Stat Ed Meeting

SIGMAA Stat Ed Meeting and Reception

Saturday, 1-6-07

Held in New Orleans, LA from 5:45pm to 7pm

Welcome, Introductions, and Reception

SIGMAA Chair Ginger Holmes-Rowell welcomed everyone in attendance, and everyone introduced himself or herself. (See below for a list of attendees).

Approval of Minutes from Business Meeting of 1-5-06

Copies of the 2006 meeting minutes were distributed. A motion to approve the minutes was made by Pat Humphrey and seconded by Nancy Boynton. The minutes were unanimously approved.

Officer Reports

Ginger Holmes Rowell (current chair):

She reminded all that email is the primary means of correspondence with members of the SIGMAA. It is important to keep addresses updated in the MAA database.
She introduced current officers:

Chair: Ginger Holmes-Rowell, Middle Tennessee State University (rowell@mtsu.edu)

Treasurer: Murray Siegel, Governor�s School for Science and Mathematics (siegel@gssm.k12.sc.us)

Past-Chair: Tom Moore, Grinnell College (mooret@grinnell.edu)

Chair-Elect: Chris Lacke, Rowan University (lacke@rowan.edu), who was unable to attend this year�s meeting.

Secretary: Sue Schou, Idaho State University (schosue@isu.edu), who was unable to attend this year�s meeting

She reminded everyone of the SIGMAA-sponsored contributed paper session on Innovative Uses of Graphs in Statistics Education to be held Sunday, January 7 from 1:00 to 5:30 pm.
Everyone was reminded of the award for best paper, which the Executive Committee decided to rename from the �Dexter Whittinghill Best Contributed Paper Award� to the �Dexter Whittinghill Best Contributed Presentation Award� since that is a more accurate description of the way the plaque for the award will be presented. If there are multiple authors, only the individual who gave the presentation will receive the plaque each year; co-authors are encouraged to cite the award on their vitae, however.
Ginger and Tom presented the 2006 Best Contributed Paper Award plaque to Allan Rossman for his presentation (co-authored with Beth Chance) �Examples of Assessments to Improve Student Learning in Introductory Statistics.�
Ginger inquired whether people had received the postcards from the SIGMAA that were mailed in December. Those present indicated they had received their card. The SIGMAA officers will send the cards earlier next year, in time for a reminder to submit abstracts and remind members of the election of officers.

Tom Moore (past chair)

Past Chair Tom Moore reported on the elections. These were run electronically by the MAA for the first time this year. He asked if anyone present had been disenfranchised: Dorothy Anway and Ann Watkins had not been able to vote (email changes). Tom reported that a few email bounces had occurred and were resolved to the best of his ability. John McKenzie commented that the candidate biographies were not available until he actually voted; he suggested that biographies be put on the SIGMAA web page in future. This was received as a good idea. Tom announced that candidates for Secretary were Nancy Boynton of SUNY Fredonia and Leigh Lunsford of Longwood University. The winner was Nancy Boynton. The candidates for Chair-elect were Pat Humphrey of Georgia Southern University and Barbara Wainwright of Salisbury State. The winner was Pat Humphrey.

Murray Siegel (Treasurer):

Treasurer Murray Siegel reported on the budget and known 2006 expenditures (he will not get fourth quarter numbers from MAA until late January). In drafting the 2007 budget, he took what was approved for 2006 and inflated the numbers a bit. There will be no expenditures for Mathfest 2007 as that will be a contributed paper session, rather than a panel. The SIGMAA currently has 462 members; from each $10 dues, MAA keeps $5 for administration, so the dues income to the SIGMAA for 2007 is estimated to be $2600.00. The anticipated balance for 2006 year end is $20,870.63.

Murray also reported on MathFest activities. At the 2006 meeting, there were three panelists including himself speaking on �Enhancing the Teaching of Advanced Placement Statistics�, and approximately 25-30 attendees, about half each high school teachers and college professors. For 2007, a contributed paper session on �Innovative Ideas for Teaching Introductory Statistics� has been approved. The deadline for submissions is unknown at this time, but sessions are usually publicized in the April FOCUS with submissions due in May. John McKenzie suggested publicizing it to the StatEd section of ASA and NCTM as well.

Old Business

Two items from the 2006 meeting are still unresolved: a charter review and awards. The charter needs to be amended at least to reflect that MAA is now conducting elections with a different timeframe from that specified in the charter. Any possible awards (undergraduate poster and outstanding TA or young professor) need procedural decisions on how the winners are selected, as well as recommendations for dollar amounts. Ginger said breakout groups would address the awards at the conclusion of the business meeting.

John McKenzie reminded the group that a proposal had also been made to make the positions of webmaster and newsletter editor more formally recognized in the charter.

New Business

The SIGMAA has a need for a new newsletter editor since Pat Humphrey has been elected chair-elect. Pat described the job as she had been doing it. There were no volunteers at the meeting. We will solicit for volunteers again in the newsletter.

Elections to be held in 2007 for treasurer and chair-elect were announced. Ginger will be running these as past-chair.

Don Bentley asked about trying to coordinate activities and share information with the new Mathematical Biology SIGMAA, as there may be considerable overlap of interests. Conflicting SIGMAA sessions have been a topic of concern for some time. Our members most likely also have interests in the Quantitative Literacy and Advanced High School Mathematics SIGMAAs. Officers will try to deal with MAA to conflict with as few other SIGMAAs as possible, but with eleven of them and only 3 evenings to hold business meetings (for example) there will always be some conflict.

Announcements:

There is always a need for AP Statistics readers. This year the reading will be in Louisville, KY June 3 � 9.

The second United States Conference on Teaching Statistics (USCOTS) will be held May 17 � 19 at Ohio State. Ginger passed out fliers on the conference and the sponsoring organization, the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education (CAUSE).

Those present then broke into small groups to each discuss one of the topics:

Awards
The SIGMAA website: how can it be improved?
Involvement in K-12 education
How can we �spend down� our treasury balance effectively? (desired by MAA)
What topics should the SIGMAA sponsor in future?

Report from the �Input from Members� Groups

During the SIGMAA Stat-Ed Business Meeting at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans, LA on Saturday, January 6, 2007, the members met in groups to provide ideas for the executive committee. Notes from the various groups� brief meetings are reported below. Ideas that have been suggested since the meeting are included as well. We will continue to add ideas as members make suggestions. Please send your thoughts to rowell@mtsu.edu. Periodically, she will update the lists and post them to the web.

Ideas/Activities/Events for the Spending SIGMAA Funds and Additional Activities for the SIGMAA to Sponsor

� Subsidize SIGMAA memberships for graduate students (not clear how to do this or what this would mean).

� Subsidize conference registration for graduate students who give a talk in a SIGMAA session.

� Offer award for best student presentation in a SIGMAA session (but so few students give such a presentation).

� Offer support for encouraging graduate students in statistics to consider careers in undergraduate teaching in math depts. (Perhaps we could offer some funds for anyone who agrees to give a talk for grad students along these lines.)

� Offer support for SIGMAA members who are willing to visit high schools and give talks promoting statistics as a career.

� Write to MAA regional groups (sections) and AMATYC regional groups, offering to supply speakers to give talks on statistics at their regional meetings.

� Offer financial support to worthy statistics education projects, such as USCOTS and ICOTS. Perhaps these could be used for travel grants for graduate students or faculty early in their careers.

� Offer financial support to Project NExT, perhaps by sponsoring a Project NExT Fellow, just as the ASA sponsors two Project NExT Fellows.

� Offer award for best presentation at MathFest.

� Just as the SIGMAA organizes a contributed paper session at every JMM, perhaps we could try to ensure that there is always an MAA minicourse on some aspect of statistics or statistics teaching at every JMM.

� Support a Project NExT Fellow is expensive (maybe $5000 per year), but perhaps the SIGMAA could contribute $500-$1000 toward sponsoring a Project NExT Fellow. This is especially valuable because it gets those Fellows to the JMM, and those Fellows have the potential to become future leaders of the SIGMAA

� Another option for supporting NExT is that the SIGMAA could fund a presenter to give a workshop for Projcet NExT Fellows about teaching intro stat. Such a session often happens at MathFest, but perhaps the SIGMAA could take the lead in recruiting the speaker and also funding travel for the speaker.

� The SIGMAA could offer free registration at JMM for people that it invites to participate in panels or present a minicourse. This might be especially helpful for minicourses, because we might want to have 3-4 presenters, and with so many presenters there's not much support from the minicourse structure, so offering to pay registration for those presenters could be very helpful.

Ideas for the SIGMAA Stat-Ed Webpage

� check to see if the MAA offers (requires) a template

� list of books for different classes

� brief book reviews could be added by members

� discussion board (down the road)

� A comprehensive set of online references - other organizations,
instructional data set collections, etc.

� A full list of members: names, affiliations & links (e-mail, webpage), and
affiliations

Ideas for Contributed Paper Sessions, Panels, and Workshops at the National Meetings

� General Principle: Select topics for contributed paper session that are flexible enough to allow people to easily fit in the program (many people need to give presentations to be able to attend the meetings)

� Contributed Paper Session Ideas

� Projects for intro stat classes

� Using activities to teach statistics

� Could combine activities and projects and call it �Beyond the Lecture�

� Second course in statistics (things you can do beyond Intro Stat I)

� Real � world examples

� Interdisciplinary things you have brought to your teaching

� Panel Ideas:

� Programs in statistics � majors and minors

� Scholarship of teaching and learning (could also be contributed paper session)

� Workshop Ideas:

� Non-statisticians to teach statistics

� Selected advanced topics

� Ex: Time Series, Data Mining, Markov Chains, Monte Carlo

Ideas for Activities that Support K-12 Teachers

� Encourage ASA/MAA Joint Committee to form a Speaker�s Bureau to provide active statisticians for classroom visitation in K-12 classes

� Provide resources for K-12 teachers

� Support internships for AP teachers

Awards for Teaching Assistants and Undergraduate Poster Sessions

� Teaching Assistant Award: Since most (though not all) statistics teaching assistants are in statistics departments instead of math departments, perhaps this award is more appropriate to be sponsored by the American Statistical Association Section on Statistics Education. Ginger Rowell will follow-up on this by contacting the chair of that group, Jessica Utts. It was suggested that this is a timely idea as Jessica is a proponent of TA training and support.

� Student Poster Award Ideas

� Idea for focus: �Best Use of Statistics� at the Student Poster Submissions at the Joint Math Meetings

� A judging criteria would be needed. It was decided that some homework would be required. Ginger Rowell will follow-up by contacting Diane Thomas at Mt Clair State and/or Betty Mayfield

� How many posters typically have statistical content so we would know how many judges are needed

� Find out how much money is given for the current poster awards for mathematical content

� We could have many judges (Stat-Ed SIGMAA members at the meeting)

� It was noted that this year the poster session was the same time as the Stat-Ed Contributed Paper Session.

Meeting was adjourned.

2007 SIGMAA on Statistics Education Business Meeting Attendees

Name	Affiliation	Email Address
Michael Posner	Villanova University	michael.posner@villanova.edu
Dennis Kern	Texas A&M � Texarkana	Dennis.kern@tamut.edu
Laura McSweeney	Fairfield University	lmcsweeney@mail.fairfield.edu
Deborah Lurie	Saint Joseph�s University	lurie@sju.edu
Pat Humphrey	Georgia Southern University	phumphre@georgiasouthern.edu
Nancy Boynton	SUNY Fredonia	Boynton@fredonia.edu
Dorothy Anway	Univ. of Wisconsin � Superior	danway@uwsuper.edu
Scott Alberts	Truman State University	salberts@truman.edu
George Cobb	Mount Holyoke College	gcobb@mtholyoke.edu
Mary Parker	Austin Community College	mparker@austincc.edu
Don Bentley		dbentley@pomona.edu
John McKenzie	Babson College	mckenzie@babson.edu
Robin Lock	St. Lawrence University	rlock@stlawu.edu
Allan Rossman	Cal Poly � San Luis Obispo	arossman@calpoly.edu
Tom Moore	Grinnell College	mooret@grinnell.edu
Dov Chelst	DeVry University � NJ	dchelst@devry.edu
Carolyn Cuff	Westminster College	ccuff@westminster.edu
Dennis Walsh	Middle Tennessee State Univ	dwalsh@mtsu.edu
Roger Nelson	Lewis & Clark College	nelson@lclark.edu
Ann Watkins	Cal State Northridge	Ann.watkins@csun.edu
Leigh Lunsford	Longwood University	lunsfordml@longwood.edu
Murray Siegel	SC GSSM	siegel@gssm.k12.sc.us
Bob Hollister	Jacksonville University	Bhollis@ju.edu
Ginger Holmes-Rowell	Middle Tennesee State Univ.	rowell@mtsu.edu

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