Last December, the first ASA student chapter to be created in Africa was founded in Nigeria. The Nigeria ASA Student Chapter is headquartered at the University of Lagos but includes students from other universities throughout the country. It will provide its members with many professional growth opportunities and bring new perspectives to the ASA community.
The idea for creating the Nigeria Student Chapter emerged from a meeting of the ASA Committee on International Relations in Statistics (CIRS) in March of 2020, during which committee members discussed encouraging/assisting with the creation of international student chapters.
Among other activities, CIRS administers the Educational Ambassador (EA) program, where scholars from around the globe are selected to attend JSM short courses and later teach what they learned in their home countries. With the pandemic having put the EA program on hold, helping with the initiation of student chapters seemed like a great way to continue fulfilling the committee’s goal of bringing educational opportunities to other countries. CIRS member Obafemi Keshinro volunteered to lead the creation of a student chapter in his home country of Nigeria. The committee encouraged the idea and began collecting a list of ASA resources that would be valuable to international student chapters.
A.O. Keshinro joined forces with the 2016 ASA Educational Ambassador from Nigeria, Adedayo Adepoju of the statistics department at the University of Ibadan. A local planning team was created and met several times virtually and in person. The team also included Mumuni Adamu, head of the department of mathematics at the University of Lagos (UNILAG); Sanya Olubusoye, coordinator of the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis (LISA) at the University of Ibadan; and Nnamdi Mojekwu, head of the actuarial science and insurance department at UNILAG.
Efforts to launch the student chapter began in October 2021 with the circulation of a membership registration form via Google across several universities in Nigeria. The call for registration had an overwhelmingly positive response, with 515 students registering from 10 universities.
The first student chapter president, Idowu Osubu, was elected from the University of Lagos. “There will be opportunities to interact with great statisticians from around the globe and gain from their wealth of experience,” said Osubu. The first faculty adviser chosen was Adamu, who expressed his desire to build the student chapter into an agent of positive change for society and become a point of teaching and learning of statistics.
The chapter was officially inaugurated on December 10, 2021, with a webinar titled, “Data Science: Big Data Analytics and Machine learning.” The webinar began with an introduction by Keshinro, and then featured a talk by former ASA president Wendy Martinez welcoming the students to the ASA. It was followed by a seminar by CIRS vice chair, Nathaniel Newlands. CIRS chair Carolina Franco then gave a presentation about ASA resources available to student chapters and joined the other speakers in welcoming students to the ASA. Closing remarks were delivered by Adamu.
Active participants at the webinar ranged between 75 to 80 people, and the seminar was deemed by the students to be insightful. Among the participants was the vice chancellor of Mountain Top University, a renowned private university in Nigeria. Overall, the webinar was a success and got the student chapter off to a great start.
When asked about his thoughts for the student chapter, Keshinro said, “The ASA Nigeria Student Chapter should become a platform for students of statistics, data science, and other data enthusiasts in Nigeria to interact academically with others in the field from universities where ASA has its network and to launch outreach programs capable of positively impacting society and industry with the practice of the profession.”
The leadership of CIRS hopes the success of the Nigeria Student Chapter will inspire others to follow, so other students from around the world can also join the ASA community.
To learn more about CIRS or starting student chapters, or to become a friend of the committee, visit the ASA Committee on International Relations in Statistics website or email Franco.
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