Berkeley’s First New College in 50 Years

With data science on the move as one of the fastest growing majors at Berkeley, increasing demands for innovative ways to interpret and utilize the field have also surged. Berkeley has proven to be a trailblazer in the realm of data science; with women making up nearly half of Berkeley’s data science undergraduate population as well as being a top ranked university in sending students to Silicon Valley. To keep up with demand, Berkeley is doubling down on data science and computing science, adding a unique twist, with the establishment of Berkeley’s first new college in over 50 years; the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS). 

Announced May 18th, the CDSS’ vision is to ‘educate all students to approach data ethically and masterfully, found new fields that bring computing and data science together with other disciplines, make sustained progress on issues of human and societal significance, and ​​advance the state-of-the-art in the core of computing, data science, and statistics’. The new college includes many sought after interdisciplinary graduate degree programs (Masters, doctoral, and joint programs with UCSF): see the full list is provided below. CDSS being Berkeley’s first college of the 21st century is indicative of the growing trends towards technological advancement, both within the school as well as society at large, and it intends to build the necessary ‘tools of tomorrow’ that will bring about meaningful change and solutions for the issues of today. 

The new college makes data science accessible to diverse students in every discipline, not just those studying engineering or technical fields, so that they become the ethical leaders the world needs across the private and public sectors.

Chancellor Carol Christ
Carol ChristUC Berkeley Chancellor

With one in five Berkeley undergraduates taking a data science course each year as well as an expected 900+ graduating data science majors this past academic school year, the CDSS comes as a much welcomed addition to Berkeley– feeding the growing hunger for the rapidly expanding field. CDSS’ combination of such vibrant areas of research will undoubtedly offer a wide array of groundbreaking scientific developments in the years to come.