fall 2026 projects:
see application and recruitment information under “fall 2026 recruitment.”
Chicago Scholars: Enrollment and Transfer Tracker: Chicago Scholars is a nonprofit that supports first-generation and under-resourced students in getting to and through college. The organization currently tracks where students enroll, transfer, and take breaks by hand, using a methodology its data team has built over the years. The team will build Python scripts that apply this methodology automatically to anonymized student data, flag edge cases for staff review, and export results into Chicago Scholars' CRM. Documentation will let staff run and maintain the tool on their own.
Cara Collective: Business Development Dashboard: Cara Collective is a workforce development nonprofit that helps people facing barriers to employment, such as homelessness, addiction, and incarceration, find and keep good jobs. Cara runs on Salesforce, but its business development team lacks a dashboard to track employer partnerships. The team will build a native Salesforce dashboard that tracks each partnership from prospect to sendout, interview, and placement, with goal trackers and linked reports. This will help staff learn what is working and connect more participants to jobs.
Erie Neighborhood House: Participant Demographics Map: Erie Neighborhood House wants a clearer way to see where its participants live and how demographics vary across its service area. The team will build an interactive map showing aggregate participant data by ZIP code or community area, with filters for program, age, and household income. Staff can select an area to view its demographic breakdown and print maps and summaries for reports. Source code and documentation will let Erie House update and maintain the map.
EarthTeam Stars: Verification Dashboard, Part Two: EarthTeam Stars is building a system to document and reward action and impact in planetary health. Building on a first-phase prototype for submitting report cards, reviewing evidence, and issuing test Stars on Solana devnet, the team will spend eight weeks refining it with EarthTeam staff: improving reporter and verifier workflows, testing scoring rules with real examples, strengthening permissions and the audit trail, and making exports more useful. The result will be a more reliable internal tool, with documentation and a plan for a future production launch.
Open Data: A program for students interested in data science and analysis, whether or not they have prior experience. Over the quarter, participants will complete several data analysis projects, producing reports and materials to share their findings. The first project analyzes CTA bus delay data, introducing members to GitHub and Jupyter as they examine which routes are delayed most often, the most common causes, and the distribution of delay times.
Technology Policy Writing Cohort: A new program for students who want to research and write on a technology policy issue, with guidance from peers, board members, researchers, and outside experts. We hope to build a close-knit, diverse cohort with backgrounds across public policy, computer science, physics, and data science. Participants will finish with a polished op-ed that distills complex technical and policy concepts for a public audience, to be published on a student platform similar to Tech Policy Press.