It was another stellar JSM under Section Program Chair Stacey Hancock and Roundtable/Birds-of-a-Feather Chair Amelia McNamara. Section highlights included sponsoring a workshop for graduate students preparing to teach, four invited panels/sessions, four topic-contributed panels/sessions, two contributed paper sessions, one contributed poster session, one speed poster session, two roundtables, and 10 birds-of-a-feather discussions.

Slides from JSM 2019 talks and the detailed handout and minutes from the business meeting will be posted to the section’s website.

This was the second year of a joint education table at JSM with the Section on Teaching Statistics in the Health Sciences, History of Statistics Special Interest Group, and Business Analytics/Statistics Education Special Interest Group. Carol Blumberg and Rebecca Nichols organized the four-table booth, a one-stop shop for all things education and history.

Congratulations to the following education award honorees:

2018 Ron Wasserstein Award for Best Contributed Paper: Jennifer Green of Montana State University, “STEM Storytellers, Improving Graduate Students’ Oral Communication Skills”

2018 Ron Wasserstein Award for Best Contributed Paper Honorable Mention: Sherry Hix of the University of North Georgia, “Extending the Applications of Simulation-Based Approaches in the Teaching of Elementary Statistics”

2019 Section on Statistics and Data Science Education Speed Session Award:

• Honorable Mention: Ginger Holmes Rowell of Middle Tennessee State University, “Digital Metaphors: A Tool to Provide Insights into Introductory Statistics Students’ Motivation and Success”
• Honorable Mention: Allison Theobold of Montana State University, “Computational Workshops to Facilitate Implementation of Statistics in Scientific Research”
• Winner: Gwendolyn Marie Eadie of the University of Washington, “Active-Learning for Bayesian Inference: An Introductory Exercise Using M&M’s Candy”

2019 Mu Sigma Rho National Statistics Honor Society William D. Warde Statistics Education Award: Deb Nolan, University of California at Berkeley

2019 Section Service Award: Stacey Hancock, Montana University

ASA Fellows: Ann Cannon, Keith Crank, Kate Crespi, Davy Paindaveine, and Mike Shaughnessy

Section Fellows: Kathy Fubo and Amy Hogan

Section Fellows

The section recently created the Fellowship Program for High-School and Two-Year College Teachers. It is designed for individuals who want to make an impact beyond their classroom setting. As part of the program, the selection committee selects at most one high-school teacher and one two-year college teacher. Each one-year fellowship begins in August and aims to provide opportunities for the fellows to expand their influence and involvement in statistics education innovation.

Mentoring Program

The mentoring program, founded in 2016, connects early-career statistics educators with experienced mentors to provide career advice help participants achieve their professional goals. A fourth set of 20 pairings for 2019–2020 was announced prior to JSM. We still have a few unmatched mentors. Applications for 2020–2021 will open in the spring.

Website

Brigitte Baldi has been working to improve our section website, which has a variety of useful resources and links, including a newly added initiatives page. Suggestions for additions or improvements can be sent to her.

Graduate Student Workshop

The NSF and IMS New Researchers Group sponsored a one-day workshop for 35 graduate students with an interest in teaching statistics and data science. Presenters included Beth Chance of Cal Poly, Allan Rossman of Cal Poly, Nick Horton of Amherst, Ulrike Genschel of Iowa State, and Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel of the University of Edinburgh/Duke. We are planning continued communication and support for this group with Zoom calls throughout the academic year.

New Officers

Our new officers are Jo Hardin of Pomona, chair-elect 2020; Maria Tackett of Duke, communications officer 2020–2022; Brianna Heggeseth of Macalester, Council of Sections representative 2020–2022; Lisa Kay of Eastern Kentucky University, executive committee at-large 2020–2022; and Ellen Breazel of Clemson, executive committee at-large 2020–2022.

Officers whose terms are ending December 31 are Beth Chance, past chair; Stacey Hancock, 2019 program chair; Kay Endriss, communications officer; Garrett Grolemund, executive committee; Rebecca Nugent, executive committee; and Erin Blankenship, Council of Sections representative.

Policy and Guidelines

All section members are invited to review the ASA Activities Conduct Policy and Ethical Guidelines for Statistical Practice. We will be linking to these from the section website, as well.

Continuing Education

The section is starting a new continuing education series, Infusing Data Science Education and Applications into Statistics Learning Communities (IDEAS). IDEAS will feature five sessions to run between October and April or July 2020 on topics such as mastering the Tidyverse, Bayesian statistics, and K–12 statistics education. More information is forthcoming in the ASA Community.

The Data Science Education Working Group—comprised of faculty and industry professionals from statistics, computer science, and data science (Nick Horton, Rob Gould, Stacy Hancock, Ben Baumer, Lance Waller, Cassandra Pattanayak, Bill Notz, Erin Blankenship, Dennis Sun, John DeNero, Kathryn Kozak, Min Chi, Shirley Yap, Beth Chance, and Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel) is continuing its efforts and will be disseminating milestones and products via the ASA Community.

Save the date for the Electronic Conference on Teaching of Statistics (eCOTS), which will take place May 18–22, 2020. 

Call for Papers

The Journal of Statistics Education has announced a call for papers for a special fall 2020 issue looking backward and forward 10 years after the publication of Nolan and Temple Lang’s The American Statistician paper, “Computing in the Statistics Curriculum.”

Become a Section Member

Like what you see, but you aren’t a section member? You can easily add a section to your membership outside of your regular ASA membership renewal cycle. (You would pay full annual section dues for the abbreviated time until your next renewal.) Go to the ASA website and log in using your ASA user name and password. In the Members Only area under your name, there is a button labeled “Add items to your membership.” This is where section and chapter memberships can be added. The Section on Statistics and Data Science Education welcomes you!