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STATCOM: Revitalization of Statistical Community Service at Universities

1 April 2018 3,361 views One Comment
Evan Reynolds and Timothy NeCamp

    Universities provide valuable resources for providing pro-bono statistical services, including community connections and many statistically inclined students eager to apply their skills. STATCOM at the University of Michigan is leveraging these resources to increase its benefit to both the community and the university. While several universities with graduate statistics and biostatistics programs founded STATCOM chapters in the 2000s, much of their activity has declined since then. In contrast, STATCOM is larger and more active than ever at the University of Michigan.

    Statistics in the Community (STATCOM) is a university-based, student-run organization that provides pro-bono statistical consulting services to nonprofit and government organizations. STATCOM began in 2001 in the department of statistics at Purdue University. Following grant support from the American Statistical Association, STATCOM programs were initiated in universities across the country.

    The University of Michigan’s STATCOM had 45 student members with five projects in 2014. In 2017, it grew to 147 student members with 10 projects.

    The University of Michigan’s STATCOM had 45 student members with five
    projects in 2014. In 2017, it grew to 147 student members with 10 projects.

    The STATCOM chapter at the University of Michigan was founded in December 2006 under the supervision of Michael Elliott. It is a community outreach program led by graduate students that provides free statistical consulting to organizations in Southeast Michigan. Currently, the group is led by co-presidents Evan Reynolds and Timothy NeCamp and supervised by Elliott and Cathie Spino. STATCOM is project based; as new projects arise, teams of 3–5 are assembled to help the requesting organization.

    All project tasks are completed by student volunteers, including project obtainment, client communication, consultation, and analysis. Faculty members serve as project advisers. Project tasks include developing surveys and data-collection practices, defining questions that can be answered with available data, providing numerical and graphical summaries of the organization’s data, and building statistical models and performing analyses to help answer the organization’s key questions. By participating in projects, students learn consulting skills that are difficult to teach in a classroom setting.

    In the past few years, the University of Michigan’s STATCOM chapter has seen tremendous growth. In 2014, it had 45 student members with five projects. In 2017, it grew to 147 student members with 10 projects. The chapter has developed new collaborations and organizational features that have helped the chapter both expand and cope with the expansion.

    STATCOM is made up of a multidisciplinary group of graduate students. Though most members are majoring in biostatistics and statistics, STATCOM also has students majoring in survey methodology, social work, epidemiology, information, and industrial and operations engineering. The enrollment in many of these programs, especially biostatistics and statistics, has increased substantially in the past few years. As these programs grow, more students are looking for ways to practice statistical consulting in real-world settings, especially in ways that can lead to positive impact. STATCOM has helped provide those experiences.

    Finding pro-bono statistical projects with local nonprofit and government organizations can be difficult. Though statisticians know and believe in the benefits of data, community partners may be less aware of data’s power. Starting a project with a potential partner requires raising awareness of how STATCOM can help, establishing trust in the benefits of statistical consulting, and ensuring that working with STATCOM will not be a burden. This is a not a trivial task.

    Two years ago, STATCOM started a collaboration with the Community Technical Assistance Collaborative (CTAC), a group at the University of Michigan consisting of mostly social work students directed through the Edward Ginsberg Center. As the primary office for community engagement at the University of Michigan for the past 20 years, the Ginsberg Center has a large established network of community organizations. By collaborating with the Ginsberg Center, STATCOM was able to break down this initial barrier to community entry and acquire many more community partners. The collaboration also provided benefits such as workshops teaching STATCOM members practices for thoughtfully engaging with communities and the ability to work on projects that required both social work and evaluation skills (i.e., CTAC) and statistical expertise (i.e., STATCOM).

    The rise of data science initiatives at the University of Michigan has fostered other beneficial partnerships. Through collaboration with the Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS), STATCOM has worked with students from other data science disciplines to broaden its impact. Also, STATCOM is teaming up this spring with CTAC and the Ann Arbor Data Dive for an inaugural showcase of all the pro-bono quantitative work going on across the university.

    A recent project provides an excellent example of STATCOM’s work and the benefits of these new collaborations. The Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation (AAACF) received $13 million to improve services for the senior population of Washtenaw County and sought to assess which subpopulations of the county were most in need. Working together, STATCOM and CTAC developed a survey to assess quality of life of seniors within Washtenaw County. Quality of life was measured through the Older People’s Quality of Life questionnaire developed by Ann Bowling. CTAC members implemented the survey and received more than 600 survey responses. Once the data was compiled, STATCOM provided analysis with methods ranging from graphical summaries to regression trees. The analyses indicated geographic location—specifically within two ZIP codes of Washtenaw County—and financial vulnerability were most associated with lower quality of life. Surprisingly, living alone—which was previously hypothesized to negatively affect quality of life—was not a significant predictor.

    This year, STATCOM is continuing to work on a spectrum of projects with a variety of community partners. STATCOM is collaborating with the Catholic Social Services of Washtenaw County to analyze therapy appointment data to optimize scheduling. A STATCOM team has assisted the Ozone House of Ann Arbor to build a predictive time-series model to schedule staff volunteers to best handle crisis calls from youth in the surrounding area. Additionally, STATCOM has partnered with the Detroit College Access Network to evaluate how their counseling program has affected college application and enrollment for Detroit high-school students.

    STATCOM recently expanded its student leadership team to distribute some of the increasing amount of administrative work required with the influx of new projects. New leadership positions include a communications chair who helps communicate with collaborators and community partners, a president-elect who will become president in the upcoming year and who receives training to ensure a smooth transition, and a project obtainment chair who actively seeks projects with new and old community partners.

    As exciting as STATCOM’s growth and accomplishments have been over the past several years, STATCOM is still nowhere close to its project capacity. Whenever a call for volunteers is sent out, there are always more interested volunteers than needed. With the help of new student leaders, STATCOM is hoping to increase its capacity and impact in 2018 and beyond. In 2018, there is a goal of 12 projects.

    Many factors leading to STATCOM’s success at the University of Michigan are present at other universities. The rise of student enrollment in statistics, biostatistics, and data science graduate programs is well documented. The influx of students wishing to get real-world analytical practice is at an all-time high. Additionally, working on projects within the local community guarantees a low overhead cost and easy access to projects. These types of collaborations can be replicated at other universities where, with high probability, established university-based community engagement organizations already exist.

    Readers hoping to establish similar organizations at their universities should not be afraid to get started. The collection of student volunteers and potential projects can be slow, especially at first. Keep in mind, there are always organizations doing impactful work for the community, many of which can enhance the scope of their effect with the help of statistically inclined students. Also, while STATCOM at the University of Michigan has established wonderful university-wide collaborations, these are by no means a requirement for starting a new chapter. All it takes is a few students interested in applying their statistical skills to improve their community. In the end, the work will be an invaluable experience for students and provide a major benefit to the community, especially in an increasingly data-driven world.

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