The Data Science for Social Good Lab, with the Block Center for Technology and Society, is hosting a Scopeathon for Social Good at Carnegie Mellon University on February 7th and 8th, 2025.

Schedule

The event will take place in the evening of Friday Feb 7th and all day Saturday Feb 8th.

Friday evening, we will begin with a panel discussing the importance and challenges of scoping a project well. We’ll give partners a chance to talk about the problem they’re bringing, and pair up student teams with partner organizations. 

On Saturday, the all-day workshop will cover the scoping process that the Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) Lab has developed over the last 10 years. Students and partner organizations will work together on developing each phase of their project. By the end of the day, you’ll have worked together to create a project scope that can become an effective and impactful solution for the partner organization and, most importantly, gained the skills to effectively scope a data science project that informs the organization’s operations.

Interested in participating?

If you’re a local or regional government agency, nonprofit, or other social good organization, and would like to get a problem you’re facing scoped, learn how to do it yourselves, get connected to enthusiastic and passionate students, and meet peers interested in the use of data to increase impact, please fill out this short form.

Ideally, partner organizations should have:

1. a problem that could be addressed with data they have available at their organization, and
2. people from their organization who can attend the event and participate in the training.

Participants from the partner organization will join in the scoping process and work with a team of students to apply it to the problem they bring to the event. We ask partner organizations to plan to have 2 to 3 one-hour calls with us ahead of the event to prepare their problem and to attend both the Friday-evening kick-off event and the day-long training on Saturday.