Join us for an all-day workshop where you'll learn to use the R programming language and Generative AI for data science applications. These concepts will be presented in an interactive format, integrating instruction and computational practice. Montana University system graduate students, undergrads, staff, faculty, and community members are all welcome to join. The full schedule is below.  

Location: Montana State University, American Indian Hall (AIH) 166 - with an online option
Date: Friday, August 14, 2026
Time: 9 am - 5 pm

This training is sponsored by the Library, Social Data Collection and Analysis Services, and Montana INBRE. 

Workshop Agenda

Introduction to R - 9am - 12pm 
This session will start with the building blocks of using RStudio to create and explore the data structures available in R. Then we'll learn some basic tools for working with data using R's tidyverse package. 

Lunch (provided for in-person attendees) - 12pm - 1pm 

Data Visualization in R - 1pm - 2:30pm
The ability to create meaningful and attractive data visualizations is an essential skill of data-intensive research. This session will give you an overview of the grammar of graphics plotting concepts from the ggplot2 package. We will explore ggplot’s three plotting components, data, aesthetics, and geometries, for many univariate and multivariate graphics.   

Coding with Generative AI - 2:45pm - 5pm
In this session, we'll explore using Generative AI to write code. We'll also discuss writing prompts and responsible use of Generative AI for data science applications.