The Széll Kálmán Data Science College of Economics was founded at Széchenyi István University a year ago and has already achieved significant success in its first year. Its membership exceeds one hundred, it brings international students into the academic community, and its young people have achieved good results at national and international conferences.

The Széll Kálmán College was established as Széchenyi István University’s tenth specialist college with the support of the Neumann Nonprofit Public Benefit Ltd. Its aim is to nurture the talents of students interested in data science, data asset approach and management, to support their research activities and to educate young researchers. Data is a resource that every organisation needs to exploit effectively today. Due to increasing digitalisation, data science is one of the most emerging multi-disciplinary fields of study. The importance and relevance of the topic is reflected in the popularity of the youngest specialised college at Széchenyi University.

"Our openness is characterised by the fact that any active, full-time student of any university can apply for membership, and that we are consciously open to the international student community of Széchenyi University. The focus of our activities is on targeted career management of our members from undergraduate to doctoral programmes. Our main goal is to create a research workshop where we can bring together talented students interested in research and academic activity to conduct research together, primarily in English, in line with international standards." said Dr László Buics, Assistant Professor of the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Budapest, and Programme Director of the College,” said Dr László Buics, Assistant Professor of the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Budapest, and Programme Director of the College.

Dr László Buics, Programme Director of the College of Arts and Sciences (centre) with the students (Árpád Horváth, Nyambayar Batbayar, Chadi Mourad, Denson Mulaze Benedito) who were awarded at the Scientific and Art Students' Conference.

The College has been a success since its launch, with membership growing steadily and dynamically, and now exceeds all expectations, reaching over 100 members. "The key to our success is enthusiasm and activity. During the past two semesters, we have regularly organised lectures where participants have been able to deepen their knowledge in various fields with the help of invited professional speakers. We also held several online professional presentations on digitalisation and skills development throughout the semester, which also contributed to the great results. In addition to the continuous recruitment and the regular organisation of lectures, we put a strong emphasis on developing the academic interest of the students recruited, with the preparation of research papers for the Scientific Students Association (TDK) playing a significant role," said the programme director, giving an insight into the functioning of the college.

He added that seven of their members had already participated in the spring TDK, of whom one international student and one Hungarian came first and, in second place, were one international and one Hungarian student.

"We have been active in publishing in English, and several of our international Master's students have participated in conferences. One of our joint publications was even nominated for a Best Paper Award, which means that it was one of the top five publications out of nearly one hundred, and thus also published in a Scopus-indexed conference proceedings," he stressed.

Fifteen students represented the College in the autumn semester's TDK event, three of whom won first place, one second place and four won special prizes.

"Our joint publication with one of the first-year PhD students, who was already a member of the College as a Master's student, was invited to a special issue of a prestigious Q1 international journal," said Dr László Buics, listing the results.

"I feel that the first year of the College has laid the foundations for a successful continuation of our work for the development of our talented and motivated students. We are looking forward to welcoming active and interested candidates in data science topics in the next semester, both as Hungarian and international student members and as operational staff", concluded the Programme Director.

The College is available on the following platforms:

E-mail: szellkalman@sze.hu

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100065052908484

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/szellkalman/

Application form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdFwstQKsM8-dTouQzfVHALWgNUx9RFYApliW4GlWzpq6QjIQ/viewform