The History Project of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the American Statistical Association

• Activity Number: 483
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 6, 2014 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Committee on ASA Archives and Historical Materials
• Author(s): Chris Barker*+ and Dean Fearn
• Companies: InVentiv Health Clinical and California State University, East Bay (Retired)
• Keywords: San Francisco Bay Area Chapter History

Abstract

During the first month of the first author's (CB) chapter presidency, we asked the officers when the chapter was originally chartered by the ASA. Our chapter webmaster and Historian (DF) suggested contacting a past chapter president, Elizabeth King and ask about chapter origins. After calling, Elizabeth remarked on the serendipitous timing of the phone call, as she was about to discard an original copy of the chapter constitution and other miscellaneous chapter history memorabilia. One item was a list of chapter presidents from 1953 to about 2000. The chapter officers agreed to update the list of presidents to the current president, and look for other chapter memorabilia. While updating the list of presidents, we discovered that several past chapter presidents had saved a copy of nearly every newsletter mailed out by the chapter from the late '90s to the current day. The ASA executive director, provided an archived copy of the ASA Chapter Charter, signed 3:30 p.m. June 29, 1928 by the ASA executive committee. All paper records were scanned into electronic format. We currently use the Chapter micro-website hosted by the ASA as a repository for electronic materials.