Dr. John R. Stevens

I had just finished my third year as a Ph.D. student at Purdue when Craig Johnson (then the director of STATCOM) invited me to get involved. Specifically, he said there was a need to formalize some of the aspects of the organization, and that there was a project coming up that would likely require more time and energy than previous projects, but that it might generate some good publicity for us. That was the Sagamore Parkway Task Force project, and Craig was right – it did take quite a bit of time and we did get quite a bit of good press out of it. I was the team leader on that first project, but it was successful because of the great members on that first team – Pang Du, Nilupa Gunaratna, Gayla Hobbs Olbricht, and Alex Lipka were all tremendously committed to the project and made it extremely enjoyable, despite the substantial time commitment the project required. Soon afterwards, I served as the Associate Director and then the Director of STATCOM.

From the consulting side, I feel that my involvement with STATCOM was quite rewarding. It’s always fun to play in other people’s backyards, as John Tukey said. I was able to put into practice things that (unbeknownst to some clients, probably) I had only seen in textbooks before. It was also nice to have practice working with a team, especially in refining communication skills to put together a final report that was comprehensive and yet still accessible to the client. One unique aspect of STATCOM is that there is limited faculty supervision. I think this speaks volumes about the amount of trust the Department Head Mary Ellen Bock places in the graduate students, and it gives multiple opportunities for learning leadership (which in this case is more managerial than anything else). For those reasons, I would strongly encourage students to become involved in a similar consulting service.

I just finished my first year in my first “real” job – I am an Assistant Professor of Statistics in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Utah State University. My experiences with STATCOM helped me refine my time-management and written communication skills, and that has made this past year actually quite enjoyable, despite the usual pressures associated with a tenure-track position. I am hopeful that I can eventually develop a volunteer-based consulting service for our students here, because I know they would thrive with it. At the moment, however, I know I don’t have the time necessary to start it up; I remember how things were in the beginning at Purdue.

I’m hopeful that I might turn more attention to it in a few years.

When I started with STATCOM, there were probably a half-dozen or so students involved to some extent. Craig Johnson was a strong advocate of the organization, though, and due to his relentless recruiting we had about twenty students regularly involved by the time I became Director. Craig was very good in formalizing the structure and developing that first manual, so that I felt that my primary responsibility as Director was to just keep the whole thing moving. We had a lot of interesting projects that kept our students interested, and that just helped the organization grow and move in a good direction. Fortunately, most of our projects were not of the same magnitude as my initial Sagamore Parkway Task Force project, so that the time commitment for students was usually 1-2 hours per week, and enjoyable hours at that. When I left Purdue, STATCOM was running very well, with Nilupa Gunaratna as a very enthusiastic and ambitious Director. I think the number of students involved had reached 30 or so at that point, which is pretty remarkable.

The biggest challenge I feel we encountered with STATCOM was time. We were fortunate that the faculty were all quite supportive of our efforts, and maybe even a little amused that we would do so much for free. I never felt that my involvement with STATCOM detracted from my studies or research (since those were my academic priorities), so if anything suffered it was STATCOM because I could only give it a few hours a week. Finding good projects was a little tricky, because clients sometimes have different expectations, but somehow we always managed to find clients with interesting and well-defined projects who were understanding of how our lives ran on semesters. Once we had a few good projects under our belts, word of mouth seemed to generate sufficient interest in the community to keep us as busy as we wanted to be.

To anyone considering joining or starting a program similar to STATCOM, I would say first of all, be patient. This takes time to organize and get going. Once it is going, it will likely take as much time as you are willing to give it, so for your own benefit, set limits up front. Our 1-2 hours per week was a recommendation that I think worked fairly well on average once things were up and running. I would also warn against spending too much time on it, especially if it begins to affect your ability to focus on your primary responsibilities; it can be fun enough to become a distraction, so again, set limits up front. (As an aside, I would apply the same warning to any efforts to expand or “market” a STATCOM-like model – if it’s not professionally rewarding in some way, don’t give it too much time.) Getting things organized and communicating expectations with faculty were a little awkward at first, but I am very glad that I was involved with STATCOM.

Looking back, I would consider my graduate school experience incomplete without some experience in a STATCOM-like environment. I wish the organization continued success!