Grantee Spotlight: Clint Smith and Amy Patterson, Sewanee

With just under 2,000 students, Sewanee, University of the South is a small liberal arts college, but earlier this year it launched a program that educators and administrators expect may become huge, alleviating public health challenges in underserved Tennessee communities and reaching predominantly Black and economically challenged people.

Sewanee is part of the New America Public Interest Technology University Network’s 2020 Network Challenge cohort, receiving funding it will use for two projects. Both of the projects are focused on building data analytics expertise and will include work alongside existing community organizations such as the South Cumberland Health Network, which is a nonprofit working on health care for low income people as well as an ongoing institutional partnership with Meharry Medical College in Nashville.

This program, headed up by assistant professor of Biology Clint Smith and professor of Politics Amy Patterson, will build capacity for data-analytics and technology use that addresses pressing public health challenges of the local community, giving them the tools they need to apply for and win grants, explains Jim Peterman, the director of the Office of Civic Engagement at Sewanee.

Sewanee faculty and students will learn new skills in biostatistics and epidemiology through study at Meharry, and then will design a research project that involves researchers from both schools to address public health challenges in both rural and urban areas in the state. The school will also pilot a data analytics institute — the Sewanee Public Interest Data Analysis Institute — led by associate professor of Mathematics Matthew Rudd. He and his students expect to identify four public interest projects that will be worked on by students and faculty teams.

“We're calling it sort of generically data analysis, but it's really sort of a variety of ways that you can work with, understand, analyze, and communicate about data in a way that would support the efforts of community organizations that we're working with,” Peterman says. “We're interested in, for example, determining the ways in which the emergency room could be avoided for ambulatory sensitive conditions. We'll be doing data analysis connected to that.”

This work is connected to the school’s Office of Civic Engagement – and for a reason, Patterson says. “We see students that are involved in this project, they will, through the conversations in partnership with Meharry Medical College, an historically black medical institution, they will get a much better sense of an understanding and the questions that need to be asked, and the depth of racial injustice and how structural racism has impacted health.”

Most important, says Patterson, the increased focus on data analytics will mean students will be better prepared for the real world and professors like her will be able to teach more effectively and deepen the content of their courses.

“As a liberal arts institution, we're always pushing our students to articulate clearly, to understand problems comprehensively, to think critically, to ask the hard questions,” explains Patterson. “By building some capacity around data, particularly the biostats and epidemiology, we are giving them some more tools to be able to do that.”