An Innovative Team Approach to Teaching Environmental Statistics

• Activity Number: 355
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 3, 2010 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics and the Environment
• Author(s): William Frederick Hunt, Jr.*+ and David Mobley and Kevin Jones and Christine Wu and Colin Geisenhoffer and Emily Wisner and Alissa Anderson and Elena Beckman and Brody Heffner and James Kniffen, Jr. and Michael Shaw and Madeline Kamal and Stephen Crenshaw
• Companies: North Carolina State University and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and North Carolina State University and North Carolina State University and North Carolina State University and North Carolina State University and North Carolina State University and North Carolina State University and North Carolina State University and North Carolina State University and North Carolina State University and North Carolina State University and North Carolina State University
• Keywords: environmental statistics ; teaching ; team approach ; student projects ; analyze data

Abstract

How could a win-win strategy be used to train young people in environmental statistics and at the same time analyze environmental data for Federal, State and local agencies or the private sector? This presentation will discuss an innovative team approach to teaching environmental statistics with a faculty member and an agency engineer, who served as both a lecturer and a client. The team approach was used in two courses that were developed to train undergraduate students in environmental statistics. The courses were developed with support of a NSF Grant in a collaborative effort with Spelman College (2003-06), which demonstrated that this approach is portable to other universities and colleges. This team approach shows that the course can be taught with a statistician at the university and a scientist from the public or private sector. Two student team projects will be discussed.