Alycia Holwerda
D.R.E.A.M.
D.R.E.A.M (Data Resources for Eager and Analytical Minds)
D.R.E.A.M is a student organization at Minnesota State University, Mankato that teaches members more about data science, data analytic skills, and provides enriching guest speaker lectures from businesses all over that deal with various data science components. Our advisor, Dr. Rajeev Bukralia, helps organize our group by meeting with businesses to speak to our group, giving us access to valuable resources, and teaching us all that he knows about Data Science. Just a few of the resources available to members are IBM Watson accounts (accounts to the smartest computer in the world), SAS software (SAS is the leading data analytic company in the world), tutorials in Python, R, SQL, links to numerous data science articles, videos of popular data science lectures, and data science books. In only the organization’s first semester, over one hundred of the brightest STEM, business, philosophy, and other majors students have joined the D.R.E.A.M.
SAS Workshop 2017
Since I was both a part of D.R.E.A.M and a Hackathon competitor, I was graciously offered the opportunity to attend a SAS workshop. On March 24th-25th, 2017, SAS, the leading statistical analysis software, came to Minnesota State University, Mankato to teach 50 people how to use their software. I was given an online manual, SAS software, and training on how to use both of these. After attending this two-day all day workshop, I am almost completely trained in using SAS Studio and SAS Enterprise Miner. This is a wonderful skill to have at my discretion, because of the infinite usages in data analytics. I hope to someday soon become completely certified in both SAS Studio and SAS Enterprise Miner. Besides, the amazing opporuntiy to learn SAS, I was able to network with both my peers and companies in the Data Analytics division. (Certificate Image to follow shortly)
Image powered by D.R.E.A.M. Twitter account @MNSU_DREAM
D.R.E.AM. PR Executive Chair
During my junior year, I was elected as the Personal Relations Executive Chair to D.R.E.A.M. In this role I had various responsibilities to the organization. In the following reflection I discuss how I became the Personal Relations Executive Chair and what I did during my “time in office.” My responsibilities as the PR executive chair for D.R.E.A.M. were to be responsible for recruiting members to D.R.E.A.M.; secure sponsorships, food, and guest speakers for our bi-weekly meetings as well as connect with industry professionals; and to publicize D.R.E.A.M. events.
In this opportunity I learned how to connect with industry professionals and students from diverse backgrounds. I learned how to properly connect with formal, business manners. Besides industry professionals, I gained more experience connecting with others from a different background than my own since the majority of D.R.E.A.M.’s members are international students. I learned how to accommodate to their specific cultural customs such as eating only specific food, wearing certain clothing, and participating in multiple events. Many of my friends are D.R.E.A.M. members that do come from diverse backgrounds. Another important skill I learned from D.R.E.A.M. was how to host and advertise events. Along with this skill, I got the opportunity to gain even more experience speaking in front of crowds.
SAS Workshop 2018
On March 23rd-24th, 2018 another SAS workshop was held at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Instead of the college department organizing the event, D.R.E.A.M. oversaw hosting the workshop. As part of D.R.E.A.M.’s executive board, part of the responsibility of hosting the event fell to me as well as the rest of the executive board. Together we were able to figure out our expenses (which was mainly food), how much we would need to charge to fund the workshop, and the priority list of trainees. Since many of our trainees were international students with specific cultural diets, we made sure to have enough vegetarian and turkey sandwiches for everyone. The event ran without any hitches, and everyone seemed to learn a lot from the two trainers. The first day was dedicated to learning SAS enterprise miner, which I had learned at the previous years workshop. The next day was however new to everyone. We learned how to you SAS text miner to work with documents of the text variety instead of numbers. Besides the actual training, we helped organize a networking event with industry leaders. I had the opportunity to meet with many of our academic leaders on campus and our industry innovators off campus. Through this event I was not only able to gain skills in a very valuable statistical software, I continued to refine my skills in collaborating with other to organize an event, addressing specific needs of others, and delegating responsibilities. I am very thankful for this opportunity to learn more about SAS and their software.
D.R.E.A.M. President
In April of 2018, I was elected as the President to D.R.E.A.M. I am very passionate and thankful for all the wonderful knowledge and opportunities I have gained through D.R.E.A.M. I am very excited for this wonderful opportunity to help make D.R.E.A.M. even more successful. As president for the upcoming year, I have a couple of goals. The first is to continue to recruit new members but specifically from different disciplines by creating a short promo video. The next is to create more opportunities for members of D.R.E.A.M. such as more workshops, tutorials on data science skills, research possibilities, and hopefully an internal hackathon. I also want to create a website for D.R.E.A.M. as well as one main communication between members and the executive board. I