A rising senior majoring in computer science, Lauren Hyde has landed internships at some of the world’s biggest tech companies and is a recent winner of the Big Ten Academic Alliance data visualization contest – successes she has achieved thanks in part to Illinois’ X + Data Science (X + DS) program.

“I think my involvement in [X + Data Science] at Illinois was a huge part of how I ended up at Apple, as well as my internship last summer at PayPal,” she said. “The biggest draw to the University of Illinois for me was the computer science and data science programs. The opportunities I’ve found here in those areas have been impactful.”

As data reshapes every corner of society, the University of Illinois is preparing a new generation of leaders like Hyde who can harness its power across disciplines. The X + DS program is an interdisciplinary undergraduate program that pairs a traditional degree major, represented by “X,” with core coursework in data science offered by faculty in Grainger Engineering’s No. 5-ranked Siebel School of Computing and Data Science. The initiative launched in 2019 with 18 students; this year, at least 2,000 students in disciplines across campus will take the introductory CS/STAT 107 course, Data Science Discovery. In addition, thousands of other students around the country are using Illinois Data Science “DISCOVERY” resources that are available online.

X + DS is offering growing numbers of degree combinations, offering data science instruction to majors in astronomy, accountancy, business, finance, molecular and cellular biology, and more. This year,  three more blended degrees in chemical engineering, materials science and engineering, and nuclear, plasma, and radiological engineering are joining the 21 engineering majors available to students.  

CS/STAT 107 is the first course in the data science fundamentals coursework that X + DS students are required to complete within their first 3-5 semesters to prepare for advanced work in their area of specialization.

The initiative follows the massive success of the Computer Science + X program, which blends computer science with a conventional discipline, launched by the Siebel School in 2017. Lauded nationally for its innovative approach, CS + X has grown to 17 blended degrees. X + DS draws on the success of its predecessor to prepare students from business, information sciences, liberal arts and sciences, and engineering for a data-driven world. Together, the CS + X and X + DS programs serve 6,400 students.

“Students are hyped up, understanding how they can use computation to excel in their area of action,” said Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider, a computer science professor who co-teaches the CS/STAT 107 course. “To understand how, for example, history can be amplified through data science is one thing that is foundational to the DISCOVERY web resource, and part of the reason we’ve grown.”

“Our main goal is to do everything we can to make Illinois a national leader in data science education,” said Fagen-Ulmschneider. “We’re already a leader in computer science and in computer science education.”

Fagen-Ulmschneider’s co-instructor, Karle Flanagan, said that the X + DS program offers a unique opportunity for non-CS majors to gain an advantage upon graduation. As word spreads from veterans of the program, Flanagan is seeing more students register.

“It’s a way to enhance their major, make them more marketable, and give them a deeper understanding of how data and data science can integrate with whatever that X is,” said Flanagan, who is a teaching associate professor in the Department of Statistics in Illinois’ College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, as well as a computer science affiliate. “The goal is to have as many of these majors as possible. A lot is going on in the pipeline right now. It’s still the early stages, but the X + DS majors are popular among the students.”

CS/STAT 107 will have a record enrollment of nearly 1,200 students this fall, and the interest in data science is coming from Illinois students across many fields of study. Fagen-Ulmschneider notes that the Fall 2024 class was made up of students from over 90 majors, including over 300 from the Division of General Studies (renamed the Division of Exploratory Studies in Fall 2025).

Fagen-Ulmschneider explained why so many students from different majors are interested in the class. “When we designed the course, we knew that... students who were going to do something with data science were going to take [it] as their first course. Students who may have taken it for general studies or another reason could potentially be interested in data science after completing it.”

A major reason for the class’s appeal is its project-driven approach. Students use real-world datasets to analyze, discover and visualize the data’s impact.

AJ Schmidt, the Data Science Education Coordinator for the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, said, “Lots of students take CS/STAT 107 without really knowing what is possible and come out of there wanting to learn more. They do a great job with real-world problems, and when students learn how powerful and (in some cases) easy these tools are, they realize they have lots of potential uses.”

Flanagan said that data science has become part of her discipline. “I got my master’s in statistics over ten years ago. When I was a student, we used [the] R [programming language] occasionally, but we didn’t often program. Many classes were very theoretical and mathematical, and the technology wasn’t there yet. Now, you can’t do statistics without data science,” she said.

There’s good reason to believe the X + DS program will only continue to grow. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projected a 36% growth in data science occupations from 2021 to 2031, likely fueled by industry demand for cross-disciplinary data fluency.

That growth is reflected in the X + DS offerings across campus. Together with the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Gies College of Business, and the School of Information Sciences, Illinois offers X + DS undergraduate degree programs in Accountancy + Data Science,  Astronomy + Data Science, Business + Data Science, Finance + Data Science, Information Sciences + Data Science, and Molecular & Cellular Biology + Data Science. In addition to the three new engineering programs, several more blended degrees are in the pipeline, and a new Data Science Center, which will offer both classroom and research space, is under construction.

Baron Peters, Director of Undergraduate Studies in chemical and biomolecular engineering, said that the new degree program in Chemical Engineering + DS will give graduating students an edge.

 “People in industry are going to find the combination – the ability to be fully trained in chemical engineering fundamentals while also having a high degree of literacy and broad training in data science tools – will really make our students valuable on teams that are using both,” he said.

Schmidt said that the new Molecular and Cellular Biology + DS degree that launched in his college has already attracted significant interest from students and parents. He believes it has a promising future.

“We anticipate the MCB + DS major being popular, for example, with pre-med students. We know there is not a 100% success rate for med school, and there are lots of medicine-related jobs that are data-intensive,” he said.

Fagen-Ulmschneider said that data science education is exploding beyond campus and reaching even younger students. 

He led the creation of the open-access Data Science DISCOVERY website. The site’s Micro-Projects are available to help anyone worldwide learn data science. Over 3,000 have been completed to date.

The team is also educating high schoolers in the Chicago Public Schools as part of an effort called the Digital Scholars Program. The instructors are a graduate student and an undergraduate student who teach a six-week version of the CS/STAT 107 course.

“Most of the students haven’t seen a lot of data science, so it’s an opportunity for them to experience what a course at Illinois is like,” said Flanagan. “They complete a final project at the end, and then each student receives a micro-credential—a badge that they can display on their LinkedIn profile, share on social media, or use anywhere else. More and more (CPS digital scholar program graduates) who decide to come to the U. of I. take a proficiency exam. Then they have credit for CS/STAT 107, and then they can start in STAT 207 and get a bit of a jump start.”

The CPS data science class will soon offer an extra benefit. Pending state approval, and through the Office of the Provost, CPS high schools will offer dual credit. “They teach a high school course for a year that covers the data science curriculum,” Flanagan said. “Students take the same course, spanning the entire year in high school, rather than a semester. At the end of that experience, they get a CS/STAT 107 credit on their Illinois transcript that they can use if they come here or [to] any other university.”

The long waitlist attests to the program’s appeal, as does the queue for a separate teacher training program in Chicago that the team launched in 2024. That course is taught by an Illinois computer science student, who gives pointers on how to teach data science, introduces the curriculum, and teaches the teachers Python. 

Flanagan said she expects that demand for Grainger Engineering’s data science expertise will only continue to rise as more students discover its advantages for their careers.

“At first, people were somewhat skeptical,” she said. “They were saying, ‘Is this just a fad? Is it watering down the statistics major?’ Now people are saying, ‘No, this is enhancing the statistics major when we’re doing data science.’ There’s been a huge shift.”

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