Michael R. Chernick

Isaac Nuamah, the current president of the Princeton-Trenton Chapter, speaks to students about becoming statisticians.

The ASA’s Princeton-Trenton Chapter held its Career Day at Rutgers University Busch Campus on November 20, 2010. Thirty-two students from the local high schools, colleges, universities, and graduate schools registered.

While serving as president of the Princeton-Trenton Chapter in 2009, I proposed starting a career day. After receiving a $500 grant from the ASA, 2010 Chapter President Isaac Nuamah put that proposal into action and our career day was held on November 20. We invited students from the local high schools, colleges, universities, and graduate schools to Rutgers University Busch Campus, where 32 students registered.

The day started at 9:30 a.m. with registration, refreshments, and informal discussion between students and chapter members. A representative from Smith Hanley, a recruiting and consulting company, also was on hand.

At 10 a.m., a series of presentations were given by Peter Ouyang, vice president of biostatistics and statistical programming at Celgene Corporation; John Hall, a senior statistician at Mathematica Policy Research; and John Kolassa, a statistics faculty member at Rutgers. After the talks, students visited booths set up by Celgene, Smith Hanley, Statistics.com, Johnson and Johnson, and the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research. Chapter members from Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb also were available to discuss their careers.

At noon, a box lunch was served and Peter Bruce, president and CEO of Statistics.com, gave the luncheon talk about his career and how statistics became a big part of it.

Students check out the booths during the Princeton-Trenton Chapter's career day.

While chapter officers had reservations about how well career day would work out, I think it was successful because of the support of the ASA and the excellent site provided by Rutgers. The students seemed to be pleased with the program and, hopefully, it exceeded their expectations. I also hope this was the start of a series of career days for the chapter.

View more photos of the event on the ASA’s Facebook page.