New SDS partnership brings real-world learning opportunities for UTSA students

JANUARY 2, 2025 — The UTSA School of Data Science (SDS) has partnered with Federal IT Consulting (FEDITC) to create the UTSA Headache Cure Board, a groundbreaking forum connecting students with real-world data-science challenges. Funded by a substantial gift from FEDITC, the program enables businesses, government agencies and nonprofits to submit pressing problems for UTSA master’s students to tackle. Its goal is to alleviate the challenges that keep senior executives awake at night.

“The idea with the problem board is to expose students to a lot of different problems from a lot of different places, problems that don’t just exist in an online world,” said Aaron McKee, who is FEDITC’s COO and SVP and is spearheading the program.

By solving real challenges, the Headache Cure Board fosters meaningful educational and professional growth for students while offering organizations an innovative, low-risk way to address pressing issues.

“Providing students with opportunities to tackle real-world challenges is central to our mission.”

To ensure the process functions smoothly and to provide students with even more practical experience, FEDITC submitted an initial problem during the forum’s test phase. Looking ahead, the plan is for participating organizations to regularly submit projects for UTSA students in the M.S. in Data Analytics (M.S.D.A.), the M.S. in Artificial Intelligence (M.S.A.I.), and the M.S. in Statistics and Data Science (M.S.S.D.S.) to solve.

"Providing students with opportunities to tackle real-world challenges is central to our mission,” said Jianwei Niu, interim executive director of the School of Data Science. “These experiences prepare graduate students from diverse academic backgrounds to apply their skills and thrive in professional environments."

Even in its early stages, the program is already showing results. The students are working to analyze exposure to perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as “forever chemicals,” which have been linked to long-term health risks.

“The students are looking to forecast PFAS exposure into the future for specific communities while working to identify who may have lived in areas with high PFAS levels,” said Anthony Rios, SDS Faculty Fellow and assistant professor in UTSA’s Department of Information Systems and Cybersecurity. “Reaching out to these people can help them address potential health issues before they become major problems.”

The students’ efforts culminated in a showcase, where they presented their findings and received feedback to improve the integration of real-world problems into future courses.

“This is an exciting step in integrating even more impactful, real-world challenges into our curriculum,” Rios explained. “The goal is to refine the process and expand it further in the next semester.”

The FEDITC team has been impressed by the students’ progress.

“We were shocked,” McKee said. “We put it in to make sure all the online forms worked, but the students actually developed something of a solution, or at least an approach to a solution, which blew our minds.”

For FEDITC, the Headache Cure Board is about solving challenges. It’s also an educational tool.

“Even if a solution doesn’t take off or doesn’t necessarily work, your brain will have learned a new way to tackle things,” McKee said. “That’s the goal, that students come out of this with different kinds of problem sets and a different mindset on how to solve them.”

In addition to providing valuable experiential learning opportunities, FEDITC sees the Headache Cure Board as a critical pathway for graduates to advance their careers. By engaging in hands-on problem-solving and networking with industry leaders, students gain an edge in the job market.

“It’s going to be something that you put on your résumé,” McKee said. “‘I did this, for this problem, submitted by this institution,’ which I believe will be very helpful in getting a job. You’re telling an employer, ‘If you hire me, I’m already experienced in solving the kinds of problems that you need solved.’”

Although currently limited to M.S.D.A., M.S.A.I. and M.S.S.D.S. students, the hope is to expand the platform.

“We would like the problem board to take off so it can be used by students in other majors and disciplines,” McKee said.

UTSA prepares 7,000 students every year for Texas’ professional workforce, equipped with the in-demand skills Texas needs the most.

— Christopher Reichert and Rosalinda Montero