Need a consultation?

The Consulting Program is supported by a team of NC State faculty, faculty librarians, library staff, and graduate student consultants.

Access our support by making an individual consultation appointment. We can help you with a range of needs, from addressing a specific issue working with your data to assisting with your broader data science project.

For more information, visit the Get Data Science Help Page.

Book an Appointment

Book a 30-minute appointment with a Data Science Consultant about data and visualization topics.

Think you’ll need more than one appointment? Just book one appointment to start, and we’ll work with you to evaluate your needs and refer you to the best person to help with your project.

Book an appointment here

Research and Modeling

Another aspect of our work in collaborative data science support is researching models and best practices for organizing and supporting data science use in higher education.

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Researchers Helping Researchers

The Data Science Consulting program provides free assistance to students, faculty and staff seeking help with their data and telling the story behind their research.  

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Models for Sustainable and Inclusive Data Science Consulting and Collaboration in Higher Education Workshop Series

This series focused on mechanisms for delivering data science research support via consulting and collaboration models, as well as developing policies and discussing infrastructure that supports robust, inclusive and sustainable practices. 

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Libraries and Data Science and AI Academy receive Major Consulting Grant

Data science is an increasingly important element in all business sectors and facets of life. How can higher education better prepare students to engage meaningfully with data? In a new project funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the NC State University Libraries and the Data Science and AI Academy (DSA) are answering that question.

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Academic and Community Involvement

We are interested in disseminating our scholarly work on consulting and collaboration models in higher education by presenting at conferences.

Recent conference and Community participation:

2025 Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Conference

On April 2-5, 2025, Mara Blake, Head, and Shannon Ricci, Associate Head, of NC State Data & Visualization Services, gave a lightning talk and poster presentation at the biennial Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Conference in Minneapolis, MN, one of the largest conferences geared towards those working in academic libraries.

Both Blake and Ricci delivered a compelling lightning talk, spotlighting the NC State data science consulting program. This collaborative initiative, with the university’s center on data science and the Department of Statistics, showcases how graduate student consultants provide vital data science support, fostering student success and interdisciplinary research.

Additionally, Blake and Ricci jointly presented a detailed poster outlining NC State University Libraries comprehensive suite of data science services, including workshops, specialized labs, and consulting. Attendees gained insights into our strategies for assessing interdisciplinary impact, successful outreach to diverse patrons, staffing models, and cross-institutional collaborations.

Presenting Authors: Mara Blake and Shannon Ricci, NC State University

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2025 NC State Conference on Faculty Excellence

On March 6, 2025, Mara Blake, Head, NC State University Libraries Data & Visualization Services; Emily Griffith, Professor of the Practice, Department of Statistics and Director of DSA Consulting; and Shannon Ricci, Associate Head, NC State University Libraries Data & Visualization Services presented a conference poster titled, “Get Data Help: Experiences from NC State University’s Data Science Consulting Program” at the NC State Conference on Faculty Excellence. This presentation highlighted the collaborative efforts of the Department of Statistics, DSA Consulting, and University Libraries in providing data science consulting services.

Presenting Authors: Mara Blake, Emily Griffith, and Shannon Ricci, NC State University

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2024 Symposium on Data Science and Statistics

NC State’s Shannon Ricci discussed how the NC State Libraries’ Data Science Consulting Service supports the entire data science lifecycle for the university community. The Consulting Service leverages graduate student consultants, providing valuable learning experiences while scaling the service. This model also exposes students to diverse career paths. By analyzing user data, program managers refine service delivery, plan outreach, and recruit skilled student consultants. This discussion allowed speakers to share their experiences developing and expanding this successful program, which provides valuable data science support to the NC State community.

Presenting Author: Shannon Ricci, NC State University

Authors: Shannon Ricci, Alp Tezbasaran, Mara Blake, Emily Griffith, NC State University

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Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Fall 2023 Membership Meeting

This briefing provided an update on the “Models for Sustainable and Inclusive Data Science Consulting and Collaboration in Higher Education” project generously sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The project leveraged the successful collaboration between the Libraries, the Data Science and AI Academy, and the Department of Statistics at North Carolina State University (NCSU) to provide interdisciplinary data science consulting to the campus. The NCSU model utilizes a mix of staff, faculty, and graduate student staffing to serve users across all the colleges of the university. Driven by an interest in approaches to structuring data science consulting in higher education and a relative dearth of recent literature on the topic, the presenters convened a cohort of experts from a variety of institution types to explore the topic. The cohort enthusiastically engaged with different facets of administrative models for data science consulting to identify considerations for structuring programs. The project briefing shared the successful structure of the project, the initial considerations identified by the cohort, and details on forthcoming output from the project.

Presenters: Emily Griffith, Mara Blake, NC State University

Watch the full presentation

Academic Data Science Alliance (ADSA) Annual Meeting, 2023

NC State’s Mara Blake and Emily Griffith led a discussion about mechanisms for organizing, leading, and delivering data science research support via consulting and collaboration in higher education. Topics included robust, inclusive, and sustainable practices for developing policies and infrastructure, including potential strategies, benefits, and barriers to creating a sustainable data science consulting service within an academic environment. The presentation examined broader organizational issues of data science consulting and research enablement models that have mixed staffing (e.g. faculty, graduate students, and professional consultants), home departments, areas of expertise, and funding sources. It also explored the training and education involved in using graduate students as consultants and shared outcomes learned through an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant that brought together a cohort of diverse professionals working in this area. The goal of this discussion was to share and learn from a variety of successful models for consulting/collaboration in an academic setting. The discussion was grounded in an understanding of power dynamics between tenured/tenure-track faculty, non-tenure track faculty, research staff, and students.

Presenters: Mara Blake, Emily Griffith, NC State University

Learn more about ADSA events