In Good Company

Sharon Tettegah, a UC Santa Barbara professor of Black Studies, has been invited by the Institute in Critical Quantitative, Computational and Mixed-Methodologies (ICQCM) to participate in the 2021 National Science Foundation (NSF) QCM Scholars cohort.

Tettegah, director of the Center for Black Studies Research, joins a group of 35 scholars for a two-year series of virtual training seminars offered by leading methodologists, researchers and critical theorists.

“It is a great opportunity to be accepted as an NSF QCM Scholar,” Tettegah said. “It is an honor to know that I will gain knowledge, which will help students who are undergraduate research fellows at the Center for Black Studies Research in the area of computational and data science.

“Training and knowledge in critical data science within Black Studies will assist in providing the field with the ability to develop generations of researchers in computational and data science through the use of a just and critical lens,” she continued. “The questions of where we choose to turn the lens, who gets to look through it, and what steps society takes to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to look through the lens is an important one.”

Joining the cohort is a perfect fit for Tettegah, whose career and scholarly work have focused on the intersections of social justice and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). ICQCM, meanwhile, aims to broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in data science and other STEM fields.

“During my tenure as an ICQCM scholar I plan to learn and apply my new knowledge to Black studies at UCSB,” she said. “My commitment as a faculty member is to learn all that I can so that underrepresented minority students at UCSB will know that there are many tools available to examine all types of data. 

Before joining UCSB Tettegah was an associate dean for research and sponsored programs at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She was the program chair of Digital Environments for Learning, Teaching and Agency in the College of Education at the University of Illinois, at Urbana Champaign. She also held an appointment in cognitive neuroscience in bio-intelligence at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. In addition, she was a research scientist and affiliate at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Her research centers on the intersection of STEM learning, emotions, equity and social justice. She was also a program director from 2010 to 2012 at the National Science Foundation, where she managed multiple programs. She is the series editor for emotions and technology with academic publisher Elsevier.

ICQCM is committed to advancing the use of data science methodologies among scholars at institutions serving predominantly underrepresented students, underrepresented postdoctoral and faculty researchers at all institutions, and those who conduct research with Latina/o/x, Indigenous and Black communities.