Branson Selected for 2022-2023 Wimmer Fellowship

Zach Branson has been selected to receive a Wimmer Faculty Fellowship for 2022-2023!  These fellowships are funded by the Wimmer Family Foundation and are designed for junior faculty members “interested in enhancing their teaching through concentrated work designing or re-designing a course, innovating new materials, or exploring a new pedagogical approach.”  Zach will be working with our programs on trying to increase our communications curricula.

Specifically, Zach’s plan is to develop a mini course that teaches undergraduate students how to communicate statistical methods and data analyses, with a focus on oral presentations. This course will be designed to complement experiential learning opportunities throughout our department (e.g., capstone courses and senior theses), where students workshop their project presentations and learn the primary aspects of effective statistical communication. Increasingly, students must communicate statistical results in many forms and to a wide range of audiences, whether it's in job interviews or even in class: e.g., many statistics courses across the country have final projects that include an oral presentation. However, statistics classes do not necessarily teach how to give an effective presentation; rather, the hope is that if students master the quantitative intricacies of statistical methods, then they will organically know how to communicate those methods. The proposed course will make teachings on statistical communications explicit rather than implicit.