2012 ASA Educational Ambassador Keamogetse Setlhare in a JSM session

As the 2012 ASA Educational Ambassador, Keamogetse Setlhare of the University of Botswana attended the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in San Diego, California, to participate in Continuing Education (CE) courses.

The Educational Ambassador Program is an ASA outreach effort launched by the Committee on International Relations in Statistics to foster international collaboration and enhance statistics education worldwide. The program subsidizes an ambassador from a developing country to attend JSM and take CE courses. It also provides a one-year ASA membership.

Candidates are required to have a PhD in statistics, an interest in teaching, and be open to study in new areas of research. After attending CE courses in an emerging area of research, the educational ambassador returns to his or her country and teaches the subject matter learned in the CE course(s) within the next year to at least 10 students.

CE presenter Daniel Cooley with 2012 ASA Educational Ambassador Keamogetse Setlhare

While at JSM, Setlhare took courses in Bayesian methods and computation, simulation and sampling of data, and analysis of univariate and multivariate extremes, as well as several computer technology workshops.

Since the program launch in 2005, the Committee on International Relations in Statistics has chosen educational ambassadors from Argentina, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Morocco, Armenia, Costa Rica, and Botswana.