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Come explore data science tools and methods in a fun, relaxed environment. Everyone is welcome! Those with little or no data experience are especially encouraged to participate.

Faculty/Staff Summer 2025 Workshops

Excel

Faculty/staff workshop

Tuesday, May 27th, 11:00am – 12:00pm, Bertrand Library Lab (Lower Level 1, 025)
Basic Formulas: Learn formula syntax and apply basic formulas to perform simple mathematical operations to summarize your data.

Thursday, May 29th, 11:00am – 12:00pm, Bertrand Library Lab (Lower Level 1, 025)
Advanced Formulas: Learn advanced formulas like sumif, countif, and xlookup to quickly uncover information.

Tuesday, June 3rd, 11:00am – 12:00pm, Bertrand Library Lab (Lower Level 1, 025)
Sorting, Filtering and Data Validation: Use some basic data functions to quickly understand what’s in your dataset, and identify potential issues and anomalies.

Thursday, June 5th, 11:00am – 12:00pm, Bertrand Library Lab (Lower Level 1, 025)
Formatting and Conditional Formatting: Use formatting to improve data quality and to identify outliers and highlight important data.

Tuesday, June 10th, 11:00am – 12:00pm, Bertrand Library Lab (Lower Level 1, 025)
Pivot Tables: Learn how pivot tables can help you identify relationships and trends within your data by summarizing and grouping information.

Thursday, June 12th, 11:00am – 12:00pm, Bertrand Library Lab (Lower Level 1, 025)
Charts and Visualization: Learn some of the built-in viz types that you can use to quickly tell a story with your data.

Instructors: Katie Akateh (Research Data Services Specialist) and Doug LeBlanc (Data Analytics Engineer)

Co-sponsored by Library Services and the Office for Institutional Research and Analytics

What is AI?

Thursday, July 10, 1:00-2:00pm (Zoom)
Faculty/staff workshop
Registration coming soon.

This session will cover AI tools that are available to Bucknell faculty and staff.  Please join us on July 10th  from 1-2 pm ET as we demonstrate how Google Gemini, Google NotebookLM, and Zoom AI Companion can be used. Below is a quick summary of what each tool does.

Google Gemini:

Gemini is Google’s most capable and general-purpose AI model. It’s designed to be multimodal, meaning it can understand and operate across various types of information, including text, code, images, and more. Essentially, it’s built to help people with a wide range of tasks, from answering complex questions to generating creative content.

Google NotebookLM:

NotebookLM is an AI-powered tool designed to help users understand and work with their own documents. It analyzes uploaded files, like PDFs and text documents, to answer questions and provide insights. Essentially, it acts as a personalized research assistant, enabling users to extract information and generate new content based on their own data.

Zoom AI Companion:

Zoom AI Companion is an integrated AI assistant within the Zoom platform. It helps with tasks like summarizing meetings, generating chat responses, and brainstorming ideas during calls. It aims to enhance productivity and collaboration by automating common meeting-related tasks.

This session will be on Zoom to accommodate our colleagues who are off-campus.

Instructors: Brandon Karcher (Manager, Instructional Technology) and Steve O’Hara (Associate Vice President, Information Technology)

Co-sponsored by Library Services and IT

Prompting AI

Tuesday, July 15, 1:00-2:00pm, Taylor 210
Faculty/staff workshop
No registration required.

AI is evolving into an essential tool that can help us become more efficient at our day-to-day tasks. However, you have control over the quality of the responses you get. With better prompting and general knowledge of how these AI engines work, you can dramatically improve its responses and make informed choices about your AI use. This workshop will provide you with hands-on opportunities to learn how common generative AI tools work and how prompt engineering skills can help you leverage AI tools effectively in your daily work.

Instructor: Brian King (Associate Professor for Computer Science)

Student Summer 2025 Workshops

Student summer workshops are open to anyone in the Bucknell community (students, faculty, and staff) unless otherwise noted.

Collaboration and Productivity Tips in the Google Suite

Tuesday, May 27, 2:30-4:00pm, Taylor 210

Learn how to work smarter and save time this summer using all of the features of the Google Suite! This session will cover tips and tricks for using Google Drive for staying organized, tracking your time with Google Calendar, and collaborating with peers and mentors over Google Docs and Sheets. Participants will need a laptop.

Instructor: Claire Cahoon (Digital Pedagogy & Scholarship Specialist)

Data Analysis with R

Monday, June 2, 2:30-4:00pm, Taylor 210 (Intro and Data Viz)
Tuesday, June 3, 2:30-4:00pm, Taylor 210 (Data Viz)
Wednesday, June 4, 2:30-4:00pm, Taylor 210 (Data Wrangling)
Thursday, June 5, 2:30-4:00pm, Taylor 210 (Modeling)

Jumpstart your data analysis with a bootcamp that covers how to do common analysis tasks using the statistical software, R.  In this workshop, we will cover graphing, wrangling, summarizing, and modeling data in R.  All students are welcome and no prior R experience is required.  Participants will need a laptop. We recommend attending all sessions as they will build on each other.

Instructors: Kelly McConville + Grayson White

GIS and Map-Based Analysis

Monday, June 9, 4:30 – 6:00pm, GIS Lab – Academic West 209
This is a student workshop offered in collaboration with the Undergraduate Summer Research Program.

Instructor: Janine Glathar (Digital Pedagogy & Scholarship Specialist for GIS and Spatial Thinking)

AI Tools that Help (not Hurt!) Learning in Research Assignments

Tuesday, June 10, 2:30-4:00pm, Taylor 210

This interactive presentation will give a short overview of how and when we learn in research assignments. It will then give practical tools and tips for using generative AI to facilitate and enhance the research process in a way that safeguards the pedagogical value of these assignments and creates ethical research products.

Instructors: Mary Broussard (Arts & Humanities Librarian) and Rachel Sweeney (Scholarly Communications & Copyright Librarian)

Co-sponsored by Library Services

Exploring Data Analysis in Google Sheets

Monday, June 16, 4:30 – 6:00pm, Hildreth-Mirza Great Room
This is a student workshop offered in collaboration with the Undergraduate Summer Research Program.

Instructors: Claire Cahoon (Digital Pedagogy & Scholarship Specialist) and Katie Akateh (Research Data Services Specialist)

Prompting AI for Undergraduate Researchers

Tuesday, June 17, 2:30-4:00pm, Taylor 210

AI is evolving rapidly into a tool that can accelerate and enhance certain stages of the research process. However, the output you get depends on your prompt! This workshop will provide you with hands-on opportunities to learn prompt engineering skills to help you leverage AI tools effectively in your summer research projects. You’ll learn practical guidelines for crafting prompts to help you generate high-quality outputs related to your projects and help you make informed choices about how you use AI in your work.

Instructors: Brian King (Associate Professor for Computer Science)

Designing Data Visualizations

Tuesday, June 24, 2:30-4:00pm, Taylor 210

Want to make your data visualizations stand out? No matter what tool you use, your chart, color, and text choices will have a huge impact on how people interpret your results. This workshop will cover design best practices useful for any platform, so no experience with data visualization tools is required.

Instructor: Claire Cahoon (Digital Pedagogy & Scholarship Specialist)

Introduction to Tableau for Data Visualization

Tuesday, July 1, 2:30-4:00pm, Taylor 210

This workshop will cover the basics for creating a finished Tableau visualization. Topics include connecting to your data, choosing the right visualization, formatting, applying interactive filters, and combining visualizations into a user-friendly dashboard.

Instructor: Doug LeBlanc (Data Analytics Engineer)

Co-sponsored by the Office for Institutional Research and Analytics

Storytelling with Data

Tuesday, July 8, 2:30-4:00pm, Taylor 210

Once you have analyzed your data, how do you communicate your results to a broad audience and in an engaging way?  This workshop will cover how to tell stories with data and how to design engaging slides.  Participants should bring two slides related to their in-progress data work for an activity. Participants will need a laptop.

Instructor: Kelly McConville (Director, Dominguez Center for Data Science)

Creating a Portfolio Website

Tuesday, July 14, 2:30-4:00pm, Taylor 210

You’ve done the research, now show it off! Having a website describing your research and experience can help you when you’re looking for jobs and internships. In this workshop, learn how to create your own portfolio website using Google Sites (or another platform). No prior experience required, please bring a laptop.

Instructor: Claire Cahoon (Digital Pedagogy & Scholarship Specialist)

Co-sponsored by Library Services

Creating Art with Code

Wednesday, July 23, 2:30-4:00pm, Taylor 210

Come destress and get creative with coding! At the event, participants will use the statistical software R to create art.  No prior experience is required but please bring a laptop.

Workshop Feedback

Let us know what you thought about the workshops! Please fill out the survey separately for each workshop you attended.

We value your honest feedback, both positive and negative.

Previous Semesters

Looking for a past workshop? See each past semester’s page for more information:

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