Joining the QMSS team this semester is Delaney Ryan, a GSI for QMSS 201. Delaney received dual degrees in Environmental Science and Psychology from the University of Michigan and has made her way back to earn a Master's in Public Health through the Health Behavior and Health Education program.
Before returning to Michigan, Delaney worked as a Market Strategy Analyst for a health insurance company. This required her to work with data in order to offer clients recommendations, so she learned plenty about data cleaning and analysis. Delaney recognized that working with data was her favorite aspect of the job, but she knew that she wanted to apply these skills in a different industry in the future.
Delaney’s research interests are spread out across a wide range of disciplines. She currently works with the Detroit Urban Research Center, where they conduct community-based participatory research (CBPR). Along with that, Delaney has a passion for workforce development and helping students reach their full potential, which she did as a GSI for Psych 211 last year. Through that course, Delaney assisted students with resume-building and interview workshops, along with teaching students the variety of ways their degrees can be applied. Delaney also enjoys researching education and social determinants of health.
When explaining important skills for undergraduates to develop, Delaney highlights the ability to clean data. She emphasizes that in the real world, employers are often not given clean data to work with, so it is imperative for individuals to have data-cleaning skills developed. She also thinks that proficiency in Excel and Tableau is important for data preparation and presentation.
Delaney thinks that a course she took, taught by her mentor in the School of Social Work, was the perfect preparation for GSIing QMSS 201. She says that with this course, graduate students were introduced to analytics platforms and taught how to clean and present data to a variety of audiences. Delaney valued the content of the class so greatly that she realized it was what she wanted to teach to others.
Delaney believes that QMSS 201 is an important course because it’s pivotal for social science students to realize that they are more than capable of working with data. She recognizes that sometimes students are hesitant to take this type of course due to the intimidating nature of coding or mathematics. Despite this, she knows that once students are exposed to what they can do with data it opens up a whole new world for them!
