President Mark Payton

Vice President J. L. Madrigal

Past President Don Edwards

Secretary/ Golde Holtzman

Treasurer Department of Statistics

Directors- James H. Albert

at-Large Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Larry D. Haugh

M. Adams AL a C. E. Smith NC a R. Canfield UT a

D. Boes CO a V. Rohatgi OH a B. Collings UT b

W.R. Stephenson IA a W. Warde OK a L. Haugh VT a

D. Wackerly FL a (Position available) PA a J. Birch VA a

G. Milliken KS a Y. Palesch SC a G. Hobbs WV a

A. S. Katiyar LA a D. Edwards SC b R. Cochran WY a

C. McCulloch NY a E. Eltinge TX a

• Our new members from last year are: Laura Coombs (Ph.D. student at OSU who is still working on degree); Krista Crenshaw (graduated with MS in December, moved to Dallas, with her husband and is currently looking for a position in that area); Jinger Davis (graduated with BS in May and is now working on an MS in Industrial Engineering at OSU); Becky Johnson (working to complete MS at OSU); Rebecca Moore (Graduated with MS in May and is now working in Oklahoma City for the State Department of Mental Health); Francisca Richter (graduated with MS in May, had a son during Spring Semester while finishing her degree and is now working on a PhD in Agricultural Economics at OSU); Jason Skoch (expects to complete BS in May); Kijoung Song (completed MS and returned home to Korea); Lisa Wester (expects to complete BS in May).

• OSU conducts a one month residential summer academy for Native American 7th to 9th grade students in June. The academy covers an exposure to Math, Computing & Statistics, Biology, and Chemistry. Last summer, 31 students from Oklahoma, Kansas, Arizona, and New Mexico attended, and a similar number are expected in June, 1998. The academy is sponsored by NASA through the American Indian Science Technology Education Consortium (AISTEC) of which OSU is a member.

• The SC Beta chapter had a record graduating year, which was great for the students but has depleted the ranks of the chapter’s active membership! The following members finished graduate degrees in calendar year 1997, and their first job is shown at the right in each case. Every graduate who sought employment found it within two months of graduation; most had jobs waiting for them beforehand.

• Since the Joint Meetings were so far away last summer (in Anaheim [1997]), we could not afford to send a College Bowl team. . . no wonder Iowa eked out a victory!

• The Chapter did take the annual trip to Charleston in February. The Chapter also sponsored picnics and an excellent talk by graduate Leslie Jones (MS'91), who is currently Chief Actuary for Life and Accident Insurance for the State of South Carolina. The Chapter inducted two new members, Jim Gleaton and Michele Nichols.

• The MSR chapter sponsored a Statistics Department opening social in early September. The social was very well attended with about 50 students, spouses and children, and about a dozen faculty and staff. Everyone had a great time and it got the year off to a good start.

• The BYU chapter inducted 18 new members this fall. David Clinton Draper was inducted as a graduate student. The seventeen undergraduates were: Sally Allen, Susan M. Allen, Channing Badurek, Justin P. Bleazard, Arthur Todd Bushman, Brian James Carini, Chad Alan Crawford, Marcie Fillmore, Lance Lomond Jolley, Brett Jay Mendenhall, Dallan R. Moody, Russel W. Oslund, Kristen Piggott, Janna Raber, Bryan Shepherd, Christopher T. Strong, and Arminda Zohner.

• Our recent graduates have gone to a wide number of companies: general industries (the quality science emphasis students), pharmaceuticals, consult-ing companies and insurance companies (usually the actuarial emphasis companies), etc. Several of our statistics emphasis graduates have gone onto graduate schools for PhDs (currently University of Washington, Iowa, NC State, Texas A&M, Rice). A typical salary range would be $35-45K for the BS students and slightly higher for the MS students.

• We offer five undergraduate emphases: statistics, stat-business, quality science, information science and actuarial science. We have a total of about 120 undergraduate majors and about 20 graduate students in the MS program. A large portion of our students have also voluntarily served 18 month (female) or 2 years (male) as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the sponsoring organization for BYU). As a result, approximately sixty percent of our students are fluent in a foreign language including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, Portugese, German, Finnish, and Russian.

• In the Spring of 1997, five new outstanding students were initiated. Joseph Carpenter went through the Biostatistics M.S. program on a part time basis, and continued his position with our Medical Biostatistics Unit in the College of Medicine. In-Kyu Choi earned his B.S. and went to the University of Wyoming for continued graduate work in statistics. Kristie Hannah earned her B.S. and continued her graduate work here, taking advantage of our Accelerated Master's Program. Glen McFarlane received a Biostatistics M.S. and is now employed at Johns Hopkins University. Qifu Zheng earned his M.S. in Statistics in addition to his Ph.D. in Mathematical Science, and is now a professor at the College of New Jersey.

• The Fall of 1997 began with a social gathering on campus sponsored by our Statistics Student Association (SSA) to welcome the new students and, afterwards, provide an orientation session for the new graduate students. This orientation to computing on campus was led by Jackie Bartlett, president of the SSA.

• The students continued a monthly Biostatistics/Statistics Journal Club for themselves this academic year, that was first begun last year. Some of the students also attend a Journal Club series sponsored by our Vermont Back Research Center.

• At the April banquet, we inducted six undergraduate and 20 graduate student members. Our speaker was Alan F. Karr, Associate Director of National Institute of Statistical Sciences and Professor of Statistics and Biostatistics at UNC-Chapel Hill.

• The new undergraduate members are Carey Marlow Hill, Khristine Marie Westfall, Daniel Scott Wilkins, Kimberley Watson Evans, Robert Joseph Morris, and Lea Angela Truman.

• New graduate students are Mandy Lee Bergquist, Chris H. Bodily, Di Chen, Jianfeng Ding, Jimmy Akira Doi, Joel Fenner, Peter Allyn Frechtel, Eric Anderson Grau, Buffy Lynne Hudson-Curtis, Hyon-Jung Kim, Yuntae Kim, Jared Kenneth Lunceford, Dahlia Michelle Nielsen, Steven Jon Novick, Mindy Jean Roeder, Jennifer Lynn Shannon Gauvin, Carlos Henrique Silva, Darren Edward Stewart, Ye Sun, and Li Yang.

• The Chapter had two sponsored colloquia in 1997. They were: "Data Mining and Cluster Analysis" presented by Dr. John Kettenring, president of the American Statistical Association; and "An Overview of the Graphical and Analytical Capabilities of JMP" given by Dr. Herbert Kirk, Vice President of Profession Services at the SAS Institute.

• To promote success in statistics among students in all fields, our chapter organized a list of available tutors to assist students with their statistics coursework. The list was distributed to all faculty and graduate students teaching statistics courses. We plan to compile an updated list of available tutors each fall.

• To make our organization more visible to Virginia Tech and the world, our chapter recently developed a web page with the help of the department Internet coordinator and newest faculty member, Dr. Christine Anderson-Cook. The page gives a general overview of Mu Sigma Rho, and information about our chapter and its activities. It also contains a list of our members as well as contact information for our officers and tutors. We invite you to visit our page at http://www.cas.vt.edu/statistics/msrho.html.

• Our new initiates are Kenneth Keane and Jason Thomas Lee (under-graduates), Shelia M. Fulk, Kimberly Gimbert, Li Guan, Susan Harris, Stephen Kathman, Jr., Shannon C. Lang, Gurong Ma, and Samuel P. Wilcock (graduate students), Dr. Christine Anderson-Cook (faculty), and Drs. John Kettenring and Herbert Kirk (honorary).

• Current officers are Jennifer W. Huffman, president; Patrick F. Darken, vice president, and Yew-Haur Lee, secretary-treasurer. Dr. Jeffrey B. Birch is the faculty advisor.