NSF Award
0839952
This project, which is cofunded by the Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS) and the Office of Multidisciplinary Activity (OMA) in the NSF Directorate of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, will develop a joint postdoctoral program among the Five Colleges --- Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst --- for two purposes: to introduce new postdoctoral faculty to professional life at liberal arts colleges and research universities and to foster collaborative research among statistics students and faculty and other Five College researchers. During the three-year fellowship, each postdoctoral associate will teach one course per semester at one of the undergraduate colleges and will be the lead statistician on a research team of statistics students and an investigator from another discipline. The undergraduate teaching will be overseen by the statistics faculty already at those colleges, while the research teams will be put together and overseen by the statistics faculty at the University of Massachusetts. By the end of their appointments, the postdoctoral faculty will have been mentored in teaching by several different professors from liberal arts colleges and will have participated in several different multidisciplinary research projects.<br/><br/>The mathematical workforce will benefit in several ways. Graduate and undergraduate students on the research teams will experience applied statistics through collaborative research; the postdoctoral faculty will serve as their mentors and role models for potential new career options. The postdoctoral faculty will be able to make more informed career choices after having been introduced to academic life in both small colleges and large universities. Modern applied statistics will be introduced to more students earlier in their careers and to faculty from other disciplines who might not otherwise become familiar with recent statistical developments. Researchers from all fields can bring their quantitative research questions to center for statistical consulting and collaboration.
