Chong Ho Yu's latest article discusses the puzzle in education, and he also presented research in Nashville this summer.
At HPU, Professor and Program Director of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Chong Ho “Alex” Yu, Ph.D., has a way of finding clarity in the things we can’t quite put into words and the things we can’t quite see. Whether he’s studying how school principals quietly pick up leadership skills on the job or challenging us to rethink how artificial intelligence makes decisions, Yu is consistently working at the frontiers of knowledge and ethics.
Chong Ho Yu.
In his latest article, co-authored with Linda A. Bonney, Ph.D., Yu takes on a puzzle in education: how principals learn the most valuable parts of their leadership not from textbooks, but through lived experience. Published in the Journal of School Leadership, the article, “Learning on the Job: School Principal’s Tacit Knowledge for Leadership” maps out those hard-to-describe insights.
In the article, Yu and Bonney collected stories from 16 elementary school principals, uncovering 67 examples of “tacit knowledge.” Using clustering techniques and visual maps, they organized strategies into five themes, ranging from building trust and reducing conflict to making sure every student is seen as capable of learning.
“These are strategies that principals practice every day, yet they often don’t have the language or opportunity to share them,” Yu said. “By bringing them to light, we create ways for leaders to learn from one another.”
Yu’s curiosity does not stop there. This summer, he took the stage at the Joint Statistical Meeting in Nashville, Tennessee to present his paper, “Beyond the Black Box: Data Ethics, Explainable AI, and Human Oversight.”
AI systems, he told his audience, are powerful… but also mysterious. They churn out results so complex that even experts can struggle to explain them. That mystery can lead to misplaced trust and, worse, biased or harmful decisions. He pointed to methods like feature analysis and counterfactual explanations that can make algorithms more transparent, but he underscored one central truth:
“No matter how advanced the model, human oversight is the safeguard we can’t live without,” Yu said. “Especially in areas like healthcare or law enforcement, where decisions touch people’s lives in very real ways.” Slides from his presentation are available here.
Yu is a three-time recipient of the SAS Faculty Scholarship and the Distinguished SAS Educator Award, Yu brings a wealth of perspective to his work at the intersection of data, ethics, and education. His scholarship spans data science methodology, cross-cultural analysis, and the ethical implications of emerging technologies, placing him firmly at the forefront of global conversations about artificial intelligence, fairness, and the future of learning.
