I'm an Associate Research Professor and Chair for Undergraduate Curricula in the Department of Statistics at Penn State University. Prior to Penn State, I earned a MS in Statistics and PhD in Educational Psychology with an emphasis on Statistics Education from the University of Minnesota, and I worked for 8 years as a Statistician in the medical technology industry. More recently, I've been working (with Neil Hatfield) to launch a new Statistics & Data Science Education Research Lab at Penn State and I currently serve (with Laura Le) as Associate co-Director for Research for the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education (CAUSE; causeweb.org).
Why did you decide to go into Statistics/Statistics Education?
In college, I had been a math major at Penn State preparing to become a high school mathematics teacher until one day a 20 min discussion with a terrific professor (Don Richards) turned into an hours-long conversation about my future and he convinced me to think about an MS in statistics. At the time, I knew so little about statistics that I didn't know I had never studied statistics--only probability theory! I headed to University of Minnesota (UMN) for graduate school, discovered that I loved statistics and found a terrific job at a medical technology company called Medtronic upon graduation. I still had passion for teaching & learning and worried that my industry career meant leaving that behind, but I was lucky enough to meet Michelle Everson at UMN and she helped me join the Educational Psychology Department as adjunct faculty where I taught an evening section of introductory statistics for a few semesters. Before long, Michelle introduced me to Joan Garfield & Bob del Mas who were leading a Statistics Education PhD program at UMN. At the time, it was perhaps the only PhD program of it's kind and seemed to be the perfect marriage of my love for statistics and passion for teaching & learning so I wanted very much to join, but I had already started a family and couldn't easily leave my job (i.e., pay the mortgage & some school loans) to return as a full-time graduate student again. Luckily, Joan & Bob agreed to take a chance on me as the first-part-time student to enroll in their program while keeping my full-time job at Medtronic. The company had a tuition benefit that helped cover part of that expense, but even more generous was the remarkable support of my colleagues and supervisors to allow flexibility in my work schedule despite the admittedly narrow intersection between my interests in a PhD in Educational Psychology--albeit statistics education--and my responsibilities as a professional statistician. A few years later, I graduated and was hired at Penn State, where I settled into an office just a few doors down from... Don Richards! The same terrific professor with whom the whole story began.
So... "why did I *decide* to go into statistics/statistics education?" When I started, I didn't know anything about statistics, so I surely didn't have any inkling that statistics education was a thing. For me, it has always felt much more like the unforeseen outcome of saying "yes" to responsible risks and embracing the subtle shifts that result. Personally, I attribute things like that to God's grace and mercy in my life, but when I explain it to folks that might not share similar beliefs I guess "luck" is the closest description. Even as I describe several key events, there were plenty others that "didn't pan out" that had just as much impact and I'm thankful for those too. Regardless, I'm definitely happy that the sum total steered me toward Statistics/Statistics Education and I feel "lucky" to be part of this terrific community!
What's a class/workshop at your workplace/university that you wish you could take and why?
Fly Fishing! I know... I work at a huge university with hundreds of classes so there are plenty of ways I could (should?) answer this that would make me a better statistician and/or researcher, but the fact of the matter is that I have only once made a sincere attempt to enroll in a Penn State course as a faculty member and that was KINES 004: Fly Fishing.
I don't do that much fishing in general and I don't know anything about fly fishing, but I've heard there is world-class wild trout fishing in some of the limestone streams near Penn State so I guess it sounds relaxing and I'd like to see what all the fuss is about? Also, maybe it could lead to a new hobby to try with my dad and brother? I had nearly forgotten about that! Maybe I'll have to try again :)
What Statistics Topic do you think is the most difficult to teach well?
I think the most difficult topic to teach *well* is EDA. There is so much more to be gained from a careful and compelling EDA beyond just summary statistics and cursory plots, but it requires a kind of authentic curiosity--maybe even tenacity--that has been difficult for me to "teach." Also, teaching EDA seems generally to be in scope for introductory-type courses, but then rather than continuing to develop a more sophisticated approach to EDA in subsequent courses there's a strong pull to gloss over that work in order to focus on the business of new content (logistic regression, mixed effects, ML tools, or whatever). I think the cumulative effect of this steers students to feel as though EDA is some kind of quick exercise before we do before the fun part with the fancy models and "get the answers." It's difficult, but I would love to do a better job revisiting EDA with greater sophistication in those subsequent classes to help my students learn to try and patiently glean as much as possible from the data and even build intuition for "the answers" (to the research questions) as well as limitations of our data before we formalize things with inferential or predictive models.
What advice would you give to someone who is new to teaching statistics?
Join the ISOSTAT email list, read the GAISE guidelines, go to USCOTS or eCOTS or JSM (etc) and meet others who are passionate about statistics & data science education!
What is your go-to source for data?
Tidy Tuesday, FiveThirtyEight, things people share on the ISOSTAT email list.
What statistics class(es) are you currently teaching? What statistics classes do you enjoy teaching the most?
I teach kind of a range of topics. Last semester, I taught an introduction to R course (i.e., R for computing with data) and the senior capstone course for our undergraduate statistics major.
What do you enjoy doing when you’re not working?
My solo hobbies are trail running & playing drums, but I'm up for basically anything my family is into (e.g., skiing, road trips, gaming, boating, climbing... maybe fly fishing one day??)
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