It’s been thrilling to accompany the Summer Institute students on a path that starts with the initial first meetings where everything we’re talking about still seems confusing because they’re still new to spatial ways of thinking, methods and computational tools, where everyone makes lots of mistakes and feels awkward and uncertain about the programming, the data, the questions and the methods. As they’re progressing with Marynia’s class and their project, there’s suddenly more traction after digging in and at the end of the summer, they’ve started to acquire a new spatial perspective on research, learned new spatial methods and have made the tools their own in a way that they’re now flying through them confidently. It’s been a beautiful transition to watch. Several of the students got hooked and we’ll be continuing to work with them on funded spatial research projects that will provide them with opportunities to publish a paper, attend a research conference and collaborate with a policy institution. They are now plugging into the larger spatial infrastructure at the Center for Spatial Data Science with our spatial study group, spatial workshops, and a spatial interdisciplinary community. All this is preparing them to be ready for an increasing number of opportunities that are opening up in the computational social sciences.