Professional Strategies Working Group

While graduate students receive high quality research mentoring, professional norms are not generally taught. The Professional Strategies Working Group (PSWG) in the Department of Statistics at NCSU was established to provide students, particularly women and under-represented minorities, with mentoring for career success. 

Women and URM may face different obstacles than students in the majority. The PSWG studies decision making and professional behavior, particularly for professional conferences. We also read books on professional development and leadership.

Additionally, we have been able to send a small group of students to the Women in Statistics and Data Science (WSDS) Conference for the past few years. The students participate in a series of mentoring meetings and write a post-conference reflection. A profile of the students who attended WSDS in 2019 can be found here.

I've started keeping a dynamic list of readings and reading ideas here: https://github.com/ehgriffith/Professional-Strategies-for-Statisticians

Julia Sharp and I worte about our efforts to organize this kind of mentoring group for Significance Magazine's September 2022 issue on women in statistics and data science.

At the 2018 Women in Statistics and Data Science Conference, I presented work that Herle McGowan, Alyson Wilson, and I have done with this group.

WSDS 2018 PSWG Talk EHG.pdf

Several of our graduate students attended Women in Statistics and Data Science in 2017 after working through a pre-conference mentoring program. They participated in the WSDS Hackathon as a team.

Additional cohorts of students attended in 2018, 2019, and again in 2020 after working through our pre-conference mentoring.

This effort is funded by Dr. Len Stefanski's R.A. Fisher endowment.