Graduate Students in Data Science Consulting: A Blueprint for Success

This manual provides a practical guide on how graduate students can work in statistical and data science consulting and offers valuable resources for anyone interested in creating, expanding, or maintaining statistical or data science consulting programs in higher education across multiple disciplines.

Key Features:

• Hands on, practical guide to working with graduate students in data science consulting programs
• Broadly applicable across disciplines and program types
• Based on years of experience successfully working with graduate students as data science consultants

This book is aimed at readers looking to set up a consulting program with their graduate students, as well as graduate students looking to consult during their studies.

A PDF version of this book is available for free in Open Access at www.taylorfrancis.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC-BY-NC-SA) 4.0 license.

Dr. Emily H. Griffith is a Professor of the Practice in the Department of Statistics and the Director of Analytics Consulting in the Data Science and AI Academy at NC State. Emily helped create NC State’s Data Science and AI Academy while serving as a fellow in NC State’s Office of Research and Innovation. She co-directs the Data Science Consulting Program at NC State with Mara Rojeski Blake. This program is a joint effort between the DSA and the Libraries’ Data Science Services department. Emily is a recognized expert in statistical collaboration and has a long and successful track record of interdisciplinary collaboration. She is also a recognized expert in collaborative training and education. As Deputy Director of the Statistical and Mathematical Sciences Institute from 2019-2021, Emily organized and ran several workshops. She co-developed a video-based curriculum for training the next generation of collaborative statisticians (Sharp, Griffith and Higgs 2021), has taught several short courses and workshops on statistical communication, and published and spoken about statistical communication in a variety of venues. She is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.

Mara Rojeski Blake is the Head of the Data Science Services department in the Libraries at NC State University. The department provides training, consulting, and computer labs for specialized data work to help affiliates to find, use, analyze, and visualize data. She co-directs the Data Science Consulting Program at NC State University with Emily Griffith, a partnership between the Data Science Services department in the Libraries and the Data Science and AI Academy. Mara served as a Co-PI on the “Models for Sustainable and Inclusive Data Science Consulting and Collaboration in Higher Education” project funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Mara served with Griffith as a co-editor for a special issue of Stat to share the output of the project. Mara is recognized as an expert in developing data services based in an academic library. She engaged in several collaborative community building projects related to the provision of data services in libraries. She served as Co-PI of the Sloan-funded project “to launch and expand a cross-institutional staffing model for curating disciplinary research data,” helping to found and lead the Data Curation Network. Her other work includes co-founding and leading the Geospatial Information Network.

Dr. David J. Edwards is a Professor and the Head of the Department of Mathematics and Data Analytics at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. Previously he was a Professor of Statistics and Chair of the Department of Statistical Sciences and Operations Research at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is a former Editor-in-Chief of Quality Engineering, a journal devoted to publishing papers that describe new methods ready for immediate industrial application or novel examples of employed techniques, and a former Associate Editor of Technometrics. David is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and is a past chair of the ASA section on Quality and Productivity. He has a track record of engagement in diverse interdisciplinary research endeavors spanning aerospace engineering, biomedical engineering, pharmaceutical engineering, the human microbiome, and education. Furthermore, he has served as a research mentor or co-mentor to students from a variety of disciplines, offering guidance on sound statistical practices, particularly as they pertain to the design and analysis of experiments.

Shannon Ricci is the Associate Head of the Data Science Services department in the Libraries at NC State University. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Geospatial Analytics and brings both academic and practical research expertise to this role. Shannon provides consultations on data science and GIS, mentors and supervises graduate student consultants, and develops and leads workshops on GIS, Python, and data visualization. She is focused on the Libraries’ collaboration with the Data Science and AI Academy's consulting arm, enhancing communication and transparency between the groups and establishing the Data Science Consulting Program as a high impact experiential learning opportunity for students. Shannon is working on applying a data-driven approach to refining and highlighting the impact of the Librairies Data Science services, expanding GIS and Python workshops offerings, and enhancing her leadership skills to better manage and support student workers. She holds a Master of Science in Biological Oceanography from NC State University, and was part of the first cohort of consultants for the Data Science and AI Academy.

Michelle Thompson Gumbs is a Senior Geographic Information Systems Specialist in the Data Services department at New York University, with a robust career spanning over a decade in academic roles. NYU Data Services professional and student staff offer support to the NYU community throughout the academic and research data lifecycle, from data finding to analysis to preservation. Michelle has led the recruiting, hiring, onboarding, managing, and training of NYU Data Services Student Specialists for over seven years and has grown the mentorship aspect of the program during her tenure. Her experience as an Adjunct Lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, specializing in courses related to criminal justice and geospatial research, has given her deep understanding of student dynamics in academic settings. Michelle's extensive educational background, including a Master of Science in Human Resource Management and Development, and her accolades, such as the NYU Distinguished Administrator Award and the NYU Libraries Dean's Award, affirm her exceptional commitment to excellence in academic administration and employee development.

Kate Freeman previously served as a Data Science Support Specialist at NC State University Libraries, supporting the Department of Data Science Services as it fosters and advances the university's data science community. Kate’s responsibilities included a variety of support initiatives within the DSS department, entailing supervisory, technical, administrative, and communication roles and projects. Her primary focus centered on working with colleagues to manage the Libraries' data science support services, namely the maintenance and improvement of the Hunt and D.H. Hill Library Dataspace and Data Experience Lab, the coordination of Libraries Workshops, as well as service planning and co-supervision for the Data Science Consulting Service. Kate published a paper on DSS’s graduate student-staffed consulting model with the department’s Data Science Consulting Service Team. Her journey into library services began during her undergraduate studies when she worked as a library assistant at UNC Chapel Hill's Wilson Library Special Collections. She holds qualifications in History and French with honors, and has recently returned to school to earn a Masters in Social Work from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Joddy Marchesoni is the Data Services Librarian at Wake Forest University, providing services in data literacy and data science instruction and consultation for students, faculty, and staff. They previously served as a Data & Visualization Librarian in the Data Science Services department at NC State University Libraries, where they focused on delivering and improving library data services. This included: helping to manage the Data Science Consulting Program within the Libraries through service planning and supervision of grad student Data Science Consultants; providing data science consultations; and offering library workshops and course-integrated instruction sessions on R, data management, and many other topics. Joddy collaborated on several publications at NCSU as a data analyst for the Hoyo lab, and worked on a team to publish work describing the student-staffed consulting service model at NCSU Libraries. They also presented with a team on a contributed paper at ACRL 2025 on evaluating qualitative research support services at NC State University Libraries. They hold a Master of Science in Applied Statistics from UNC Greensboro.