Catching Up With: ASA President Dr. Nathaniel Schenker

In 2013, Inside NCHS interviewed Dr. Nathaniel Schenker, director of the Office of Research and Methodology, about his serving as president-elect of the American Statistical Association (ASA). In the article, Dr. Schenker discussed his presidential agenda. His three main initiatives included having ASA revise its curricula guidelines for undergraduate majors and minors in statistics, developing leadership training for statisticians, and developing and launching a prototype of a statistical Web portal that would include important statistical information not normally found in journals.

Dr. Schenker assumed the ASA presidency in January 2014 and has lost no time pursuing his presidential objectives. He appointed Nicholas Horton of Amherst College to chair his initiative to update ASA’s curriculum guidelines, Janet Buckingham of Southwest Research Institute to chair his initiative on leadership, and David Barks of Duke University to chair his Web portal initiative. Each chair leads workgroups focused on bringing the initiatives to fruition.

Dr. Schenker writes a regular Web and print column, “President’s Corner,” for the ASA’s AMSTATNews and has featured these initiatives, and their chairs, in his three most recent columns. As it turns out, Dr. Schenker is as insightful an interviewer as he is an interview subject. Take a moment to find out more about Dr. Schenker’s ASA initiatives on statistics curriculum guidelines, statistical leadership, and the statistical Web portal.