From Data+ to Watershed Science: How a Duke Summer Program Shaped an Ecologist’s Career

Can a summer data science program spark a lifelong passion? For Matthew Ross, a Duke Ph.D. graduate in ecology, one of Duke’s interdisciplinary “plus programs” helped lead to a career that blends environmental science, data visualization and collaborative teaching. A decade after mentoring undergraduates in the Data+ program, he trains the next generation of scientists at Colorado State University.

It’s June, temperatures are rising and Duke’s summer +Programs are in full swing — including Data+, the signature program led by the Rhodes Information Initiative at Duke that started it all.

Since 2015 this 10-week immersive research experience has paired undergraduates with graduate students to explore data-driven approaches to interdisciplinary challenges. Small teams, supported by Duke faculty, staff and external partners, learn to collect, analyze and visualize data while gaining broad exposure to the field of data science. 

We caught up with one of the original participants, Matthew Ross, to find out how Data+ influenced his career path.

Learning by Doing

While pursuing a Ph.D. in ecology at Duke, Ross joined two Data+ projects that helped shape his technical and teaching skills. Advised by Martin Doyle and Emily Bernhardt, he was researching the environmental impacts of mountaintop coal mining, which required him to understand large, complex datasets.

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“When I started graduate school, I had zero experience working with or analyzing data,” Ross recalls. But through Data+, he quickly developed a passion for programming by learning from other members of his labs.

By 2015, Ross wanted to spread this passion for data analysis and joined Aaron Berdanier on one of the first Data+ projects: “Interactive Environmental Data Applications.” As a project mentor he helped undergraduates Molly Rosenstein and Tess Harper build visualizations for an introductory environmental science course. In 2017, as a project manager for “Data Viz for Long-term Ecological Research and Curricula,” he guided undergraduates in creating a website that visualized long-term ecosystem databases for students in introductory ecology courses.

Data+ made me realize how rapidly students can learn intimidating skills with significant motivation and consistent mentoring.

“All in all, my experience with Data+ made me realize how rapidly students can learn intimidating skills with significant motivation and consistent mentoring,” he says. “All of our undergraduate students had little experience with programming and within 10 weeks had made complex, interesting and beautiful data visualizations that tell important environmental stories.”

These hands-on, team-based learning experiences not only deepened his technical skills but also helped shaped his teaching philosophy.

Flipping the Classroom: A Teaching Philosophy Rooted in Collaboration

Now as an associate professor of watershed science at Colorado State University (CSU), he uses data science techniques to understand how human activities impact our water resources and shares his passion for data science and visualization with his students.

From the start at CSU, he says he flipped his classroom: students now watch lectures before class and spend class time coding and solving problems together.

“That was substantially based on my experience with Data+,” Ross says. “You can’t just tell students to go home and code on their own. It’s so much better with a mentor or peer coding next to you.”

He emphasizes that technical skills are best acquired “live and together,” especially when paired with subject-area knowledge — a philosophy that mirrors the Data+ model.

Building a Team

Ross brings the same collaborative and empowerment philosophy to his lab, aptly called the Radical Open Science Syndicate (ROSS). The lab focuses on making science more open and accessible, using and sharing open source data and tools to better design and manage freshwater ecosystems. His team is collecting data to tackle major problems like fresh water supply for cities and climate change impacts on freshwater quality.

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“I’m most proud of my team and their relationships to each other and their work,” he says.

For example, through The Poudre Water Quality Network, a partnership with the City of Fort Collins, his team monitors water quality in the Cache la Poudre River through a network of sensors that capture real-time water quality data. This information will eventually help resource managers make more informed decisions about river health and serve as a tool to engage the community on watershed stewardship.

Ross says his lab culture and management style is inspired by his Duke advisors, Bernhardt and Doyle, and the autonomy he had during the summer program.

In Data+, I had a lot of control of the projects, and I’ve tried to do that here with my staff and students.

“As a grad student in Data+, I had a lot of control of the projects, and I’ve tried to do that here with my staff and students,” says Ross. “I look at the products, but I give my grad students, and staff too, full control.”

“I’ve recruited people that are very much focused around impact and engagement. I’m proud of the work we've done, which is much more like engaged scholarship. We have a lot of work that is being directly used by our water resource management partners throughout the country and especially in Colorado.”

Spreading Impact

Ross has created several new courses at CSU that his team pitches in to teach. “They spread our approach to the classes, which is largely focused on lowering barriers to implementing technical solutions and allowing people to be successful despite any preconceived notions that they’re not coders or they’re not good at this stuff.”

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Ross also helped launch a new professional science master’s program designed in part on Data+’s approach. “The Data+ apprenticeship model directly connected to industry, and these direct industry connections are something I’m very focused on increasing in higher education. Data+ was amazing at that.”

From mentoring undergraduates at Duke to leading a lab at CSU, Ross’s journey shows how Duke’s +Programs can stick with students.

“I think Data+ deeply influenced me in critical ways in, and elevated lessons from my advisers and overall education experience,” he says. “You have to marry technical skill with subject area knowledge, and Data+ is organized that way.”

Want to know more? Check out the 2025 Data+ projects. Meet the ROSS team in this video or explore one of their open access courses.

Main image: Matthew Ross monitors water quality in the Cache la Poudre River. (Photo: Anika Pyle)