Biostatistics 521 is an introductory statistical analysis course offered in the School of Public Health (SPH). Designed to foster data analysis skills in future public health practitioners, the course serves a large and diverse audience of >200 graduate students each Fall semester. Increasing expectations on practical data analysis skills have rendered the computer lab component of BIOS 521 outdated in content and philosophy. The current format of closed-ended problem sets and antiquated data simply do not meet the training needs of today’s public health students. We propose to modernize computer labs to an “authentic” learning experience that explicitly mimics the open-ended statistical tasks these students will perform in their future careers. First, we will team with faculty from across SPH disciplines to identify public health datasets that are current standards in their fields and develop a set of timely scientific questions for students to explore. Next, we will design a set of innovative, modular lab assignments that each focus on a specific piece of the statistical analysis procedure. The modules will naturally build upon each other to guide students through the logical steps of a statistical analysis. At the conclusion of the semester, each student will have designed and implemented a complete statistical analysis, from exploratory figures to multivariate inferential modeling, on a modern public health dataset. Our revised lab structure provides hands-on experience and enhances the training of first-year graduate students eager to jump into analyzing data on the latest public health topics.