ASA seeks members’ assistance to spread word

Jeff Myers, ASA Public Relations Coordinator

The ASA’s public awareness campaign—This Is Statistics—returns in 2015 for its second year of promoting the virtues of careers in statistics to high-school and college undergraduate students.

Renewal was made official in November when the members of the ASA Board green-lighted the continuation of the campaign and the relationship with Stanton Communications, the ASA’s public relations firm, for the second year.

As this year gets under way, ASA President David Morganstein is asking association members to share news of the campaign and its promotional resources with students, parents, teachers, and education administrators in their communities.

A Look Back

Most of 2014 was focused on developing the campaign. It began with interviews with key ASA volunteer leaders, followed by the building of an informational website that serves as the campaign’s communications hub and then the official launch on August 19.

By the end of the year, the campaign had made considerable progress in sharing information about statistics careers. The website had drawn more than 17,000 visits from 13,000 unique visitors. Its social media following had grown tremendously—more than 1,300 Facebook likes and 900 Twitter followers—and the statistician video profiles had been viewed more than 10,000 times.

The year ended with the biggest success for the awareness campaign to date when The Washington Post published a major feature article written by reporter Brigid Schulte, who writes about work-life issues for the paper. Schulte’s article, which appeared on the front page of the Sunday business section on December 21, focused on the high number of women in statistics and how the field is different from other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

Under the title “Women Flocking to Statistics, the Newly Hot, High-Tech Field of Data Science”, Schulte wrote the following about the higher rate of women in statistics versus other STEM fields:

This major article infused significant momentum in the awareness campaign and set the stage for continued campaign growth and success in 2015.

A Look Ahead

Along with the ongoing focus on encouraging high-school and college undergraduate students to learn about statistics careers, the ASA and Stanton will be undertaking a trio of new initiatives to create newsworthy information and resources that can be used to build awareness of the campaign and statistics. The likely initiatives are:

• Research augmented by a possible survey that will examine where recent statistics bachelor’s and master’s graduates are working and the nature of their job focus
• A work group of women prominent in the fields of statistics and Big Data that will develop a statement about the need to attract more women to data science
• Creation of a toolkit that ASA sections, chapters, and individual members can use to promote This Is Statistics in their hometowns and at career, science, or math day events at local high schools and colleges

Stanton will use the findings from the first two initiatives to create media outreach campaigns. These mini-campaigns will educate journalists about the field of statistics and the abundant career opportunities awaiting students into the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, the promotional toolkit will help various ASA audiences take the campaign’s key messages to their constituencies, communities, and even their own family members. Stanton and the ASA will be gathering feedback about useful promotional resources from the boards of ASA sections and chapters. Individual members can submit resource ideas to ASA Public Relations Coordinator Jeff Myers at jeffrey@amstat.org.

Getting Involved

Delivering the campaign’s key messages to the local level will require the active, hands-on involvement of ASA members from coast to coast.

“It is critical that ASA members get involved in this awareness campaign,” said Morganstein. “A thousand voices speaking as one are more powerful and effective than a single voice. By spreading the word about the This Is Statistics campaign, you will make new connections that otherwise will not be established.”

The ASA is asking individual members to share the videos and campaign website with the following groups of people:

• Students, if you are a high-school or college statistics instructor
• Family members—children, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren
• Teachers and guidance counselors at high schools in your area (especially if you have family members at those schools)
• Statistics professors and career counselors at colleges in your area
• The head of math or statistics department at your local high school and/or college

For chapters and sections (and the more enthusiastic individual members), we’ll be providing promotional resources in the earlier-mentioned toolkit. While the toolkit contents have not been finalized yet, it likely will include downloadable and printable brochures, a PowerPoint presentation, talking points for events, drop-in press releases, a downloadable and printable poster, and links to the statistician profile videos produced for the awareness campaign.

For faculty members, especially department heads, you could host your university administration for a visit like Daniel Jeske, chair of the department of statistics at the University of California, Riverside, did and showcase This Is Statistics and its various promotional items. “The conversation with the chancellor came at a time when the campus was discussing options for alternative academic structures,” he described. “The campaign materials, particularly the video profiles, were helpful in getting our message across that the demand and opportunity for statistics training is rapidly growing and that university statistics departments are inherently cross-disciplinary.”

To become involved, email Myers at jeffrey@amstat.org. The ASA also encourages the input of K–12 teachers, college statistics instructors, students in the target audience (grades 11–12 and undergraduates), and individual members on the campaign direction, its resources, and its messaging.