DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA (803)-777-7800 William J. Padgett, Chairman E-mail: padgett@stat.sc.edu
It is again time to bring our alumni, friends, and former faculty and staff up to date on happenings in the Department of Statistics. We send greetings and best wishes for the season to all of you. We have seen many of you on various occasions this past year. It is always good to "catch up" with you personally, and you are invited to drop by the Department any time you are in Columbia. We also would like to hear any news about you as it happens, so stay in touch by e-mail or letter. Please take a few minutes to complete and return the form at the end of the newsletter any time you would like to inform us about promotions, awards, weddings, births, or other occurrences.
The Department has settled into its new headquarters on the second floor of LeConte, as reported last year. It is beginning to feel like "home" now. Our facilities have continued to improve in the Department as well as in LeConte overall. We have more space for graduate assistants (approximately 22 this fall). We have continued to upgrade computing equipment for faculty, staff and students, and to improve our overall space as much as possible. The College of Science and Mathematics has equipped a new Pentium PC laboratory on the third floor of LeConte, and a Power Macintosh lab has been set up on the first floor, in addition to our departmental facilities. There are also two Sun Sparcstation labs in the building, located on the third and fourth floors. Hence, the computing facilities and software are now quite extensive with all three platforms available on the network.
This year, Joe Padgett is still the Department Chair and Don Edwards is the Director of Graduate Studies and Assistant Chair. Lori Thombs continues as Director of Undergraduate Studies. Also, John Grego is in his fifth year as the Statistical Laboratory Director, with Holmes Finch as the Manager. Holmes is also teaching a section of STAT 201 for us this year and is really enjoying being in the classroom in addition to his StatLab duties. Jim Lynch is still directing the Center for Reliability and Quality Sciences, offering short courses to industrial, business and government personnel.
The Office staff now consists of Nancy Brazzell as the Business Manager and Office Manager, with Kim Aaron as the Administrative Specialist. We also have two work-study office assistants this year, Rajesh Dodani and Gail Doyle. Rajesh is a freshman pre-medicine major and Gail is a senior in advertising. Sue Darlington, our former Office Manager, retired on June 30 to travel and to visit with family. At the time of retirement, Sue was the Office Manager for the Center for Science Education.
No new faculty were hired for 1997-98, but Tony Rossini who came as an Assistant Professor in 1995 is leaving after December to move to Seattle. His wife, Sally Liu, took a position at the University of Washington. We have hired Trevor Craney, who will complete the M.S. degree in December, as a temporary instructor for the spring semester 1998. A permanent replacement for Tony will be sought for 1998-99. The "retired guy" (Steve Durham) is continuing to do research on an NSF grant with Jim Lynch and Joe Padgett, so he is "at work" regularly.
Some personal notes: Todd and Christine Ogden had their second child right after Christmas last year, James Robert. Tony Rossini and Sally had their first child, Matthias, in early summer. Web West was married (to Olga Garcia) in late July and combined a honeymoon in Greece and Istanbul with his participation in the International Statistical Institute Meeting in Istanbul.
Statistics course enrollments continue to increase at approximately 3-5% per year! In both Spring and Fall semesters of 1997, the total course enrollments reached well over 1000! This is good news during a time that some disciplines are experiencing slight enrollment decreases. Many majors within the University are now requiring STAT. Also, for the first time this fall, several new freshmen declared Statistics as their major. These are outstanding students and some had statistics courses in high school which spurred their interest.
John Spurrier developed and taught, with NSF support, a "capstone course" for statistics majors, a senior-level course pulling together the various aspects of statistics to simulate work experiences. The course, STAT 590, will be required for all majors starting next fall.
A new permanent graduate course on Environmental Statistics was approved last spring and will be offered during the spring 1998. The course is co-taught by Walt Piegorsch and Don Edwards. Another new graduate course on generalized linear models is being planned and will help to fill out the graduate curriculum in the next year or so.
The Department continues to improve its home page on the World Wide Web. The page includes information about the Department, course syllabi and outlines, campus pictures, pictures of the faculty and staff, and links to other homepages. Even this newsletter is posted there! You are invited to check it out if you have not yet seen it, at http://www.stat.sc.edu .
The StatLab has been doing a number of interesting projects over the past year. These include a quality improvement project for FN Manufacturing in Columbia, some work with Sonoco in Hartsville, the River Alliance in Columbia, and several other companies and agencies. The Lab also continues to work with the S.C. Alliance for Minority Participation, providing support on retention and tracking minority students in science and engineering in the participating colleges and universities in South Carolina. Funded projects have reached an all-time high this year in the StatLab, due to the hard work of John Grego, Holmes Finch, and the student research assistants!
Duan Wei, a 1977 Ph.D. graduate (M.A. 1975), was awarded the first Outstanding Statistics Alumni Award in June. He also received the College of Science and Mathematics' first Alumni Distinguished Career Award for his scholarly accomplishments and government service to the Republic of China, Taiwan. Dr. Wei is currently the Director-General of the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, Executive Yuan, ROC. He was formerly in the same position for the Taipei City Government and Senior Adviser in the Office of the President, among other notable positions. In addition, he held adjunct professor positions at National Central University and National Chengchi University, and had been a faculty member in the Institute of Business Administration, National Sun Yat-sen University.
The awards were presented to Dr. Wei during a visit to the University and Department on June 4. A luncheon was held with Dr. James Myers, Director of the Center for Asian Studies, Dr. Richard Walker, former Ambassador to Korea, Interim Dean Roger Sawyer, Dr. Robert L. Taylor, Wei's Ph.D. advisor now at the University of Georgia, and several other friends and acquaintances from Wei's student days. At the luncheon, Dr. Wei presented a generous gift to the Department's Padgett Fellowship Fund.
In 1994 the College of Science and Mathematics (COSM) began awarding a scholarship to an outstanding senior in each major program. To be eligible for the COSM scholarship in Statistics, students must be rising seniors and have an overall GPA at USC of at least 3.5 with at least 75 semester hours of credit at the time of nomination. In addition, a GPA of at least 3.5 in all STAT courses and 500-level or higher MATH courses taken for major credit, and have at least 6 hours of 500-level STAT courses, as well as having completed the calculus and matrix algebra requirement. The statistics majors who have received the scholarship in the past three years were Scott Sheridan (1994-95), Anne McNair (1995-96), and James Watts (1996-97). For 1997-98, Michele Nichols is the COSM scholarship recipient.
The annual undergraduate awards presented at the University Awards Day Ceremony in April went to James Watts (Mu Sigma Rho Award) and Tamara Marsh (S.D. Durham Award).
This year the University held a Graduate Student Awards luncheon at which our 1997 Outstanding Graduate Student Award was presented to W. Jason Owen. Also, the 1997 Outstanding First Year Graduate Student Award went to Trevor Craney. Our 1997 Departmental Outstanding Graduate Assistant Awards were given at the spring picnic to Obaid Al-Saidy, Dena Beatty, Arzu Onar, James Surles, and Beth Walters.
In 1997, the Department had a record number of Ph.D. students completing degree requirements. They were Aparna Sengupta Merchant (Don Edwards, advisor), William Jason Owen (Joe Padgett, advisor), W. Scott Street IV (Don Edwards, advisor), and Wanzhu Tu (Walt Piegorsch, advisor). All received their degrees at the August 9 doctoral commencement exercises in the Koger Center on campus. Aparna will be moving away from Columbia with her husband in December. Jason is Assistant Professor in the Deparment of Mathematical Sciences, University of New Hampshire, and Scott is Assistant Professor in the Mathematics Department, Georgia Southern University. Wanzhu accepted a post-doctoral position in the Division of Biostatistics, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis.
Thirteen M.S. degrees were also awarded in 1997! The total number of 17 graduate degrees awarded in a year was a record!!
We are always looking for good students. Please send names, addresses, and phone numbers of potential students for our undergraduate or graduate programs. Lori Thombs, (803) 777-5163, is our Undergraduate Director and Don Edwards, (803) 777-5073, is our Graduate Director. The address is Department of Statistics, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208 and they can be reached by e-mail at thombs@stat.sc.edu and edwards@stat.sc.edu, respectively. The demand for statistics graduates at all levels is high, and the placement of graduates has been excellent.
The Department hosted an NSF-sponsored workshop to train college faculty members on the use of "hands-on" laboratory exercises in elementary statistics. The workshop was held on June 24-28, 1997, with an outstanding group of 24 college faculty members from all across the United States. The workshop will be held again on June 16-20, 1998, with the number of participants again limited to 24. John Spurrier and Lori Thombs will lead the workshop, as last summer.
Funding is available to support local expenses of all selected participants. In addition, five stipends of up to $250 are available to help defray travel expenses for participants from colleges that cannot provide support.
Participants will take part in ten laboratory experiences which illustrate important concepts of applied statistics. In addition, participants will discuss strategies for leading a laboratory session, using student teams, having students produce written reports, obtaining equipment, scheduling, constructing new laboratory exercises, generating enrollments, and training lab assistants.
To obtain an application form or more information about the workshop, contact John Spurrier by e-mail (spurrier@stat.sc.edu) or by mail.
All of our faculty are very busy with professional activities, instructional activities, and statistical research. The following are exciting examples:
Don Edwards was elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association this year, bringing the number of ASA Fellows on our regular faculty to four! Huynh Huynh, an adjunct faculty member from the USC College of Education, was also elected Fellow of ASA, the fifth in the Department!
Don Edwards has also been busy for a second year as the co-organizer of the College Bowl at the Annual Joint Statistics Meetings in Anaheim. He is also working with John Spurrier and Lori Thombs on revisions of their laboratory textbook for elementary statistics.
Both Todd Ogden and Walt Piegorsch (with John Bailer) had books published this year, on wavelets in statistics and environmental statistics, respectively. Web West spent last summer at the Naval Surface Weapons Laboratory in Dahlgren, Virginia, and Todd Ogden was at Carnegie Mellon University all summer working on brain mapping/image analysis problems with Bill Eddy's research group. Lori Thombs spent part of the summer at Stanford after a couple of weeks in Hawaii!!
Seven faculty members are currently serving on the editorial boards of fifteen different statistical journals.
Walt Piegorsch and Web West recently obtained a research grant from the National Cancer Institute (NIH). They and a graduate student are working on low dose risk assessment for environmental carcinogenesis. Steve Durham, Jim Lynch and Joe Padgett, along with two graduate students, are continuing work on a research grant from the National Science Foundation to model failure of systems with dependent components. This has direct application to modern fibrous composite materials.
Don Edwards, John Spurrier, Jennifer Lasecki (MS 1997), and David Hardesty (MS 1995) have completed work on multiple comparison functions which have been incorporated into version 4.0 of SPlus.
Web West, Tony Rossini, and Todd Ogden are also continuing to develop applets for statistical analysis via the Internet (see the Department's home page).
Dean Johnson, BS 91, MS 93, is working on a doctoral degree in Educational Psychology at the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho.
T. J. Horan, BS (Comp.Sci.) 93, MS 95, is now Manager of Modeling Services at HNC Software, San Diego.
Scott Sheridan, BS 95, completed a master's degree in Statistics at the University of Florida and is in the doctoral program in Environmental Engineering there.
Danny Weathers, MS 96, is employed by SCANA Corporation, Columbia, SC. He is also teaching in the Evening Division at USC.
Jennifer (Simsick) Street, MS 95, is now an instructor in the Mathematics Department at Georgia Southern University, where her husband, Scott Street, Ph.D. 97, is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics. They were married in the summer 1997.
Greg Osenga, MS 83, is Senior Vice President of Information Services, Charlotte.
Tammiee Dickenson, MS 96, is a Statistician working in the Office of Institutional Planning and Analysis at USC, Columbia. Tammiee also regularly teaches statistics as an adjunct instructor in the Evening Division at USC.
Sylvia Hill, BS 96, is a statistician/SAS programmer in the USC Institutional Planning & Analysis Office, Columbia. She was married last spring.
John Rodermund, BS 88, is married to Vilinda Son, BS 90, and they are living with their four-year old daughter in New Jersey. John is Supervisor of Clinical Programming Specialists in the Biostatistics Department, and Vilinda is a Clinical Data Coordinator, both at Schering-Plough Research Institute in Kenilworth, NJ. John is working on an MS in Information Systems at Seton Hall University.
Mark A. Dawson, BS 92, is Quality Assurance Supervisor at Georgia-Pacific in Delair, New Jersey.
Richard A. Phillips, BS 83, is now a Certified Quality Engineer and a Senior Member of the American Society for Quality. He is the QS-9000 Coordinator (Quality Systems Administrator) at Lear Corporation in Strasburg, Virginia.
G. Stephen Few, BS 84, is now an Environmental Statistician with Division of Air Quality, North Carolina Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources, moving back into the Southeast after many years at Boeing Aircraft in Seattle.
Jayasshree S. Krishnaa, MS 93, is now a Statistician at Intel Corporation in Hillsboro, Oregon.
Shiowjen Lee, Ph.D. 93, is Assistant Professor in the Mathematics Department at the University of West Florida, Pensacola. She received the Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award at UWF in 1997.
Yuhlong Lio, Ph.D. 87, was promoted to the rank of Full Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, in 1997.
Michael J. VanLue, BS 87, received an MSP in speech pathology and the Ph.D. in 1997 from the USC School of Public Health. He is a Research Associate and assistant coordinator of the USC Speech-Language Pathology Distance Education Program. Michael held the position as speech-language pathologist at Taylor Elementary School in Cayce, SC, where he was named Teacher of the Year in 1995!
Jan Overstreet, MS 90, has moved to Richmond, Virginia, where she is working in quality control. Jan formerly taught mathematics and statistics at Spring Valley High School and Lexington High School.
Madeline J. Boyle-Whitesel, MS 96, was married to Carl Whitesel on June 14. She is living in Charlotte and working at Carolinas Medical Center as a biostatistician.
Azhar Nizam, MS 88, is Senior Associate, Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Emory University.
Beth Walters, MS 97, is an instructor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, Loyola College, Baltimore, Maryland.
David Whitin, BS 95, received the MS degree in Statistics at the University of Georgia in June 1997. David won a University Outstanding Teacher Award in 1996-97 as a teaching assistant at U.Ga.
Dolores Scott, former Administrative Assistant to the Chairman 1987-94, received a master's degree in Education from USC in 1996. She works at the SC Department of Health and Environmental Control in Columbia.
Tom Baker, former faculty (1978-80), is at Lockheed Martin, Denver, Colorado.
Please send information regarding new job, spouse, kids, or address to Joe Padgett, Department of Statistics, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208 (or padgett@stat.sc.edu). A form is included for your convenience.
We are interested in learning how your USC education has helped you. Also, any suggestions you might have to improve our Department are welcome. You might be quoted in our brochures!
Several of our alumni and friends have made generous contributions to the department. These donations allow us to support many activities that would not otherwise be possible. Contributions can be made to either of two funds within the USC Educational Foundation. Some employers provide a matching gifts program, also.
The Department of Statistics Fund (Account 1A3410) supports annual awards for top undergraduate and graduate students, helps support student receptions, helps provide computer software for student use, and other activities. Major contributions could be used to support undergraduate scholarships or help to establish chaired professorships.
The W. J. Padgett Fellowship Fund (account 1B1593) was established in 1993 and helps us attract outstanding graduate students to the Department by offering supplemental fellowships annually. The fellowships are funded with interest from the account. Thus, contributions to this account will continue to help young statisticians into the future.
Contribution forms for both accounts are enclosed for your convenience.
The Statistics Department Faculty and Staff Wish You a Happy 1997 Holiday Season!
GIFT FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS
Name ______________________________________ SSN _______________________
Address _______________________________________________________________
City ___________________________________ State _______ Zip ______________
My Total Gift Will Be: $__________
Matching Gift Company ______________________________________
I will make this gift as follows:
___ to be paid monthly/quarterly/semi-annually/annually
Reminders to begin __________________
___ I would like to give securities or other
_______________________________
This gift is to be restricted for the use of the Department of Statistics
(Account 1A3410).
___ Check payable to USC Educational Foundation is enclosed.
___ You may list my name in the Report of Private Giving; otherwise, treat
this gift as anonymous.
You can double your gift if you or a member of your family is employed with
a companyhaving a "Matching Gift Program." Please enclose the company's
matching gift formavailable from your personnel office.
RETURN TO: Development Office, University of South Carolina, Byrnes
6th, Columbia, SC 29208
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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GIFT FOR "W. J. Padgett Fellowship Fund"
Name ______________________________________ SSN _______________________
Address _______________________________________________________________
City ___________________________________ State _______ Zip ______________
My Total Gift Will Be: $__________
Matching Gift Company ______________________________________
I will make this gift as follows:
___ to be paid monthly/quarterly/semi-annually/annually
Reminders to begin __________________
___ I would like to give securities or other
_______________________________
This gift is to be restricted for the use of the Department of
Statistics in establishing the "W. J. Padgett Fellowship Fund."
(Account 1B1593)
___ Check payable to USC Educational Foundation is enclosed.
___ You may list my name in the Report of Private Giving; otherwise, treat
this gift as anonymous.
You can double your gift if you or a member of your family is employed with
a companyhaving a "Matching Gift Program." Please enclose the company's
matching gift formavailable from your personnel office.
RETURN TO: Development Office, University of South Carolina, Byrnes
6th, Columbia, SC 29208
What's Happening To You?
Please send information regarding new job, spouse, kids, or address to W.
J. Padgett, Department of Statistics, University of South Carolina,
Columbia, SC 29208 (or padgett@stat.sc.edu).
Name: ____________________________________
Degree and Year _______________________
Address
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
News of any kind:
Thoughts on how your USC statistics education has helped you. May we quote
you in our Departmental brochures?
Suggestions to improve the Department of Statistics: