Our projects span a range of different focus areas including criminal justice reform, economic development, education, health, energy & environment, and philanthropic investments. Since 2018, Applied Data Fellows have been embedded in public sector and social impact organizations. Fellows translate data insights in to actionable programs and decisions and create data analytics models that incorporate real-world processes and constraints to support novel, evidence-based policymaking.
Market Share Analysis: For a large partner organization with a wide national network, a Fellow used Power BI and Excel to analyze nationwide and program-specific membership trends over a 10-year time period to understand whether competition by new competitive centers is negatively impacting membership.
Impact Measurement Tool: For a large nation-wide non-profit, a Fellow conducted a meta-analysis on the impact of after school programs on Power BI and is currently building a tool, an app, which would estimate the impact each member organization has on their community.
Salary Benchmark Analysis: Taking a sample of 30 schools, and around 3,500 teachers, a Fellow conducted an analysis of teacher salaries in charter schools using R. This primarily involved descriptive statistics of the distribution of charter salaries by school level (elementary/high school), years of experience, highest degree earned and subject matter. Our Fellow also produced a policy analysis of how non-unionized charter school salaries compare to the Chicago Teachers Union contracts and the contracts of unionized charter schools.
Visualization of Processes: A Fellow used GIS and Python to create data story maps to show the effects of under- investment in different regions of Cook County. Our Fellow’s interventions helped the department cohere their data, visually lay it out to understand gaps between investments and needs, and refocus their investment strategy.
Mapping Trends and Gap Analysis: A Fellow used publicly available data from Chicago Public Schools to create visualizations to characterize trends in graduation and college enrollment rates. Through this they demonstrated that while high school graduation rates have plateaued in recent years citywide, there remains significant variation at the school and community level. Another important finding is that some schools do well in graduation rates but do not increase college enrollment and these schools cluster spatially.
Since its inception, the University of Chicago’s Applied Data Fellowship (ADF) has embedded dozens of Fellows with government agencies, nonprofits, social enterprises, and philanthropic organizations in the United States to enable data-backed public policy and social impact.
In a short span of time since January 2020, COVID-19 has disrupted the lives and needs for billions of people around the world, including in Chicago. Applied Data Fellows helped Chicago and Illinois organizations’ COVID-19 responses in the areas of contact tracing, housing, workforce protection, state and federal finance, food security, education, and small business.
ADF Fellows created COVID-19 relief policies affecting 5 million residents of Chicago and Cook County. Their work has supported a $56 million contact tracing program, monitored PPE usage for more than 9,000 jail workers and detainees, allocated $10 million in funds for small businesses or independent contractors, distributed $2.5 million to organizations fighting for social good, developed reports to understand economic impacts of the virus on the state, ensured thousands of Chicago residents had access to food, and protected 17,000 low income Cook County residents.
The Chicago Mayor’s Office impacts all three million residents of Chicago. The office has played an integral role in responding to COVID-19 on many fronts – public health, economic development, public transportation, crime and public safety, education, and environment. The ADF Fellow has worked as a support for the Chicago Contact Tracing initiative, streamlining the organization and communication efforts while ensuring project goals are being met. The Contact Tracing program is a $56 million grant for community-based organizations to hire, train and support 600 individuals to conduct case investigations of community-based coronavirus transmission. This project will help the Chicago Mayor’s Office to continue to monitor COVID-19 and inform the office’s response as more information becomes available on how the virus spreads.
The primary response of the Housing Authority of Cook County during the pandemic has been to ensure none of the roughly 17,000 low income tenants in Cook County are evicted because of nonpayment during the crisis. The Fellow analyzed pre-pandemic data to determine how many residents may be vulnerable to COVID-19-related unemployment while tracking economic fallout as it occurs. The projects have also led the Fellow to compiling many resources for HACC residents like a nutrition and food bank database as well as a tracker showing the number of cases in areas where HACC residents live. These projects have ensured HACC residents have access to housing, food, and resources that will protect them from COVID-19’s economic disruptions.
As COVID-19 took hold in Cook County, the Bureau of Economic Development immediately looked to launch an emergency relief fund for suburban businesses in anticipation of mass economic and social disruptions. The Bureau launched a $10 million Community Recovery Loan Fund for small business and independent contractors. An ADF Fellow at the Bureau developed two surveys to assess the needs of smaller businesses and created two maps to visualize the density of businesses in areas throughout Cook County. At the Department of Finance, another ADF Fellow analyzed tax revenue data to determine how industries and companies would be affected by the coronavirus lockdown, finding that there will be significant budget shortfalls. The Fellow was also part of a team that strategized the equitable distribution of $51 million in federal funds to municipalities in Cook County. The Fellow was able to help the team define eligibility and qualification criteria to ensure loans are directed to small business applicants with the greatest need.
The Cook County Sheriff’s Office is responsible for protecting 4,250 detainees from COVID-19 infections while providing protection to its workforce of about 5,000 individuals. An ADF Fellow created an R code to track and analyze PPE usage within the jail. It helped the Cook County Sheriff’s Office to follow usage trends over time to inform the administrative workers who purchase and distribute PPE within the jail where the greatest needs lie. Another ADF Fellow project entails three daily reports to executives that summarize infection and testing rates for detainees and employees in the jail to give the organization a comprehensive view of the trends within the jail. These projects ensured people within the organization have ample information to make policies to protect inmates and employees from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago works to improve the Chicago region as a place to live, work, and do business to promote social and economic well-being in the region. In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the Civic Committee has worked to rebuild Illinois’ state finances to promote fiscal stability and economic growth across the state. The ADF Fellow has been working on projects to collect information and data to understand COVID-19’s impact on the economy and Illinois state budget. The analysis and research has provided the Civic Committee with information and data to better understand the impact of COVID-19 while building solutions for the long-term health of the state’s economy.
Thrive Chicago has reached out to its 50 partners and stakeholders throughout the pandemic to provide help to children impacted by the crisis. The ADF Fellow worked on two major projects throughout the pandemic. Through the creation of a R Shiny app, the Fellow developed an interactive map allowing users to find the closest schools and food pantries to ensure vulnerable students have access to proper nutrition through the lockdown. In another project, the Fellow analyzed how COVID-19 will affect college enrollment from high school seniors in the upcoming years. These projects have directly provided aid to more than 50 organizations in need while trying to understand factors of the coronavirus beyond immediate concerns.
The Joyce Foundation designated $2.5 million to support rapid response initiatives in Chicago and across the state to provide financial support in the form of grants to organizations that aim to create systemic change. Twenty grantees have already been supported. The Education and Economic Mobility program contributed $2.5 million to the Chicago Education Equity COVID-19 Response Fund to help education issues in Chicago. The Joyce Foundation also raised funds for the Illinois COVID-19 Relief Fund with a $500,000 contribution. The ADF Fellow is collaborating with different groups in analyzing application data from various organizations for city and state funds. Their analysis helps determine whether the grants support the populations with the most need while identifying which relevant organizations were not funded properly in the first round of applications. These projects have ensured populations with the most need get the quality funding to protect and serve their communities.
