“We had a huge number of resources at our disposal, and also, data science became so important so fast in the pandemic itself,” she said, citing interest in network models and predictive analytics to track the spread of the disease.
Additionally, the School’s recent creation of an online master’s program proved even more beneficial than could have been imagined when it was conceived.
“All the residential students went into that online program,” said Phil Bourne. “So the teaching part was affected, but not as affected as badly as it could have been.”
Still, for a school that was in its infancy, particularly one whose aim was to foster collaboration, the pandemic created unavoidable challenges.
“It’s very much dependent on how people are personally interacting all day, every day,” said Bourne of the conditions needed to create the culture the School was aiming for. “And when you lose that, and everybody’s just in a Zoom window, it really affects things. When I look back on it, I’m actually surprised we did as well as we did.”
For students like Melissa Phillips, it was not the conclusion to her one-year master’s degree experience that she imagined or desired.
“It was challenging and not the way we wanted to end things because we really wanted to have that graduation moment,” she said.
Nevertheless, she credited the School for how it handled an incredibly difficult period.
“I feel like the transition was easier because of all the support we got from faculty and staff,” Phillips said.
Even though it was far from a traditional commencement, Burgess did fondly recall the poignant video remarks Bourne recorded on the steps of the Rotunda to honor the first group of master’s students to graduate since the School of Data Science had been established the year before.
Burgess remembered the moving scene and the look in Bourne’s eyes during his remarks and what she knew it signified: “The people that are getting those degrees are the future of what data science is going to be.”
In the summer of 2020, in addition to a pandemic, the nation experienced a racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis.
Less than three years earlier, the country’s attention had turned to Charlottesville when white nationalists descended on the city for the “Unite the Right” rally, which resulted in tragedy.
These incidents, and others, threw into sharp relief how much work remained to build a better, fairer, and more equitable society.
Phil Bourne credited Claudia Scholz, the director for research development, with making the case for how the School of Data Science could be a part of that work.
“She really is very passionate and helped me a lot in thinking through how we should respond to these events and how we should nurture our students and our faculty and our staff,” Bourne said.
One step the School took was to create a new position: associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion. To fill that role, in 2021 Bourne tapped Siri Russell, who had served as the inaugural director of equity and inclusion for Albemarle County since 2018 where she had led efforts to create and implement a diversity, equity, and inclusion program for the county.
In a release announcing her hire, Russell said she was inspired to join the School because of its “commitment to using data science to achieve positive outcomes.”
“Their mission is not just stated but put into action, and their work effects change on a large scale while transforming the field,” she added.
The work of the School’s Office of Equity and Inclusion has included community initiatives aimed at making a direct impact. The School participates in the UVA Equity Center’s Starr Hill Pathways program, which is designed to highlight a wide range of career possibilities for Charlottesville-area young people, including in data science.
There is also the Data Justice Academy, a residential data science research experience held each summer for undergraduate students from groups that are historically underrepresented in data science.
Guiding these and other initiatives aimed at promoting diversity and equity is the school’s Inclusive Excellence Plan.
The School has also been active in advocating for gender diversity in data science through events like Women in Data Science (WiDS) Charlottesville, which is organized as a component of the annual WiDS global conference. It was an idea that emerged in the Data Science Institute years during a visit by the team to Stanford University, which hosts the global WiDS conference.
“The big thing we got out of that visit was WiDS,” said Don Brown, the institute’s director at the time who thought that UVA could hold “the East Coast version.” The conference continues to be held each year at UVA.
While the Data Science Institute was active in helping to recruit faculty in its early days, new hires were not coming to the institute directly but rather joining other schools, such as the School of Medicine or the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
As Don Brown said, “We were basically looking to hire people who would be able to be collaborators.”
Early in his tenure, Phil Bourne noted the considerable pressures he and his still-small staff faced.
“We were borrowing faculty,” he said. “We were just constantly scrambling,” adding that, if they had lost a single person, “we wouldn’t have been able to deliver the program.”
However, with a new school firmly established, by 2021 efforts ramped up to expand the roster of data science faculty. New professors would include Jeffrey Blume, a statistician from Vanderbilt University who became the Quantitative Foundation Associate Dean of Academic and Faculty Affairs.
In 2022, 11 more faculty members joined the school’s ranks, and their backgrounds were emblematic of the breadth of what data science represented at UVA.
There was Paul Perrin, who would hold a dual appointment with the Department of Psychology; Natalie Kupperman, an expert in applied sports science who studied biometrics and wearable technology; Alex Gates, a computational social scientist; and Sheng Li, an artificial intelligence researcher, to name a few.
Bourne noted the exciting possibilities this diversity of academic backgrounds created.
“I’m seeing things happen that would just not happen if we were in separate departments within the University,” Bourne said — including in his own work as a leading researcher, where he, with a background in biomedicine, has collaborated on research with Terence Johnson, an economist, who was another 2022 hire by the School.
“We would never have come to this piece of work if we didn’t have those two perspectives,” Bourne said.
In 2023, the data science faculty roster further expanded with 14 experts from fields such as sociology, history, mathematics, and machine learning, with wide-ranging research interests that include the environment, data governance, and cloud computing.
The staff was also growing throughout this time. Gone were the days of Arlyn Burgess single-handedly traversing Grounds to do outreach or build a master’s program from scratch.
Admissions and student affairs offices were taking shape to ensure that students could make the most of their experience at the School. Other administrative support personnel were also in place, and research administration and information technology staff were joining the ranks, all to help ensure a rapidly growing school could achieve its academic and research goals.
Prior to the School’s launch, data science efforts at UVA were led by a small group of people conducting research at the Data Science Institute and building and implementing a master’s program. In just a few short years after its founding, a growing, vibrant School of 100 faculty and staff would become a national leader in a field with unlimited promise.
“The growth of the faculty, the growth of the definition of data science, and the ability to hire people to do the parts of their work that they take to the complete next level is humbling and exciting, and I think that it’s far from over,” Burgess said.
Bourne pointed out that a net effect of this continual infusion of talent has been that the School experiences a reinvention each year in the most positive sense possible.
“Each of the four years of the School’s existence it has become a completely different place,” he said. “The addition of faculty and staff make it so, coming with new ideas and energy.”
Building something new with an accelerated timetable for achieving goals has proven both exciting and challenging.
“Has it been hard? Absolutely,” said Burgess. “Has it been fun? Even more absolutely.”
However, while there was joy to the mission, there was also strain. Both Bourne and Burgess are quick to acknowledge that, in hindsight, the School could have been more measured in setting its agenda during those early days.
“We did too many things,” Burgess said. “We did too many things at once.”
Bourne recounted times when staff members would come to his office and emotionally explain the toll implementing these aggressive plans was taking — episodes he described as the low points of his tenure.
Despite the difficult moments, the emergence of a passionate, committed, still-growing team of faculty and staff to deliver on the School’s vision has been a singular achievement, according to Bourne. Of the successes for the School since it launched in 2019, that has been “probably the most incredible thing of all,” he said.
As the School grew, so too would its academic programs. The School of Data Science would achieve another milestone in this area in 2022 with the approval of a doctoral program.
In a release announcing the new program, Ian Baucom, the University’s provost, underscored what this development meant for the field itself: “Creating a Ph.D. in data science at UVA is another step toward using data to solve global problems.”
The full-time, residential program kicked off in August. Thomas Stewart, an associate professor who would join the faculty that fall, would eventually take the helm as program director.
In a video promoting the new Ph.D., Jeffrey Blume, associate dean of academic affairs, described what would distinguish UVA’s degree from others affiliated with data science but focused on statistics or computer science or some other related discipline.
“What makes our program unique is that we’re all in on data science,” Blume said. “We view ourselves as growing the next generation of data scientists.
In a year-end blog post, Phil Bourne reflected on this momentous moment.
“Our new Ph.D. in data science launched this academic year with 16 diverse students, all risk takers who have entrusted us with their careers,” he wrote. “We will not let them down.”
With the doctoral program approved, residential and online master’s degree offerings, and a very popular minor — which began in 2020 — all established, the School of Data Science lacked only one critical degree option to complete a full suite of academic programs: an undergraduate major.
In 2023 that moment would come. The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia in September approved a data science major. Current first-year students in the 2023-24 academic year would be eligible to apply that spring to join the program’s first cohort in fall 2024.
Describing the new major, Brian Wright, an associate professor of data science and director of the School’s undergraduate programs, said: “We’ve designed and are going to deploy a curriculum that is not seen anywhere else in the country.”
As for interest in the new major among students, there was little concern about that. The data science minor had become the most popular minor at the University, with more than 740 students enrolled from more than 50 majors by 2024, and the enrollment number continues to climb.
“It will be a popular major based on the demand that you’ve seen already from students,” said University President Jim Ryan.
Ryan also noted that the new undergraduate program would help further the University’s mission of serving Virginia and society.
“My hope is that not only will it enable students to be prepared to pursue a host of careers that we didn’t even imagine a decade ago, but also that we will prepare them to make a genuine contribution,” he said.
Adding a doctoral program in 2022 was another step toward expanding opportunities for students to pursue graduate work in data science as well as further illustration of the importance of advanced research in the field to the new school and the role that its academic programs played in that effort.
“I think that the synergy and virtuous cycle that exists between doing teaching and doing research is really important,” said Phil Bourne.
He further explained: “You’re not going to get research grants, you’re not going to do top-edge, leading research if you’re not current in aspects of data science. So, once you do that, of course, then you are obviously teaching those as well. And by teaching them, you learn more about them, and then you bring in students to help with the research.”
Don Brown, who was leading the School’s research portfolio as senior associate dean, had witnessed — and led — research efforts since the inception of the Data Science Institute when he was its first director. He noted some of the areas he was most proud of and his hopes for the future of data science research at UVA.
“The integrated Translational Health Research Institute of Virginia, or iTHRIV, I’m very happy about our creation of that because that has allowed us to do a lot of important research, including, most recently, the research that we’ve done into COVID,” Brown said.
He also cited the relationships built with the Schools of Medicine and Engineering as key partnerships. Looking ahead, he hoped the School would continue to build on these foundations and look for other areas where it can continue to expand its footprint.
“Work with the Environmental Institute is an up-and-coming area that I’d like to see us continue to grow and to build out in a number of ways,” Brown said, adding that he also hoped that cybersecurity could be a research focus going forward.
Jim Ryan, the University’s president, said the impact of the School of Data Science was being widely felt.
“You’re already seeing what I had hoped to see, which is that the School of Data Science is not just a value to the faculty or the students who are participating, but it’s a real value to faculty across the University.”
Ryan noted that the School’s reach also extended far beyond Grounds.
“We’re able to offer services to governmental units who are interested in data analytics to better understand the data that they gather — whether it’s the city of Charlottesville or the DMV or a state agency.
He added: “I think part of a public university’s mission is to serve the public, and the School of Data Science is already doing that.”
A key priority for Ryan, Bourne, and Brown had long been an emphasis on the notion of responsible data science, an idea that Bourne said included ethics but also goes further.
“It’s more than ethics — it’s justice, it’s policy, it’s law,” he said. This will be increasingly true with the continued evolution and expanded footprint of artificial intelligence in society and the governance questions this raises, key research priorities for many faculty members.
“I actually see that as an area where we could really excel because when it comes to public policy, when it comes to law, when it comes to the humanities, we are, undoubtedly, a leading university,” said Bourne.
Ryan explained that embracing an ethical approach to the use of data was central to his vision for the School from the outset.
“This can’t just be about the revolution in data and seeing how far we could go,” he said of what he wanted the mission of the School of Data Science to be. “It needed to, from the very beginning, be focused on all of the ethical issues that are related to the gathering of data, the analyzing of data, and the sharing of data.”
Brown, who was a key architect of the curricula and philosophy of data science at UVA from the beginning, underscored this idea.
“At the foundation, we always considered the ethics of big data, and now data science, to be a critical part of our structure,” he said. “It remains that way, and I’m very proud of that.”
For those who walk the halls of the state-of-the-art new facility for the School of Data Science in the years to come, it might come as a surprise to learn just how humble its beginnings were.
There was Olsson Hall and the red shed of Dell Building One during the Data Science Institute years. There was the Elson Building, formerly the student health center, a building that retained many of the trappings of a medical facility and was home to many faculty and staff during the early years of the School.
Classes were held, the School expanded, and research continued, but the limitations in proximity and space weren’t always conducive to the sort of collaborative spirit the School was founded on. Fortunately, this was only a temporary arrangement.
Thanks to the donation from Jaffray Woodriff, a new home for the School of Data Science would be built as part of the University’s expansion at Charlottesville’s Emmet-Ivy Corridor, which would also include the new Karsh Institute of Democracy.
Groundbreaking took place in October 2021. And just like the school that would occupy it, this would be no ordinary building.
“We had three design principles,” said Arlyn Burgess, who has led efforts pertaining to the new building’s construction from day one. “They were wellness, sustainability, and utilization.”
Burgess explained that the School wanted to create a safe, healthy, eco-friendly environment where faculty and staff both desired to work and could do their best work.
Beyond the design, Burgess and Phil Bourne wanted the building to embody the discipline that would be practiced there and the principles that had guided the School’s founding — literally and figuratively a School Without Walls.
“There was a feeling that when you walk into the building it should be a physical manifestation of what it is we believe data science to be,” said Burgess.
This meant the building would include exposed steel, open hallways, a large atrium, a corporate commons for discussions with the private sector, and monumental stairs, among other features — all aimed at fostering interaction, openness, and collaboration.
“I think we designed a school to maximize all of those things,” said Bourne.
There will even be a data sculpture. After a lot of brainstorming, and many designs, school officials arrived at something that, in Burgess’ words, “is really quite simplistic in that it is literally bringing raw data up through the building in an architectural scale.” A variety of data sets, she explained, will be deployed, which could tell any number of stories.
The idea is that this will be an interactive experience, Burgess said, with the user experience depending on the perspective from which you are viewing the sculpture.
“We thought that there was something really powerful about that, that you experienced the data through your own lens,” she said.
The School also sponsored an art competition in conjunction with the new building’s opening. The contest, called Data is ART and centered around the theme of “Our World,” invited submissions from all formats and mediums, with the chosen art submissions from finalists set to be displayed at the building.
The new home of the School of Data Science, the School Without Walls, held its public opening in late April 2024, with faculty and staff moving in the following month.
The story of data science at UVA is, at its core, the story of people — faculty, staff, students, all of whom took a leap of faith to make something that had never been a reality.
It was the story of Rick Horwitz, who would leave UVA in 2014 to become executive director of the newly created Allen Institute for Cell Science. He, at an early stage, could see the potential in studying big data sets and would make the case for it to anyone who would listen at the University.
While recalling the initial period of planning the institute and building the support as sometimes stressful, Horwitz looks back on those days and the relationships he built with a smile. “It was really a lot of fun,” he said.
It was the story of Don Brown, a leading researcher and the first director of the Data Science Institute who continues to lead data science research efforts at UVA to this day.
“We can actually make a major change at this University for something that was extremely important and transformational — and that’s very exciting and satisfying to have been a part of,” he said.
It was the story of Teresa Sullivan, a groundbreaking president whose pride in the school that she helped make possible, and what it will be able to do, is evident.
“UVA is going to be able to do types of research we could not do before and to access partners we could not have access to before because we didn’t have what they needed — and now we do,” she said.
It was the story of Reggie Leonard, an early staff hire who is helping data science students become data science leaders, and Arlyn Burgess, who literally worked to build a school from scratch.
“I have had an opportunity to do more things and more experiences that I ever thought possible,” she said. “And I hope I’ve still got a long way to go in my career.”
It’s the story of Jim Ryan, a president with an eye toward the future who sees the School of Data Science as emblematic of what UVA has always been: a center for innovation.
“In some ways, it’s in our DNA,” he said.
It’s the story of Jaffray Woodriff, who knew what was possible before anyone else and through his historic gift made it so. And it’s the story of Phil Bourne, the founding dean of the first school for data science in the country, who is already thinking about the next phase for the school he leads.
“It’ll still be growing,” he predicted. “There’ll be incredible opportunities, incredible vibrance.”
“Years from now, I can stumble back here some time in my wheelchair — it’ll be great to see,” he joked.
It’s also the story of many other faculty, staff, and supporters of data science and UVA who, while not mentioned in this narrative by name, were integral to what came to be.
Ultimately, the story that will be written about the School of Data Science will be about its students, like Melissa Phillips and countless others, who are showing, and will continue to show, why this was all worth doing, what data science can achieve, and that the possibilities of a School Without Walls are truly limitless.
And it’s a story that’s just begun.