The 2015 ASA educational ambassador—Mohammad Shafiqur Rahman, associate professor of applied statistics at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh—attended the Joint Statistical Meetings in Seattle 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 hold 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.

“This is an excellent initiative taken by ASA for enhancing statistics education globally,” commented Rahman. “I benefited by attending four courses on advanced topics in statistics and hope the statistics learners in Bangladesh will also benefit by attending similar courses and workshops that I am going to arrange for them.”

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, Botswana, Colombia, and Bangladesh.

Monsanto contributed $1,000 to the Educational Ambassador Program, which helped provide additional distance learning for the 2015 educational ambassador and his students. With support such as this, the ASA is able to enhance international statistical education.