At Mason, Ran Ji is teaching in Data Analytics Engineering Program. It is important to Ran Ji that his students leave the classroom with a fundamental knowledge of data and visual analytics methodologies and tools to prepare them to be great assets to the future employers. There are two goals that motivate his teaching philosophy: 1) helping students’ understand data and visual analytics concepts and models, and 2) fostering students’ practical skills with hands-on experiences on state-of-the-art statistical and visualization tools.