The Empirical Reasoning Center (ERC) is the place to go for all your data analysis help throughout your time at Barnard. We help faculty, students, and alumnae engage critically with data - quantitative, qualitative and spatial. Our goal is to ensure everyone has the resources they need to be data literate, no matter what discipline or career path they are interested in.
Through workshops and staffed drop-in hours, the ERC provides the Barnard community with empirical research support and technology training, ranging from Excel, to survey creation, to geographic information systems (GIS).
The lab is staffed by graduate lab assistants and undergraduate empirical reasoning fellows dedicated to supporting empirical reasoning across the curriculum. We also have a full-time team that teaches workshops, manages the lab, and plans programming.
We host events on a variety of topics and in diverse formats including technical workshops, data physicalization and getting creative with data, important conversations on data ethics and data justice, and presentations rom industry and academic speakers. This image shows our recent collaboration with the DHC, with speakers from the Envisioning Seneca Village Project (featuring our faculty director Gergely Baics!)
Barnard students learn first-hand how world leaders make decisions during moments of crisis in a course, returning fall 2026, co-taught by the former Secretary of State and Columbia SIPA dean Keren Yarhi-Milo.
For the fifth consecutive year, Barnard students have earned prestigious Goldwater awards for excellence in math, engineering, and the natural sciences.
Harriet Newman Cohen ’52, one of the nation's leading matrimonial and family law attorneys, details her life in her new Memoir, “Passion and Power: A Life in Three Worlds.”
