(upbeat music)
- I'm Jeremy Porter, I'm a professor of sociology and
I am the director of Quantitative Methods
in the Social Sciences Program.
There is a huge void, I think, in both academia
and in the real world in terms of the gulf between
our theoretical understanding of social issues
and our ability to quantitatively understand those issues
with the vast amounts of data, that people are collecting
so the program's really geared towards people
that have that theoretical background in the social sciences
but they also want to gain quantitative capabilities
to take data, ask meaningful research questions
then use that data to answer those research questions.
Students, vary in terms of stages of their academic career,
so we have brand new undergraduate students
that are looking to move on to PhDs programs.
We have professionals that are coming back
to gain skills and quantitative methods.
We have people who already have PhDs that want to come back
because they don't have the training
that they believe they need in quantitative methods.
The foundational courses in the program,
requires students to work through the basics
of quantitative methods,
and then get a good strong understanding
of statistical applications.
After the foundational courses,
students can move beyond that
to take more advanced quantitative methods courses.
They can take more substantive courses
in the social sciences, if they're interested in developing
a theoretical framework to apply those methods.
We offer a lot of courses in statistical programming,
and we're really interested,
in sort of building student's skills
and in cutting edge software programs
and programming languages that employers are looking for.
The program has four different concentrations,
there is a Generic Methods program
which entails ten courses of just methodological training
students can take any courses the want
after foundational classes.
There is a Analytics for Learning track,
that students can take if they're interested
in the use of data to understand how students learn
or how to effectively communicate information
to students within the field of education.
We have a Social Inequalities track
and an Economical Inequalities track
at the local, regional, and national level
which combines the Urban Research Center
and the Stone Center for Economic Inequalities.
We have a Demography track which is also associated
with the CUNY Institute for Demographic Research.
All four tracks are fairly flexible ,
in terms of how students move through the tracks
but we do have a good group of professors in each track.
We teach a lot of our courses with cutting edge
statistical programming tools, like R and Python.
Students also learn how to work
with foundational quantitative methods
then build from that so they'll learn how to analyze
relationships between variables
but then also understand how to manage that data
and what that data looks like when it's restructured.
Our teaching philosophy is really guided by applications,
so it's a really hands-on program.
All of our classes have some type of lab component to them.
Part of our program is a capstone, a thesis course.
Where students will take everything that they've learned
in the curriculum and they'll end up applying that
to some type of a real-world research project
at the end of the program, but there also opportunities
to work with our professors.
The Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences Program
is unique because of the interdisciplinary
nature of the program.
We have a Sociology Department, the Economics Department,
the Educational Psychology Department,
the Demography Program and other programs
at the Graduate Center.
All of these programs again are housed
by world-renowned faculty who implement quantitative methods
in their ever day research.
All the classes are taught by full-time faculty members.
Students have the opportunity to work alongside
with PhDs students in their training
and they gain a rigor of understanding
and exposure to methods and techniques
that they wouldn't be able to gain access to
in the Master Zoning program.
Related that there's
the CUNY Institute of Demographic Research,
the Stone Center for Economic Inequality ,
the Urban Research Center and other institutes
and centers on campus, all of them are always happy
to have students that have strong quantitative capabilities,
that can contribute to their research.
No matter your area, professionally,
there's data that is being collected.
Whether you work for government, you can see.
Or you work for a non-profit,
or you work for an academic institution,
or you're going to private industry,
all of 'em are collecting data.
All of 'em have questions
that they're asking about this data,
all of them need people that can form
strong research questions and can design research programs
around those questions
and then they can use data to answer questions.
So there's not really one area that students can go into,
really all professional opportunities need people
that understand quantitative methods.
(upbeat music)