DATA ANALYTICS IN ACTION

• Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning promotes dialogue, understanding, friendship and civic engagement across lines of difference. The center does this by sponsoring a host of interfaith activities, including artistic performances, lectures, panels, conferences, retreats and service programs.

• Donald McNeely Center for Entrepreneurship is an education resource that provides classes, coaching and assistance to entrepreneurs. It builds relationships among and between Bennie and Johnnie students, faculty, alums and community members to create and strengthen the entrepreneurial spirit.

• Mark and Teresa Fleischhacker Center for Ethical Leadership in Action is committed to helping students take the leadership and ethics theory that is learned in the classroom and apply it within the workplace and community. When fully realized, the center’s work will be focused in four main areas: supporting internships and community engaged learning experience for Bennies; educational programming for the entire CSB and SJU community focused on the development of confident, ethical leaders; mentoring with integrity; and faculty and staff development to ensure that faculty and staff are equipped to advise students using our Benedictine values within an ethical leadership framework.

• Center for Global Education offers semester and short-term study abroad and international exchange programs, teach abroad options and on-campus global learning opportunities. Center for Global Education collaborates with global partners to offer summer English as a second language programs and sponsors visiting international scholars.

Paida Chikate ’13 found her calling as an evaluator. To do so, she needed to complement her English degree with the language of statistics.

Paida Chikate works as director of evaluation for World Savvy, an organization that partners with K-12 schools to build inclusive, adaptive and future-ready learning environments. She’s simultaneously a Ph.D. student in evaluation and data analytics at the University of Minnesota.

That’s a big shift from when she came to Saint Ben’s from Zimbabwe as an English major. But her interest in political science provided a springboard to a master’s degree in public policy from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, and to that she added a master’s in gender and sexuality studies from Minnesota State University-Mankato.

For all her education, however, she laments that her time at Saint Ben’s came before there was such a thing as a minor in data analytics – which first became available in 2020. Being able to add that to her major, she says, probably would’ve crystalized her career path sooner and helped her avoid some painful learning later when, to earn her public policy degree, she needed to take a regression course in statistics.

“It was extremely difficult – to the point that I would come home crying because it was so hard,” Paida says. “I wanted to learn data because I knew how important it was for policy makers. Being able to translate complicated numbers into regular speech is a skill. I decided I was going to learn it no matter what.”

Her experience evaluating data began with research into women and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, creating a policy agenda for the ministry of education there while she was still an undergraduate at CSB. She later evaluated international organizations’ efforts to help children fleeing conflict in Syria and small-scale West African female farmers, in addition to education in Zimbabwe. In 2018, when she voted in a national election for the first time in her homeland, she noticed how observers evaluated that process and it spurred her to develop quantitative and qualitative skills en route to her Ph.D.

She discovered programs like Python, R and Stata – all used to interpret data –are just like learning another language. And proficiency allows her to multiply her value to an employer.

“It’s akin to being a doctor or an accountant,” she says. “People will always get sick, and numbers will always be there for interpretation. And, with artificial intelligence becoming more and more prevalent, data will become even more important in many areas of our lives. Policy makers are always looking for ‘What are the numbers saying?’ So are people in a lot of organizations. They want to know about the data, so I think even just adding this minor would make you desirable because there are so few people who can do this type of work.”

• Center for the environment –

A proposed national center for the environment will be a programmatic hub for all things environmental: academic research and teaching, public outreach and education, and operations across both campuses. Over the last 30 years Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s have dramatically expanded efforts in all three areas, launching the environmental studies academic program, the Saint John’s Arboretum and Outdoor University, and broad campus sustainability initiatives in the 1990s. These grew rapidly in the 2000s, literally reaching tens of thousands of students and community members. The new center will elevate our environmentally related programs to the next level, positioning us for national prominence and engaging diverse audiences through the practice of Benedictine stewardship and an orientation toward a sustainable future for all.

“The proposed center will allow us to ‘level up’ our environmental and sustainability programing, raising what have developed into very strong regional programs to national prominence,” says Derek Larson, CSB and SJU environmental studies professor. “Ultimately we hope CSB and SJU will be places that come to mind when anyone is asked about places that inspire them to care about, act upon and advocate for everything from local access to green spaces to addressing climate change on the global stage.”

• Center for teaching and learning –The mission of a center for teaching and learning is to support, promote and enhance inclusive teaching and innovative pedagogical practices that lead to meaningful student learning. The center will provide specialized programming for new faculty to help them to understand the mission of the institutions and develop their skills as inclusive teachers. The center will also provide workshops and events to expose faculty to new, evidence-based practices, provide opportunities for faculty to discuss teaching issues and ideas through book clubs, dialogue groups and faculty panels, and to increase the adoption of inclusive pedagogies.

“The CSB and SJU faculty are outstanding teachers who are constantly working to increase their knowledge and enhance student learning,” says Pam Bacon, CSB and SJU dean of faculty. “Providing numerous campus opportunities for faculty to continue to develop their teaching skills, incorporate inclusive pedagogies into their practice, and talk about teaching with other passionate educators will have a positive impact on teaching effectiveness and, ultimately, the student experience.”

• Center for principled business leadership – CSB and SJU are establishing a center for principled business leadership to serve two primary goals: to enhance the quality and reputation of our business programs and to create a ‘big tent’ of opportunities for all students to connect their education to business. We have tremendous business programs in accounting, economics, entrepreneurship, finance and global business. And, under this new center, we will expand outreach and highimpact practices in those majors.

“We are in a unique position to address the ‘principled’ portion of business leadership as a Benedictine organization,” says Mary Jepperson, chair of the CSB and SJU global business leadership department. “The Benedictine values have stood the test of centuries of time and are as applicable to business as they are to daily life. Community living, taking counsel, respect for persons, listening, to name just a few, are skills that today’s business leader must employ to be an effective and ethical leader.”

“We want to see our students and graduates thrive after they have this educational experience,” Ice says. “This is our vision of academic excellence at Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s.”