Theresa Szczepanski

Full Name: Theresa Szczepanski

Grad Year: ​2025

Degree/Program: ​Online MS in DACSS

Current Title: Academic Dean

Current Employer: Rising Tide Public Charter School

What is the core mission of your role, or what is a major project you are currently working on? I oversee the academics of a public school serving students in grades 5-12. I analyze our school’s accountability data to identify areas of weakness in our curriculum and instruction and then work together with our school’s department chairs and teachers to set data-informed instructional goals. Last fall, we were designated a School of Recognition by the State of Massachusetts for the level of improvement we have demonstrated in achievement in English Language Arts and Mathematics.

Could you share the story of how you found this position? Did a specific networking contact, internship, or program resource help open the door?: I had been a Math and Computer Science teacher for 10 years at Rising Tide and was entering my first year as a STEM instructional coach when I started the DACSS program. I enrolled in the program because I knew that we had a wealth of data that could be used but a lack of an analysis pipeline. I was able to work with our school’s data in my culminating projects for every course that I took. The leadership team and board of trustees were so happy to have a system where we could identify and track student progress at scale that I was offered the position of Academic Dean as I was completing the DACSS program.

Is there a specific skill, methodology, or lesson from your degree that you rely on to do your work successfully? Because students are tested every year, there is a lot of historical information on the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s websites. I have found web scraping skills to be very helpful for me to build a dataset of our students’ achievement by learning standard over the last decade. Having this information has been key to prioritizing instructional initiatives and deciding what curricular resources to purchase. 

Effective visualization and story telling with data is very important in my role. School leadership teams are stretched very thin, have limited time, and typically do not have data analysis training. Being able to provide a visual story of our students’ progress is one of the most important things that I provide for our school. It is essential to put our leadership team on the same page and also allows the staff to see progress at scale.

For example, in the Fall of 2024 our Upper Middle School Science teachers revamped their instructional materials for some of the Physical Sciences standards. Our students in the last two years have performed considerably better than their peers in the state and all prior cohorts of Rising Tide students. Being able to provide visuals like this for the teachers that work directly with the students is arguably the most important aspect of my work.

Looking back, what was a pivotal moment, favorite class, or faculty mentorship during your time in the program that directly shaped how you approach your career today? Generally speaking, school districts have a wealth of data but little to no staff trained in working with data. Because of this, I sought out as many technical skills as I could while I was in the DACSS program. I use software that I wrote in Omer Yalcin’s Machine Learning and Python courses regularly. I also utilize the lessons I took away from Advanced Story Telling with Data (DACSS 604) on a regular basis. I invest a lot of time making effective visuals for a non-technical audience. Taking the time to tell the story of progress at scale is incredibly important for building a culture of data-driven instruction; teachers and leadership teams need to see if the initiatives they are undertaking are having an impact. DACSS 604 was pivotal for helping me to build the framework for communicating with our key stakeholders.

If you could give one piece of advice to a student who is on the fence about starting the MS in DACSS, what would it be? The DACSS program is very flexible and allowed me to complete projects directly connected to my career and interests; as someone with a decade of experience in my field and a wealth of untouched data sets, that flexibility was invaluable to me. This program will help you build your technical skills and then apply them directly to your specific area of interest. 

I would also say that the advising meetings were very helpful prior to course selection; the faculty listened to my specific interests and goals and recommended courses that they thought would be good fits for me.

Lastly, I strongly recommend bringing work to share for constructive critiques at any opportunity. I remember my professor in 601 saying “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough”. Bringing my unpolished and unfinished work to share and be critiqued at open office hours allowed me the opportunity to receive constructive feedback throughout the semester and set me up for less stress at the end of the term for final project submissions.