Online Program

Mentoring Program Reflections with Panel Discussion (302833)

Keywords: mentoring, statistical practice, ASA Committee on Applied Statisticians

The ASA Committee on Applied Statisticians has developed a pilot mentoring program for applied statisticians. This pilot is an opportunity to test and modify the program before its full-scale launch in late 2014. The primary goal is to connect mentors and mentees, promoting individual development through the pairing. We will first introduce this mentoring program, the resources available to applied statisticians who want to become mentors or mentees, and feedback and lessons learned from the initial stages of this. Several ideas will be presented to the audience for building a successful mentoring relationship. Attendees will hear these ideas expanded in the following panel discussion. With active participation from the audience, the panel—consisting of three mentor-mentee pairs from industry, academia, and government—will discuss what mentoring strategies have been successful, what makes the mentoring relationship continue to work, what they have gained from this experience, what has not worked, some of the lessons learned through the mentoring process, and how mentoring can enable statisticians in developing countries to have greater impact in their statistical practice.