Jennifer L. Green is an associate professor in the department of statistics and probability and in the program in mathematics education at Michigan State University. A fellow of the American Statistical Association and elected member of the International Statistical Institute, she is currently co-editor of Statistics Teacher, section editor for research in K–12 education for the Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education, and associate co-director for research with the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education.
6:45 a.m. We’re up and going! My youngest daughter is off to school for the day. I am catching up on dishes, checking emails, and chatting with my oldest daughter about our plans to help her move out of her college dorm next week.
9 a.m. I squeeze in a quick workout, then I head off to campus.
10 a.m. The campus is springing to life—as shown in the photos below, there are so many plants and trees budding and blooming right now! The spring semester is ending, and graduates are taking pictures around campus in their gowns. It’s exciting to see their joy in celebrating all their accomplishments! I quickly find a parking spot—there are many available, yay! And then I head to the library to search for the collaborative work room my PhD student advises, which I have reserved. I’ve never been to this part of the library before and am surprised to discover we have reserved a gaming room with a large monitor!
10:15 a.m. I’m the first one to arrive at the room, so I quickly check and respond to emails while I wait. There are so many emails to catch up on!
10:30 a.m. Maria and Miguel (two of my PhD student advisees) arrive. We start by catching up on the week’s events. It’s toward the end of finals week, and Maria and Miguel have finished their final exams and projects. The building with our offices was closed this whole week due to an unknown substance that was found. All final exams that were supposed to be in that building had to be rescheduled, and Maria couldn’t access her students’ posters from her office—she had to reprint them all! What a week! We are all looking forward to participating this summer in two upcoming statistics and data science education conferences—the International Conference on Teaching Statistics and the Electronic Conference on Teaching Statistics. Today, we’re planning to finish the analysis of data for our collaborative research project. We’re presenting a poster about this project in one-and-a-half months at eCOTS, so we want to make good progress today. We love having a chunk of time to collaborate since the semester is wrapping up and our schedules are more open now!
Michigan State University’s campus on a spring day offers pink flowering trees, landscaped lawns, and bright blue skies.
11 a.m. We create a game plan for our time together, but first, pause to take a group photo! We’ve conducted initial explorations of students’ perceptions of using generative artificial intelligence in an undergraduate mathematical statistics course, so today we plan to organize and define the codes that arose from that initial analysis. Projecting the collaborative documents on the big monitor is helpful for working through the material together and visualizing what each person is doing!
11:30 a.m. We are immersed in our work! I am going through the data and cleaning up transcriptions while Maria and Miguel draft the tables of descriptive codes, definitions, and example quotes.
12:25 p.m. Maria shares that we received a “revise and resubmit” decision on the paper she and I submitted with another collaborator to Statistics Education Research Journal. Yay! The editor and reviewers requested we make major revisions, but I assure Maria this is great news—the paper wasn’t rejected! In my experience, it’s rare for a paper to be accepted with minor revisions the first time it is submitted to a journal for peer review. We have a little over one month to work on and submit a revised paper, so we will need to schedule time to complete that work, in addition to the other manuscripts and ICOTS and eCOTS presentations we are preparing. There is plenty of research to do this summer!
12:48 p.m. Lunch time! Maria, Miguel, and I walk to a nearby restaurant and enjoy a meal together. We talk about upcoming program milestones, the academic job market, and the importance of community.
2 p.m. We are back at the library and dive right into collaboratively reviewing the compiled codes, definitions, and sample quotes. We begin writing a summary of our analysis methods while it is still fresh in our minds and tie up a few loose ends, so we’re ready to dive into our work when we meet again in a couple weeks.
3:30 p.m. After Maria and Miguel leave, I stay in the library to check my email, schedule meetings, and review upcoming deadlines, so I can prioritize those tasks. Importantly, I need to complete some editorial work and send review decisions to authors.
4:10 p.m. I pack up my computer and decide to drive home for my next meeting since it’s on Zoom, and I cannot access my campus office right now.
From left: Miguel Rodriguez Mejia, Maria Cruciani, and Jennifer L. Green work together.
5 p.m. Meeting time! I join a graduate student’s guidance committee meeting to talk about their progress in the program, their scholarly interests, their goals after completing their PhD, and their proposed ideas for their comprehensive exams. I love hearing about students’ scholarly interests and ideas and learning about their work!
6:04 p.m. I’m taking a break away from my computer to take a walk and eat dinner. I’ll be back later though—there’s a revised paper I need to review for Statistics Teacher!
8:30–9:45 p.m. For my day’s final work hurrah, I read the revised paper for Statistics Teacher, tracking changes to send to authors for final approval before passing it on for copyediting. The authors have done a great job addressing the reviewers’ feedback, and I think this paper will be a wonderful addition to Statistics Teacher!
This was just one day of many, and they can all look very different! As a statistics educator, I engage in a lot of different activities:
I attend several meetings (faculty meetings, service committee meetings, graduate student advising meetings, research collaboration meetings). I teach statistics, mathematics education, and statistics education courses. In the spring of 2026, I got to co-lead a statistics and data science education seminar, where graduate students from Michigan State University, North Carolina State University, Penn State University, and the University of Minnesota met weekly via Zoom to discuss readings and ask questions of a guest speaker. I review and find reviewers for articles submitted to Statistics Teacher and Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education. And I respond to lots of emails.
As an associate co-director for research in the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education, I support other statistics and data science educators (with Laura Le). I also collaborate with researchers at Michigan State University and other institutions on a variety of research projects (e.g., research on being a graduate teaching assistant, development of K–12 statistics teachers, undergraduate mathematical statistics courses). I mentor graduate students and read and review their papers (e.g., proposals and papers for their research practicums, comprehensive exams, and dissertations). I attend workshops and conferences to connect with other scholars and share about my work. I write research papers and grant proposals—and so much more!
There truly is never a dull moment, and I love the variety and opportunities for continual learning, exploration, collaboration, and engagement with others!
Leave a Reply