Emporia State University is excited about an upcoming partnership that will greatly benefit students in two separate programs.
ESU announced earlier this month it has entered into a partnership with KVC Kansas — the largest subsidiary of KVC Health Systems — where students in the Master’s of Science in Informatics program will be mining through foster care data to identify best practices and areas of need within the KVC system. Additionally, data science students and Applied Sociology graduate students will complete internships with KVC where they will work closely with the organization on social justice initiatives.
Assistant professor of mathematics and economics Dr. Bekah Selby, one of the faculty leaders of the partnership, says this an extremely rare opportunity for students to use “real-world data to do applied work during their studies rather than relying on a textbook.”
Dr. Alfredo Montalvo, an associate professor of social sciences, sociology and criminal justice, says the data mining portion of the partnership will be a large undertaking when you consider the sheer size of KVC’s database.
In a recent news release, KVC Health Systems Chief Information Officer Lonnie Johnson says, “This partnership brings together two resources that, when kept separate, bring limited value to the community. When we combine the academic knowledge of Emporia State University informatics students with the rich historical information owned by KVC, we stand to unlock a plethora of hidden insights that can greatly enhance the way we treat children and families.”
ESU’s Informatics Master’s program is a 36-credit hour course established in 2018 that provides students with skills in both data science and economic research. While in the program students learn to properly collect and analyze data, provide answers that “may have business/policy implications,” and develop important research-based questions.
