Sophia Parde - Data Skills Pathway Workspace

Name: Sophia Parde

Major: Social Sciences

Year: Junior

Semester: Fall 2026

Email: sophia.parde@und.edu

Mentor Name:

Mentor Department / Program:

Mentor Email:

Meeting Schedule:

• Medieval history
• Medieval disease - the Black Death
• Data visualization
• Cartography
• Statistics

I am interested in researching

Project Title:

Project Goal:

Data Source: Open-access scientific data

Method or Tools: ArcGIS Pro

Expected Output: Poster presentation

Why this project matters: Limited localized (city-scale) datasets on the effects of the Black Death in medieval Europe

• Develop and maintain organized and accurate workflow documentation
• Identify and implement note-taking strategies to assist with managing and analyzing research data
• Efficiently work with and standardize large datasets containing inaccuracies while preserving original data

• Weekly Data Skills Pathway meeting: Thursdays 5:30-6:20pm CT
• Mentor meeting:
• Independent work time:

• Data source 1:
• Data source 2:
• Data source 3:

• Apple Numbers / .CSV files
• ArcGIS Pro
• Other visualization tools

• Reference 1:
• Reference 2:
• Reference 3:

Date: September 3-9, 2026

What I completed:

• Attended weekly meeting
• Completed pre-survey and syllabus quiz

What I learned:

• Became familiar with course structure and expectations

Next steps:

• Identify research area and project topic

Date: September 10-16, 2026

What I completed:

• Attended weekly meeting
• Identified research area(s) + researched potential localities (Africa, Asia, Europe)
• Attempted to login to wiki and Jupyter sites

What I learned:

• Received guidance on research area and choice of project topic

Paper, figure, dataset, tool, script or output shared:

• Preferred project research area

Question or blocker:

• Unable to login to wiki (no account)
• Unable to access Jupyter site (need UND VPN)
• Unable to find African or Asian city population datasets

What I tried:

• Attempted to use personal VPN to access Jupyter site (did not work)

Next steps:

• Attempt to login with wiki credentials once provided
• Attempt to download UND VPN onto computer to access Jupyter site
• Identify specific project topic + locality

Date: September 17-23, 2026

What I completed:

• Attended meeting
• Logged into wiki and Jupyter site
• Created student workspace
• Researched city population datasets
• Downloaded data files onto Jupyter site

What I learned:

• Basic Python commands on Jupyter site

Paper, figure, dataset, tool, script or output shared:

• Student workspace
• Python outputs on Jupyter

Question or blocker:

• Unable to download UND VPN onto computer (Linux distro not supported)

What I tried:

• Attempted to download UND VPN on different computer (was successful)

Next steps:

• Continue researching population datasets
• (Re)gather original data for project

Date: September 24-30, 2026

What I completed:

• Located original project datasets online and in project folder
• Identified cities in China that experienced plague prior to 1340s
• Identified Chinese population sources (national and regional)

What I learned:

Paper, figure, dataset, tool, script or output shared:

Question or blocker:

• Datasets in project folder and within files not organized - cannot identify what was done when or why

What I tried:

• Attempted to sort project datasets by date (successful)
• Attempted to investigate most recent dataset file to identify initial and final sets (unsuccessful)

Next steps:

• Continue to sort through project folder to find datasets of interest
• Begin to analyze original datasets (as sourced online) for geographic and/or mortality data