Multiple Approaches to Undergraduate Statistical Consulting

• Activity Number: 610
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 7, 2013 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): William Hunt*+ and Kristen Benedict and Brian Eder and David Mintz
• Companies: North Carolina State University and US Environmental Protection Agency and US Environmental Protection Agency and US Environmental Protection Agency
• Keywords: environmental statistics ; teaching ; team approach ; student projects ; analyze data ; consulting

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? 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 professional from the public or private sector. Three clients each worked with their respective teams of three to four students. Two of the clients met with their team three times during the semester while the third client was embedded in the class as a student. This presentation will examine each client's experience. These approaches can be used to deal with the tsunami of environmental data that is crashing onto the beaches of the civilized world and turn it into useful information, using undergraduate students.