UMSI student hopes to use data analysis to pursue social justice

By Genevieve Monsma 

Heading into her first year at U-M, Julia Kassab planned to pursue political science and become a lawyer because she was passionate about social justice.

Then she decided to enroll in U-M’s CS KickStart. The weeklong program takes place right before school starts and is designed to introduce young women to computer science.

“That was my first exposure to computer science or coding, and it was so cool,” Kassab said.

That experience was valuable later when Kassab applied to be a research assistant for a political science project conducted by Eugenia Quintanilla, a U-M doctoral candidate who became a mentor to Kassab.

“I was hired in part because I had CS experience, which many political science students do not,” Kassab said.

“On that project, I ended up working a lot with data analysis, which is where I discovered data science,” Kassab said. “I realized I liked mixing social problems with computation.”

Shortly thereafter, Kassab was introduced to the School of Information by a family friend. She’d known little about UMSI previously but soon discovered its programming allowed her to marry multiple interests: working with people, technology and data science.

She applied and was accepted into the program her sophomore year. Kassab is set to graduate with a major in information analysis.

“I’m so grateful it worked out because now I will leave this university confident that I can navigate a technological world, which I wouldn’t have necessarily gotten with just a social sciences degree,” she said.

Kassab was one of five U-M graduates featured in the University Record. Read the full profile.