Nat Schenker

A person considering ASA membership might wonder, “What do I get for paying my dues?” The ASA website provides the obvious answers:

• Subscriptions to Amstat News and Significance
• Networking opportunities through chapters, sections, and the online ASA Community
• Free online access to ASA journals
• Members-Only features of the ASA website
• JobWeb and the JSM Career Placement Service
• Discounted registration fees for various meetings and educational programs

The benefits just listed are, by themselves, compelling incentives to join the ASA. I believe, however, there is a much stronger incentive for membership: the value of participating in ASA activities. Unlike benefits, which are objective, value is subjective, varying from member to member or group to group. And unlike benefits, which can be listed on a website, value is best illustrated with personal stories.

I’d like to share some stories with you about how I’ve found value in the ASA. I’ll emphasize three types of value, initialed “CDE.” I’m not talking about Common Desktop Environment, Cartoon Doll Emporium, or even chlorodifluoroethylene, but rather community, diversification, and education. I’d also like to develop a picture of the types of value found by the membership at large. So, whether your ASA experiences are similar to or different from mine, please send me your stories at natschenker@gmail.com.

I’ve never been quite sure where I belong in my career. During graduate school at The University of Chicago, I worked at CNA Insurance and RAND. After graduate school, I worked at the U.S. Census Bureau for a few years. Then I moved across the country and taught biostatistics at UCLA for more than a decade, receiving tenure along the way. But I missed government work and returned to the DC area, where I’ve been employed by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) ever since. [By the way, I serve as ASA president in my personal capacity, without endorsement or sanctioning by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, parent agency of NCHS) or the U.S. government. The opinions expressed herein are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the CDC or the government.]

Through all of my changes in geographic location and employment, the ASA has provided me with an unwavering community, following me from coast to coast and job to job. For example, when I moved to Los Angeles to be an assistant professor at UCLA, I hardly knew anybody. As the “new kid in town,” I was asked to join the organizing committee for the Southern California Chapter’s Workshop in Applied Statistics. Through my work on the committee, I got to know several statisticians in the area. Moreover, the committee asked me to be the master of ceremonies at the workshop, which gave me the opportunity to enhance my speaking skills and “introduce” myself to hundreds of others. Thus, my community, the ASA, provided a great source of colleagues and visibility early in my career!

ASA President Nathaniel Schenker with members of the Southern California Chapter following the chapter’s 2013 fall kick-off meeting at the City of Hope, Duarte, California (Photograph by Joe Jiang)

As my career progressed, I yearned to serve the broad professional community and beyond. I volunteered for several ASA activities at the national level, such as being the program chair for the Survey Research Methods Section, joining a task force on electronic journals that helped launch the ASA’s electronic publishing, and serving as a referee and then an associate editor for JASA. Eventually, I served on the ASA Board of Directors, for which I chaired a workgroup that led to the Conference on Statistical Practice (CSP). I also came to realize I was able to serve not only the statistical profession, but also communities outside of it, just by maintaining my ASA membership. Indeed, my dues, together with the work of ASA volunteers and staff, help to support efforts in important areas such as education and public policy, not to mention advocacy for our profession.

In addition to providing me with a wonderful community, the ASA helps to complement and enhance my paid jobs in different ways. One way is by diversifying my professional activities. I’ve enjoyed every job I’ve had, but I find ASA activities, such as those mentioned above, very fulfilling. They help provide balance to my career, giving me a lot to look forward to outside the office.

Diversifying my activities also has helped me develop my professional skills. For example, working on JASA made me more proficient at critical reading and decisionmaking, not to mention the opportunities it gave me to read about cutting-edge statistical work before it was published. And committee, section, task force, workgroup, and board activities helped me build skills in management and leadership that came in very handy when I recently moved into a senior management position at NCHS.

I’ve benefited from other ASA paths to continuing education and professional development, as well. One obvious path has been through attending and giving presentations at conferences. Another has been through short courses and webinars. In fact, I plan to take a short course on text analytics at CSP 2014 to help build my Big Data skills.

Another aspect of education that I enjoy is mentoring. I like to help guide more junior statisticians I meet through the ASA, and I hope to participate in the new mentoring program at CSP 2014. But one is never too senior to benefit from mentoring, and the ASA has given me many opportunities to be a mentee as well as mentor. For example, when I was a section program chair for JSM 1999, I learned about “running the show” by observing and working with the overall program chair, Alicia Carriquiry. Several years later, I served on the ASA Board of Directors while Bradley Efron was president and had the opportunity to spend about 45 minutes of one-on-one time with him every few months by driving him to the airport after board meetings. And recently, at the JSM 2013 Sunday night mixer, I sat down with my PhD advisor, Donald Rubin, whom I rarely have a chance to see outside of conferences, and we discussed my career plans over a couple of beers.

Lloyd Bentsen’s famous line from the 1988 U.S. vice presidential debate, “… [Y]ou’re no Jack Kennedy,” certainly applies to me. Nevertheless, I’d like to draw inspiration from President Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address and close with the following thought: Perhaps we should not ask what benefits the ASA can give to us, but rather ask what we can do within the ASA. Therein, we’ll discover the value our association can provide.