Wasserstein to Head ASA

   In January, 2007, the American Statistical Association announced that Ron Wasserstein would be appointed the next Executive Director of the association.  The executive director is the person who actually runs the organization on a day-to-day basis, and reports to the association’s Board of Directors.  Ron will succeed Bill Smith, who has served in that capacity since 2001.  (An interesting tidbit is that Bill’s predecessor in the position, Ray Waller also had KSU ties.) Ron earned his Ph.D. in the department in 1987 under the direction of John Boyer.  He has been a faculty member at Washburn University in Topeka since 1984, rising through the ranks of the professorate, and serving as Vice-President for Academic Affairs (the equivalent of  Provost at KSU) since 2001.  Ron will take over his duties in mid-August, after the joint meetings in Salt Lake City.  He and wife Sherry and their children will move their home to the Washington D.C. area.  Ron will be in charge of an organization with approximately 40 full-time employees and an annual budget of $8 million plus.  Ron has been involved in ASA in a variety of functions since before he completed his doctoral degree.   He attended his first JSM in 1985 and hasn’t missed one since. 
    He has been active in both the Statistical Consulting and Statistics Education Sections, having served as chair of both.  He twice served on the JSM program committee; has served on numerous ASA committees and task forces; served a term as chair of the Council of Chapters; and served a term on the Board of Directors.  He has also been very active in the local chapter (Kansas-Western Missouri) of the association, having served two terms as president and two terms as chapter representative, and he continues to serve as an associate editor of The American Statistician. 
    As the executive director of ASA, Wasserstein has listed his top four personal goals for the association as (1) increasing membership and retaining current membership, (2) increasing the visibility of the association and the profession, (3) vigorously supporting statistical education at all levels, and (4) making the type and d quality of service to members second-to-none.  He qualified these goals by saying his agenda would not become the ASA’s agenda without going through the steps to build consensus.

Loughin to Lead 2008 Conference

     Dr. Thomas Loughin of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby and Surrey, British Columbia, has agreed to be the keynote speaker and workshop leader for the department’s 20th annual Conference on Applied Statistics in Agriculture, to be held on April 27, 28 and 29 of 2008 at the Clarion Hotel in Manhattan, Kansas.
      Tom was a member of the faculty in the department from 1993 through 2006 and has been an active participant and support of the conference.  As a professor he has been an outstanding teacher, consultant, collaborator, and researcher, with very strong ties to agriculture.  Tom’s Sunday workshop will focus on methods and models for categorical data in agriculture.