MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — As data continues to be a growing, dominant part of daily life, Middle Tennessee State University’s College of Education, along with partners across campus, have worked hard to ensure students from MTSU to local school districts are equipped to meet it, most recently landing a $3 million National Science Foundation grant to develop leaders in the field.

Kevin Krahenbuhl, director of the college’s Assessment, Learning and Student Success Ed.D. program, celebrated the milestone on the university’s television magazine program “Out of the Blue” with host Andrew Oppmann, MTSU’s vice president for marketing and communications and a recent graduate of the program himself.

“It’s going to fully fund 16 data science teachers from five Midstate school districts in an Ed.S. or Ed.D. program to transform their practice … around the ideas of teacher leadership and data science,” said Krahenbuhl about the Leaders in Education Advancing Data Science grant, better known as LEADS, which will run for five years.

“The world that we live in is just completely inundated with data,” Krahenbuhl explained. “There isn’t a day that goes by where you do not hear (about) statistics. Our phones give a constant curation of stuff that’s entirely driven by data (algorithms).”

Watch the full segment below:

Krahenbuhl said that, though data science is not a brand-new field, seeing it in the context of education is on the cutting edge, so the college partnered with campus data-science experts at the Tennessee STEM Education Center and the Data Science Institute for help with the grant.

“It’s (so) important now that educators and students, in particular, lean into understanding how to make sense of data and what goes into how data is used in our daily life,” he said. “We think there’s no better place to do that than in the K-12 schools.”

Participants in the first cohort come from Bedford County, Cannon County, Murfreesboro City, Warren County and Williamson County school districts. By fully funding these candidates’ advanced degrees, Krahenbuhl and the program leaders hope to turn them not only into data science experts in their own classrooms but also into leaders at scale who impact their schools, their districts, and beyond.

“The two things that hopefully will come out as a result of this … are that these … next generation of students are not going to be swept away by every claim of data and that they’re going to be able to ask good questions,” he said.

Applications will open again this fall for interested teachers who meet the program’s requirements. Contact Krahenbuhl at Kevin.Krahenbuhl@mtsu.edu or call 615-494-7838 for more information.

Ways to watch, listen

• “Out of the Blue” is available anytime on the university’sYouTube channel, theTrue Blue TV channel, Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV.

• It also airs on Murfreesboro cable Channel 9 daily at 6 a.m., 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.; NewsChannel5+ at 6:30 p.m. Sundays; WKRN+ at 7 p.m. Thursdays and noon Sundays; and streamed on the MTSU Jazz Network throughWMOT.org at 7 a.m. on the first Sunday of each month; and on other cable outlets in Middle Tennessee, so check local listings.

• It is also available as a podcast on iTunes and Google Play and as individual interview segments on Spotify athttps://spoti.fi/453hxg3.

Watch previous episodes of “Out of the Blue” athttps://mtsunews.com/out-of-the-blue.

— Stephanie Wagner (Stephanie.Wagner@mtsu.edu)