Last year the Ciocca Center was contacted by Beau Lescott ’95, (philosophy major) COO -Public Investing at Silver Point Capital because he wanted to pilot a workshop focused on giving liberal arts students technical skills in the area of coding. “Two of my favorite classes were logic,” starts Lescott, “taught by philosophy professor Karsten Stueber, and a philosophy of mind class that was offered jointly by the philosophy and psychology departments. These classes taught me the power of a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving. As an investor, there is nothing more important than to be able to evaluate a puzzle from multiple angles. This ability grows in relative importance the further you are in your career.”
In the spring of 2024, we offered Beyond Excel: Python for Business Data Analytics, a workshop for 15 students from all four classes and a variety of majors. The goal was to help students gain exposure to the python programming language and learn how to approach strategic business questions using data-driven insights through coding exercises.
This year we will offer it again as a two-part series, one weekend in the fall and the second in the spring, to provide students with the foundation to continue self-directed learning in more advanced areas of data analysis and draw on examples from real-world business operations.
