From the Department Chair – 2016

Greetings from Cal Poly. I’m pleased to begin my second three-year term as chair of the Statistics Department this year.

The highlight of these newsletters for me, and I suspect for many others, is reading about what you, our alumni, are up to. More than 100 of you responded to my request for updates — a remarkable and unprecedented number! I think you’ll be delighted to learn about the interesting careers, impressive accomplishments, and many wonderful events that have occurred in your fellow alumni’s lives.

Our current students also continue to excel. I encourage you to read about the Cal Poly teams that took first and second at the DataFest competition held at UCLA last May. We also had 11 statistics majors engaged in student-faculty research last summer.

Another favorite section of this newsletter provides updates about our faculty, who continue to inspire students and amass impressive achievements of their own. For example, Soma Roy was recognized for her exceptional teaching and dedication to student learning with one of three Distinguished Teaching Awards at Cal Poly for the 2015-16 school year. You can also read about our new tenure-track faculty members Anelise Sabbag and Prince Afriyie. 

Our department has continued to grow in the eighteen months since we last put together a newsletter. We currently have a record 140 students majoring in statistics. During the last academic year, we taught 108 students in STAT 323 Design and Analysis of Experiments and 130 students in STAT 324 Applied Regression Analysis. In the current academic year, we are offering two sections of each course in our STAT 425-426-427 sequence and two sections of our capstone course Statistical Consulting and Communication (STAT 465). 

This growth is exciting, and I like to think that it reflects not only the increasing popularity of our discipline but also the high quality of education that we provide for our students. Rest assured that as we continue to grow, we never lose our focus on helping individuals succeed and fostering close student-faculty interactions. 

Before I conclude, I want to thank those who have made financial donations to our program. You support enables our students to experience distinctive Learn by Doing opportunities. You can find a list of these donors’ names in this newsletter.

Thanks for reading, and thanks especially to all who contributed an update. Please keep in touch with any questions or updates about yourself.

Best wishes,

Allan Rossman
arossman@calpoly.edu