What Should Be the Role of Collaboration/Consulting for Applied Statistical Faculty Members in Academia: Rewards and Punishments

• Activity Number: 328 - What Should Be the Role of Collaboration/Consulting for Applied Statistical Faculty Members in Academia: Rewards and Punishments
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Tuesday, July 31, 2018 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Consulting
• Author(s): Virginia Lesser* and Shane Reese* and George P. McCabe* and Dipak Kumar Dey* and James Cochran*
• Companies: Oregon State University and Brigham Young University and Purdue University and University of Connecticut and University of Alabama
• Keywords: consulting; collaboration; reappointment, promotion, and tenure; applied statistics; data science; academic standards

Abstract

Applied statisticians populate many academic niches: statistics, math, biostatistics, epidemiology, business, industrial engineering, and social science departments. They have academic status in hospitals, laboratories, statistical consulting and computing centers. The reappointment, promotion, and tenure (RPT) models in each have divergent standards regarding their activities, particularly publication records. The spectrum of attitudes is quite broad. Some academic niches do not recognize, or even punish activities leading to journal articles outside of traditional statistical outlets arising from collaboration/consulting. Others not only recognize these outlets as valid for RPT worthiness, they are encouraged. This is a concern to other stakeholders too: statistics students, industry and government employers seeking credentialed analysts. They suffer or benefit from the training of the instructors who "make it through the system". This is all the more important when faculty in departments of data science are competing with applied statistics faculty. University RPT decision makers need to examine their academic parochialism. That is the purpose of this panel discussion.