Ranjini Grove, Associate Teaching Professor and Undergraduate Program Coordinator in the Department of Statistics, has had a busy summer teaching introductory statistics/data science to high school students. She is currently an instructor for the UW Math Science Upward Bound (MSUB) Summer Academy, an outreach program sponsored by the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity (OMAD).
The Summer Academy is geared towards helping low income and potential first-generation college students in high school to prepare for entering higher education. For six weeks, students are given the opportunity to attend a variety of classes located on UW campus designed to simulate the college experience and to foster their interest in a STEM related field.
“My interest in the Summer Academy was sparked by a colleague and dear friend in the Mathematics Department (Rekha Thomas),” says Prof. Grove. “It was apparent from this conversation that students had several misconceptions about the practical utility of the mathematical sciences, especially as compared to the more prominent STEM majors such as Computer Science and Engineering.”
Grove had recently developed a modern, data science driven Introduction to Statistics course and offered to teach this class for the Academy. “It’s been a great experience so far...intense, because we meet four times a week for an hour each day, but the students are analyzing real data sets using R and they seem to be really captivated by what we are doing. It’s amazing to see how far they have come in six short weeks.”
For more information on pre-college recruitment and access programs and to get involved, visit https://www.washington.edu/omad/pre-college-recruitment/.
Grove teaches in the UW Math Science Upward Bound Program
