A letter from Section Chair Kelly McConville

Dear SSDSE Members,

Happy 2024!  I hope your year and classes are off to a great start.  In this note, I want to highlight a few relevant section-related activities, initiatives, and upcoming events.  If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.

2024 Conferences

• JSM: The Joint Stats Meetings will be in Portland, OR (the city of donuts 🍩!) August 3rd - 8th.  You still have until February 1st to submit an abstract for a contributed paper, poster or speed presentation.  Come share your ideas and your experiences teaching statistics and data science!  Reach out to Laura Hildreth (lhildreth@gustavus.edu) if you have any questions about the process.  In the spring, Prince Afriyie will advertise for Birds-of-a-Feather session leaders.

• eCOTS: The Electronic Conference on Teaching Statistics is June 10th - 13th.  There is still time to:

• Submit a Stats + Stories Lesson Plan by February 1st.

• Submit a Birds-of-a-Feather by February 28th.

• Submit a Posters and Beyond by March 10th.  

Staying Connected

• Blog: The section blog is a great place to learn more about section happenings and members.   If you have ideas for blog posts, please reach out to Sara Stoudt, Chelsea Parlett, or me.  We are also looking for more suggestions for the meet-a-member series.

• Provide suggestions here: bit.ly/ssdse-nominate

• Or, even better, fill out this form so that we can feature you on the blog: bit.ly/ssdse-meet

• Mentoring Program: We encourage you to consider participating in the section’s mentoring program – either as a mentor or as a mentee.  The mentoring program allows statistics and data science educators new to the discipline to build connections with more senior faculty. These connections are mutually beneficial, supporting the mentee to grow in their professional goals and keeping more experienced faculty connected with new educators.  The mentoring committee will send out a request for people to sign up in early May.

Learning Opportunities

• Preparing to Teach: The Preparing to Teach workshop, which helps prepare graduate students to be statistics and data science educators, will take place in Portland on August 3rd (right before JSM).  Applications will open in the spring.

• Virtual Workshops: Participate in free virtual workshops from the “Direct Experiences with Student Activities for Learning Statistical Concepts” workshop series.  Areas of emphasis for these workshops include the statistical investigation process, multi-variable thinking, and simulation-based inference.  The workshops are happening each Friday in February at 2 - 3pm ET and on Friday, March 1st at 5 - 6pm ET.  You must sign up here to participate: https://forms.gle/xNQbTkZrKjPcsnXE6

• Love Data Week: Consider participating in Love Data Week, which is happening February 12th - 16th.  There are opportunities to attend or lead activities and workshops.   

• JSDSE: Check out the ASA’s Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education.  The journal is looking for reviewers (please reach out to editor Nicholas Horton to be added to the list), authors (there are no author publication charges), and readers (all the papers are open access)!

Other Ways to Get Involved

• GAISE: The College Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education Revision group wants your input on the current draft recommendations.  They would like responses by February 26th.

• View the current recommendations and provide your feedback in this form: https://bit.ly/GAISE-Draft

• Member Initiative Grants: Each year the section funds a few small grants for innovative and impactful initiatives in statistics and data science education.  We will send out an announcement advertising this year’s application in late spring.  

• High School Fellows Program: The section runs a fellowship program for high school and two-year college teachers.  During their two-year term, the fellows receive career mentorship and lead a discussion about their teaching experiences at a statistics conference.  We will be advertising for the high school fellowship this spring with the two year term starting in August.

• Waller Awards: You have until February 15th to make a nomination for the Waller Education Award or the Waller Distinguished Teaching Career Award.  

• USPROC: If you are supervising undergraduate research or incorporate projects into your winter/spring courses, encourage your students to submit their work to the Undergraduate Statistics Project Competition.  The spring deadline is Wednesday, June 12th.

• If you’d be willing to judge the competition, please reach out to Jennifer Ward (jsward@clark.edu).

• Insert Your Idea: Send me a note (kmcconville@g.harvard.edu) if you have ideas for future section activities, such as reading groups, learning communities, workshops, meet-ups, etc!

Thanks to all of our executive committee members (outgoing, incoming, and current) and thanks to you for helping create a vibrant and supportive section!  

Best,

Kelly McConville

2024 Chair for the Section on Statistics and Data Science Education