DataSquad International

Examples

47 projects from 2 programs. Carleton started the DataSquad model, so it has the longer record: its program is older and has had more students.

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  1. Election news analysis: collecting transcripts from campaign-season coverage

    A scraper built and improved by students over several years to gather news transcripts from presidential election periods for a political science research project.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Status
    Current
    For
    Political Science Department
    By
    Aaron Bronstone, Serafin Patino, Hiromichi Ueda, Helen Du, Isabella Cha, Cathy Duan, Nina Sun, Charles Nykamp, Graham Gordon
    Work
    Data collection & scraping

  2. Converting Stata to R

    I helped translate Stata files to legible R files for an Economics professor's senior comps research course.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Status
    Current
    For
    Economics Department
    By
    Karla Cruz Sanchez
    Work
    Reproducibility & code migration

  3. Data Visualization

    Describing the nuance in making data accessible.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Status
    Current
    For
    Sociology and Anthropology Department
    By
    Rachel Kim, Karla Cruz Sanchez
    Work
    Visualization & reporting

  4. File Management for ITS

    Designing a platform where people can vote on how files are dealt with.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Status
    Current
    For
    ITS
    By
    Yang Tan
    Work
    Tools & automation, Data management & infrastructure

  5. Labeling and Sorting Alumni Images

    Creating a tool for 'tagging' alumni in college archives.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Status
    Current
    For
    Office of Alumni Relations
    By
    Artem Yushko
    Work
    Tools & automation, Digitization & heritage

  6. Project Workflow

    For our blogs, we use a workflow that organizes our projects and makes it easier to track everyone's project progress.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Status
    Current
    For
    DataSquad
    By
    Ryan Yang
    Work
    Program operations

  7. Making Voter Data Usable for Research, at Scale

    A fragmented 10TB national voter file became a single analysis-ready dataset now used across political science, economics, and health research.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2023–present
    Work
    Data management & infrastructure

  8. A lesson inventory and the site built from it for UC OSPO education

    A catalog of 55 open source and research software lessons, and the searchable site two DataSquad students built to browse it.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2025–2026
    For
    UC OSPO Network education working group
    By
    Shawn Wang, Gianna Kim, Lian Elsa Linton, Tim Dennis
    Work
    Tools & automation, Teaching & training

  9. Data help for five PhD research teams in one course

    Neuroscience PhD students in a research-design course brought questions about education; the squad helped them find datasets and plan the statistics.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2026
    For
    Interdepartmental PhD Program in Neuroscience (Project Brainstorm course)
    By
    Lian Elsa Linton, Audrey Garcia, Shawn Wang, Gianna Kim
    Work
    Analysis & modeling, Teaching & training

  10. Do STEM and humanities students know the same campus health resources?

    Survey and interview analysis for a student health project: 143 survey responses and 10 interviews.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2026
    For
    Black/Latinx AIDS Project
    By
    Shawn Wang, Lian Elsa Linton, Audrey Garcia
    Work
    Analysis & modeling

  11. Downloading over 1,200 declassified meeting minutes

    An archive that lets you download one PDF at a time, and a script that handled the rest.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2026
    For
    International Institute
    By
    Lian Elsa Linton
    Work
    Data collection & scraping

  12. wbcheck: a lesson checker for Carpentries Workbench

    A command-line tool that finds broken front matter, links and scaffold text in a Carpentries lesson in under a second, started by two DataSquad students and now at 48 rules.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2023–2026
    For
    UCLA IMLS Open Science lesson development
    By
    Lawrence Lee, Eric Huang, Tim Dennis
    Work
    Tools & automation, Teaching & training

  13. Reconnecting with alumni and assessing the model

    A form that let DataSquad alumni update their website bios, combined with the program's first assessment of its own model.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Years
    2025
    For
    The DataSquad program, for Paula Lackie
    By
    Dashiell Coyier, Zaeda Peter
    Work
    Program operations, Data cleaning & integration

  14. Scheduling technology checks across more than a hundred rooms

    Student workers check projectors and touch panels in classrooms around campus; a student wrote code to build their schedules.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Years
    2025
    For
    Presentation, Events, and Production Support
    By
    Auiannce Euwing
    Work
    Tools & automation

  15. Shedding Light on Injustice

    Four cohorts of DataSquad consultants spent five years building the dataset behind Terence Keel's book on hidden deaths in police custody.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2021–2025
    For
    Biocritical Studies Lab
    By
    Julia Wood, Ethan Allavarpu, Tristan Dewing, Lawrence Lee
    Work
    Data cleaning & integration, Visualization & reporting

  16. Carceral Ecologies: LAPD Surveillance Flight Data

    A 318-minute data-loading bottleneck became a 2-minute pipeline, unlocking research that went on to national attention and a $5 million grant.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2023–2024
    For
    Carceral Ecologies Lab
    By
    Lawrence Lee, Madeline Kim
    Work
    Data cleaning & integration

  17. Flight data for research on police helicopter surveillance

    Twelve monthly files of about a million rows each, with nested records, turned into one analyzable dataset for an undergraduate researcher.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2022–2024
    For
    UCLA undergraduate research on police helicopter surveillance
    By
    Ethan Allavarpu, Kristian Allen
    Work
    Data cleaning & integration, Analysis & modeling

  18. Moving a graduating student's files with rclone

    When a student account ends, years of files go with it; a comparison of rclone and rsync for moving large amounts of data.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Years
    2024
    For
    Information Technology Services
    By
    Ryan Yang
    Work
    Tools & automation

  19. Preserving Vietnamese Refugee Heritage Through 3D Technology

    3D scanning let the DSC digitize fragile refugee artifacts and publish the first public exhibit tracing one family's maritime escape across the Pacific.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2023–2024
    For
    Refugee Material Cultural Initiative
    By
    Doug Daniels, Bianca Badajos, Connor Lim
    Work
    Digitization & heritage

  20. Reading handwritten German memoirs

    Images of aged, handwritten memoirs became complete, accurate text a sociology professor could translate and analyze.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2024
    For
    Sociology
    Work
    Digitization & heritage

  21. Testing Layout Parser on medieval Canon Law texts

    The squad tried a newer OCR toolkit that boxes text by section, and recorded why it is hard to recommend.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2024
    For
    DataSquad
    Work
    Digitization & heritage

  22. Cleaning two decades of student-collected election coverage data

    Data coded from news broadcasts by successive student teams over two decades, merged and cleaned over a summer.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Years
    2023
    For
    Political Science
    By
    Shaun Baron-Furayama
    Work
    Data cleaning & integration

  23. From scanned pages to searchable, linked text

    A DataSquad member evaluated OCR, entity linking and layout formats to make UCLA Library collections computable for researchers.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2023
    For
    UCLA Library collections
    By
    Lukas Hager
    Work
    Digitization & heritage, Tools & automation

  24. Pulling 100,000 web visit records past the Google Analytics limit

    The Google Analytics interface exports 5,000 records at a time; a Python script pulled more than 100,000.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Years
    2023
    For
    Carleton College
    By
    Jimmy Zhong
    Work
    Data collection & scraping

  25. Como-Q: A Skincare Ingredient Screener

    The DataSquad's first project for an outside applicant: an R tool that flags comedogenic (pore-clogging) ingredients in skincare and hygiene products.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2022
    By
    Will Foote, Isabel Light
    Work
    Tools & automation

  26. Visualizing Global Obstacles to Student Data Services

    A UCLA consultant cleaned and visualized DataSquad International's first cross-institution survey on what stops campuses from employing student data analysts.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2022
    For
    DataSquad International
    By
    Will Foote
    Work
    Visualization & reporting

  27. Analyzing Ancient Chinese Buddhist Text with Python

    Standard NLP tools assume modern, pre-segmented text. A Ming-dynasty Buddhist corpus needed a different approach to segmentation and comparison.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2021
    For
    Asian Languages and Cultures
    Work
    Analysis & modeling

  28. Digitizing Ant Nests to Study Tunneling Behavior

    When broken wax casts of ant tunnels threatened years of fieldwork, 3D scanning let researchers reconstruct the nests digitally instead.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2021
    For
    Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
    By
    Doug Daniels
    Work
    Digitization & heritage

  29. Mining Twitter to test how fan communities drive pop success

    A communication studies undergraduate needed Twitter metrics for four pop artists; a DataSquad consultant scraped them in Python and the analysis won a Dean's Prize.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2021
    For
    Communication Studies undergraduate research
    By
    Julia Wood
    Work
    Data collection & scraping, Analysis & modeling

  30. Squirrels in Motion

    Motion-sensor collars on wild ground squirrels produced accelerometer data at 100 readings a second; the DSC helped turn it into a behavior-prediction model.

    Program
    UCLA Library Data Science Center
    Years
    2021
    For
    Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
    Work
    Analysis & modeling

  31. Scraping course descriptions for Writing Rich and Quantitative Reasoning lists

    The course database had the listings but not the descriptions, so a script collected the descriptions from the registration site.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Years
    2019
    For
    Carleton College
    By
    Sam Terwilliger
    Work
    Data collection & scraping

  32. Visualizing the MISO survey of technology services

    Small-multiple charts of more than 30 question pairs on how faculty, staff and students rate the college's technology services, with a cleaner way to link services to departments.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Years
    2019
    For
    ITS
    By
    Nobuaki Masaki
    Work
    Analysis & modeling, Visualization & reporting

  33. A friendlier interface for a shared physics equipment database

    A FileMaker interface for lab equipment and demonstrations shared by Carleton and St. Olaf, plus a guide for photographing the inventory.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Years
    2017–2018
    For
    Physics
    By
    Yihuang Wu
    Work
    Tools & automation, Data management & infrastructure

  34. An introduction to RStudio Server for students

    A guide to using RStudio in a web browser from any campus computer, for statistics and computer science courses.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Years
    2018
    For
    Statistics and computer science courses
    By
    Yihuang Wu
    Work
    Teaching & training, Data management & infrastructure

  35. Does the starting course change language scores?

    Histograms of speaking, listening, reading and writing scores for 59 students, split by the course they started in.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Years
    2018
    For
    Language departments
    By
    Yihuang Wu
    Work
    Visualization & reporting

  36. Mapping the international student body

    A D3 world map for the Office of International and Intercultural Life, tied to a data visualization course.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Years
    2018
    For
    Office of International and Intercultural Life
    By
    Nobuaki Masaki
    Work
    Visualization & reporting

  37. Advising on a backend and dashboard for language placement tests

    A scope longer than any student's time at Carleton, so the squad sketched the database and chose the visualization.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Years
    2017
    For
    Language departments and academic technology
    By
    Quinn Schiller, Solomon Foster
    Work
    Visualization & reporting, Data management & infrastructure

  38. Collecting self-scheduled exam opt-ins with Google Forms

    The registrar's office emailed every professor each term and tallied replies by hand; a prefilled form now compiles them automatically.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Years
    2017
    For
    Registrar's office
    By
    Quinn Schiller
    Work
    Tools & automation

  39. Converting old Microsoft Office files to PDF

    A bash script that converts a folder of old .doc, .xls and .ppt files to PDF in one pass, keeping names and timestamps.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Years
    2017
    For
    Carleton College
    Work
    Data management & infrastructure

  40. Redesigning book graphs to a publisher's rules

    Graphs of every presidential ad aired in 2008, redrawn in black and white at 4 by 7.5 inches, with the original Excel file lost.

    Program
    Carleton College
    Years
    2017
    For
    Political Science
    By
    Quinn Schiller
    Work
    Visualization & reporting

  41. Data Security Service

    The DataSquad provides practical data security guidance to faculty, students, and staff.

    Program
    Carleton College
    For
    Institutional Research Board (IRB)
    Work
    Data management & infrastructure

  42. Data Visualization

    Data visualization of helpdesk and Academic Technology support info.

    Program
    Carleton College
    For
    ITS Helpdesk and Academic Technology Support
    By
    Yuta Baba
    Work
    Visualization & reporting

  43. Data visualization for the Career Center

    Pathways provides a visual representation of the careers pursued by different graduates from their respective majors.

    Program
    Carleton College
    For
    Career Center
    By
    Joshua Song, Avery Watts
    Work
    Visualization & reporting

  44. Duplicate Faculty List into WHD Data

    Add individual data from Faculty List duplicated to the CBorn file. Match on username, split @carleton.edu off the email address.

    Program
    Carleton College
    For
    Academic Technology
    By
    Steven Wu
    Work
    Data cleaning & integration

  45. Make Grading Easier

    For years, Professor Meerts used a spreadsheet to manage the results of the peer evaluation data from her class (a student evaluates 3 other students and…

    Program
    Carleton College
    For
    Psychology Department
    By
    Jimmy (Juntao) Zhong
    Work
    Tools & automation

  46. Tableau Presentation & Support for a Sociology Class

    Professor Nierobisz wanted to find a more engaging approach to data for her criminology course.

    Program
    Carleton College
    For
    Sociology and Anthropology Department
    By
    Yiwen Luo
    Work
    Teaching & training

  47. Visiting Accepted Students Map

    Create a nice looking map of the home-towns of the accepted incoming students who visited Carleton in April ‘22.

    Program
    Carleton College
    For
    Office of Admissions
    By
    Xingyi Zhang, Nina Sun
    Work
    Visualization & reporting

How much work is behind these examples

The examples are a selection. Each program keeps a fuller record of its consultations, and this is what UCLA's shows.

UCLA Library Data Science Center

About 140 consultation notes in the Data Science Center's shared drive, by year
YearNotesRelative size
2022 about 15
2023 about 40
2024 about 55
2025 about 30 (January to July)

Projects and requests logged on the GitHub board since March 2025: 25, of which 18 done, 2 in progress, 2 new, 2 on hold, 1 future idea. Some 2025 projects appear in both records, so the two counts overlap and shouldn't be added together.

Requests that recur: text recognition and extraction from scans, scraping social media and websites, census and survey data, statistics and R help, mapping, dashboards.

We don't have Carleton's equivalent counts on the site yet. Counts are approximate, tallied from file titles and dates. Individual consultations are confidential, so none are listed.