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Pew Midstates Science and Mathematics Consortium
Upper Level Statistics in the 21st Century Workshop
November 7 – 9, 2003
St. Olaf
Final Report

The Upper Level Statistics Workshop was held November 7-9, 2003 at St. Olaf College, in Northfield, MN. Fifteen faculty representing eight Pew institutions, four non-Pew institutions and thirteen speakers attended the conference. The workshop coordinators were Julie Legler, Director of the Statistics Program at St. Olaf College, and Matt Richey, Chair of the Math Department at St. Olaf College.

The conference began Friday evening with dinner on the St. Olaf campus. George Cobb of Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA and the newly elected ASA Vice-President gave the after dinner talk. Saturday morning sessions began with an introduction to The Changing Practice of Statistics by moderator, Julie Legler, St. Olaf, then George Cobb along with Laura Chihara from Carleton College presented Mathematical Statistics in a Liberal Arts Statistics Program: Is it math or is it statistics and what should it be? Following a mid morning break Paul Roback of St. Olaf gave a talk entitled Pre- and Post- Math Stat courses: What are appropriate feeder courses for Math Stat and what should the follow-up to math stat look like?

After lunch Sonja Clark, St. Olaf '03, Practicum, Rachel Pedersen, St. Olaf '03, Internship at Mayo Clinic, and George McCabe of Purdue University discussed Experiential Learning and Undergraduate Research. The last session of the day was Post-graduate Expectation Maximization with Dean Isaacsen, Statistics Graduate Program, Iowa State, Lynn Eberly, Biostatistics Program, University of Minnesota and Craig Solid, Biostatistician, Nephrology Analytic Services. Dinner was at the Northfield Arts Guild.

Sunday morning's moderator was Thomas Moore of Grinnell. The sessions began with Resources: texts, online materials, software, other departments, ASA and CUPM guidelines, the pipeline and educators. After a mid-morning break, Matt Richey, Mathematics Department Chair at St. Olaf addressed Programmatic Issues such as Hiring and Retaining Statisticians and Statisticians in Mathematics Departments.

The workshop ended with participants filling out an evaluation, box lunches and closing comments.

The evaluations and informal comments were positive and participants found the workshop worthwhile. They seemed to particularly appreciate the opportunity to meet and share with other faculty their projects, plans, concerns, and experiences.