The Statistics and Data Science Fellows Program was launched in the Fall of 2014 with an inaugural group of six Fellows to help support statistics and data science at the college. The program has grown to a set of eleven Fellows this year (2017-2018). The Fellows are ideally selected early in their time at Amherst in a “tiered” system so that students at all levels of the program can be involved and students have multiple years to develop their skills and acquire experience. The Fellows work during the academic year to support the Statistics program at Amherst in several distinct ways, with a variety of responsibilities depending on their experience. As part of an ongoing group, they also end up supporting one another, which capitalizes on the tiered system with more senior Fellows mentoring more junior Fellows.

The Fellows work to support statistics and data analysis in several ways. First, all Fellows provide drop-in statistics tutoring via the Moss Quantitative Center (for introductory and intermediate statistics, software support for R/RStudio, data management, and data wrangling). In addition, the Fellows take on an additional project that can vary from semester to semester. Examples of current projects include:

  • serving as a teaching assistant for a statistics or data science elective to enhance student learning and assist with computing in the course
  • creating workshops for the campus and Five College community about data wrangling, graphical displays, and reproducible analysis
  • providing statistics and data science consulting support, under the direction of the Statistics faculty
  • working on special projects (e.g. support for the sports analytics program, Institutional Research, or other College entities) under the direction of the Statistics faculty

The Fellows meet on a monthly basis with the Statistics faculty and staff from the Moss Quantitative Center for informal mentoring, review of issues and problems, training workshops, and to share updates on projects.

Fellows are selected from a competitive applicant pool. Requirements include completion of introductory and intermediate statistics and general interest in pursuing statistics. A major in statistics is not required.

The inaugural year of the program was funded by the Dean of the Faculty. The program is now generously supported by the David and Jeanette Rosenblum Fund for Statistics and Data Science Fellows.

Additional Details

Statistics and Data Science Fellows work approximately 6-8 hours per week for 13 weeks a semester, with a variety of responsibilities depending on their experience. 

The Fellows work primarily in one or more of the following areas:

  • providing weekly drop-in statistics tutoring via the Moss Quantitative Center (including assistance with introductory statistics and intermediate statistics courses, software support for R and Stata, data management, and data transformation and wrangling),
  • providing statistical consulting and data analysis support, under the direction of the Statistics faculty, and/or
  • working on special projects (e.g. support for the sports analytics program, institutional research, other College entities, other non-profit organizations or faculty/student research projects) under the direction of the Statistics faculty.

The Fellows meet on a monthly basis with the Statistics faculty and staff from the Moss Quantitative Center for informal mentoring, review of issues and problems, regular training workshops in pedagogy, consulting, and statistical software as well as to share updates on projects.

Requirements for the position are strong statistical and computational skills, excellent interpersonal skills, successful completion of STAT 230 (Intermediate Statistics) and STAT231 (Data Science) or equivalent by end of the current semester along with interest in taking future statistics classes. 

Applications consist of a resume, brief summary of your background in statistics, planned future courses in statistics for the next semester and beyond, a paragraph statement of interest, and a list of two faculty members who could serve as a reference.  Applications (and any questions) should be sent to Nicholas Horton.