Nearly 50 representatives and officers from ASA chapters attended the Council of Chapters Governing Board workshop held at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Washington, DC, August 9. This year’s workshop focused on the theme Increasing and Diversifying Chapter Membership and included presentations from longtime ASA members, as well as break-out sessions for participants to share experiences, generate ideas, and network with others.

The first presentation was by David Marker and Adrian Coles, leaders of the ASA Anti-Racism Task Force, who discussed the committee’s findings and recommendations. They advised that individual ASA chapters review their charges, mission statements, and core activities to identify opportunities to promote the development of policy that prioritizes racial-ethnic equity and the anti-racist use of statistics. They also recommended the Council of Chapters actively promote this effort and provide the necessary support for implementation. An ASA traveling course on anti-racism will be developed and proposed to the governing board’s traveling course committee.

Alicia Arneson, a PhD student at Virginia Tech working under the mentorship of 2018 governing board chair and current ASA Board representative Alexandra Hanlon analyzed chapter membership trends over time and the effects of the pandemic. Arneson reported that the membership of smaller chapters tended to hold steady over the past several years, while that of larger chapters decreased by approximately 10 percent on average between 2019 and 2020.

Mike Jadoo, diversity chair of the Washington Statistical Society, spoke about successful strategies the society has used to recruit more students, minorities, and other members of the data science community into their organization. He stressed the importance of making the process for potential members to join the chapter as easy as possible and using social media, LinkedIn, meetups, and mentoring activities to diversify membership.

The fourth presenter was Teri Utlaut, chair of the ASA Committee on Membership Retention and Recruitment. She reported the main finding from the focus groups her committee held with a cross-section of ASA members was that making connections is critical for members and there needs to be a greater focus on increasing inclusive ASA networking opportunities. The committee is in the process of creating “Networking in a Box,” a resource that will include tips for pre-event outreach, icebreakers, and other activities for facilitating connections, as well as a repository for sharing successful strategies.

After the four presentations, break-out sessions were held with participants divided into five small groups to discuss the approaches used to increase and diversify membership in their chapters, the challenges they have faced, and new ways to accomplish these goals. Key take-aways and ideas generated from the break-outs were the following:

Challenges

• Retaining and motivating members (e.g., students will come to events without joining the chapter; best ways to attract undergraduates is not clear). Many students also discontinue chapter involvement after graduation
• Difficulty communicating about and increasing awareness of chapter activities.
• Increasing geographic diversity for chapters that cover a large region.
• Engaging statisticians from other sectors (i.e., beyond “ivory tower” of academia)
• Financial barriers.
• Engaging the university (i.e., many don’t want to be involved in ASA chapters).
• Variability in chapter leadership affects membership; highly dependent on level of involvement, effectiveness of chapter president. Membership decreases when leadership is less active.

Successful Strategies and New Ideas for Increasing and Diversifying Membership

• Host less formal chapter events in which spouses, partners, friends, and family can join. The presentations at these events can be on a statistical topic, but content should be accessible to a diverse and nontechnical audience.
• Take advantage of opportunities the ASA offers to increase membership such as stimulus funds, traveling course, DataFest.
• Create unofficial titles for people from other sectors to feel welcome and included in the chapter (e.g., “industry representative”).
• Advertise events throughout the broader region; consider adding a hybrid option for each meeting so individuals based in more remote areas can participate.
• Lightning talks are a great way to encourage engagement from industry, government, and academia. This format can be especially useful for graduate students in the early part of their careers because only a five-minute talk is required.
• Promote diversity in leadership positions (chapter officers) and encourage participation in the JEDI outreach group.
• Have the chapter pay for some memberships. This can be done in a variety of ways; one suggestion was through a lottery system.
• Create a statistical consulting group.
• Request from the ASA a list of ASA members in your region and compare with chapter membership list to identify potential new members.
• Contact computer science and business intelligence programs about joining the ASA.
• Hold monthly luncheons on a mix of topics that would be of interest to academia, government, and industry.
• Organize presentations on diversity-focused topics.
• Attract new faculty members by inviting them to organize the spring or fall chapter meeting and select the speaker; use chapter funds for the event.
• Rotate location of meetings and events to attract people from different sectors (e.g., company, university, government office).
• Find opportunities for cross-fertilization between chapters and other ASA events, committees, and sections (e.g., have a chapter-sponsored mixer at the Women in Statistics and Data Science Conference).
• Offer more mentoring activities for students and early-career statisticians.
• More outreach to undergraduates.
• Reach out to community colleges.
• Emphasize both what the ASA can do for you and what you can do for the ASA.

Strategies for Attracting Students

• Leave copies of ASA publications (e.g., Significance) where students can physically access them easily.
• Offer food. Pizza is an especially effective way to attract students.
• Create more student chapters.
• Provide a tutoring service.
• Organize a student poster session and get donations to support this event.
• Promote all online presentations to statistics students. Give students extra credit in courses for turning in a summary of the presentation; provide student feedback to speakers.
• Start a Mu Sigma Rho chapter and induct students. Department automatically enrolls the student and pays their membership fee in Mu Sigma Rho, then Mu Sigma Rho will pay the one-year ASA membership as long as the student is in good standing with Mu Sigma Rho.
• Display chapter recruitment posters around campus.
• Communicate with students in classes about the ASA.

Ways ASA Leadership Can Help

Ideas for future governing board workshops can be sent to 2023 chair, Mimi Kim, or 2023 chair-elect, Jo Wick.