Students design visualizations for asylum data generated by TRAC

This spring, three undergraduates from the Newhouse School used their design skills to translate complex data into visual imagery for a general audience.

Students Alexa Kroin, Lucinda Strol and Zuzanna Mlynarczyk worked with Austin Kocher, research assistant professor with Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), to create a series of professional images using data on asylum seekers in the U.S. The data is generated by TRAC.

“The students were faced with the challenge of accurately representing asylum data in a succinct and visually interesting way for an online audience while also providing sufficient context for the data. The students were also faced with the challenge of developing a format that could be easily updated and shared, since TRAC’s asylum data is updated monthly,” Kocher says. “In our view, the students succeeded in meeting these challenges head on, demonstrated competence and professionalism throughout the project and contributed to TRAC’s mission to make government data more accessible to public.”

The images show the outcome of asylum cases by immigration court, which varies widely, and summarize asylum outcomes for the 30 busiest immigration courts in the country.