The ASA is seeking qualified Cuban and Nigerian nationals to serve as the 2016 Educational Ambassador. The selected ambassador will be subsidized to attend the Joint Statistical Meetings to take one or more Continuing Education (CE) courses in an emerging area of research and return to teach the subject matter in his or her home country and/or region.

The nomination deadline is December 31.

The selected ambassador will be expected to complete the following by December 2017:

• Attend the 2016 Joint Statistical Meetings in Chicago, Illinois, to take CE courses in an emerging area of statistics research (CE courses offered in 2015 are available on the website.)
• Return to your home country, and within the next year, teach a one-semester class with no fewer than 10 students on the subject matter of the CE course at the master’s level and write lecture notes in the language locally deemed most appropriate. You will need to repeat the class the following semester. (The committee understands there can be practical and organizational considerations that can make it difficult to meet this requirement. Should this arise, the committee will be prepared to work with the ambassador to devise an alternative plan. The ASA will also investigate the possibility of providing further assistance through recorded webinars related to the CE course material.)
• Submit a report by December 2017 to the ASA through the Committee on International Relations in Statistics and the ambassador’s home institution describing how the transfer of knowledge has been accomplished and how you invited statisticians from your country to work with you on the subject matter of your course.

The ASA will arrange and pay for the selected ambassador’s airfare, hotel, meeting registration, and CE course registration. The ASA also will reimburse the visa application fee and provide a $500 stipend.

Candidates for the ambassadorship must hold a PhD or equivalent degree in statistics or a related field and be employed at the level of assistant or associate professor at a recognized university or research organization promoting the teaching and application of statistics.

Interested candidates should send the following to Geert Molenberghs at geert.molenberghs@uhasselt.be

• A curriculum vitae
• A proposal (at most two pages) describing how the ambassadorship will help disseminate knowledge of statistics in your country and how the ASA’s expectation set forth above will be implemented upon your return home
• A letter from the head of your academic unit (e.g., department chair, director, or the dean) indicating institutional support for your dissemination plan