Faculty Meeting

Faculty meeting
Body

The regular meeting of the faculty of the Department of Statistics was held on Zoom at 12:30pm, January 10, 2022. Abel Rodriguez, Department Chair, presided at the meeting. Kristine Chan was recording secretary. 

The meeting started with all participants sharing updates on personal news over winter break to allow the faculty, staff and graduate student representatives to get reacquainted. 

 

Chair Remarks 

Teaching professor search: The search committee is going to meet this Thursday (Jan. 13) to sort through the applications. They will have a short list ready to review by the faculty meeting happening on Jan. 24. Talks and interviews will be happening in February. They hope to have offers sent to candidate around Feb. 28. 

 

Interim Report: A report addressing the recommendations outlined in the closing report of the department’s 10-year review is due to the Graduate School on February 1.  The Chair has finished the report and ran it by J. Wakefield and E. Erosheva for a preliminary review, but welcomes other faculty to take look at the report for feedback. 

 

Department Staff: The staff will be telecommuting full-time for the rest of the week (Jan. 10 – 14). We will reassess their onsite schedule towards for end of this week based on campus policy around teaching. 

 

Townhall meetings: This year, the Chair plans to split the Spring graduate student townhall into two sessions. One session will be focused on M.S. students and other session will be focused on Ph.D. students. This will take place during faculty meeting slots. 

 

NSF-SSTEM proposal: The department will be participating on an NSF-SSTEM proposal to create a bridge program between undergraduate and graduate studies in statistics and data science.  Faculty who are interested in participating should contact the Chair. 

 

Department websites: The Chair gave a heads up that there will be changes on the Department website: (1) The information on the Ph.D. graduate program page will be simplified since most of the details are currently on the Ph.D. student handbook and (2) the archive tech reports section will be changed to preprint services for research papers given that we rarely have tech reports submitted. If you have any suggestions to the website, please email webmaster@stat.washington.edu.  

 

COVID Updates:  

  • Teaching/Instruction: The Chair referred to President Ana Mari Cauce and Provost Mark Richards’s email announcement on extending online instruction until the end of January. He recommended all instructors along with their TAs to conduct teaching online due to COVID concerns and we will all reassess the situation as it gets closer to Feb. 1, 2022.  

  • Limited custodial services and building access: The Administrator shared that she received a notice that there will be limited custodial services. Given that they are the ones that who are responsible for unlocking the doors for public access, expect for limited building access for the next weeks or more.  

  • Guidance on exams: The deans and chairs of other departments are still discussing ways to conduct exams. 

  • Tutoring center: The Chair will allow flexibility for the tutoring center to be conducted online or in-person. 

 

New Business 

Minutes from the previous faculty meetings (11/15, 11/22, and 12/16) were reviewed, voted on, and approved by the eligible voting faculty who were present.   

 

MS Theory Exam Waiver Process: A document was shared that detailed the changes to the procedure associated with the MS Theory Exam waivers for PhD students. Faculty and GSRs discussed the details of the document and were generally in favor of the proposed changes. A catalyst poll will be sent to the faculty after the meeting.  

 

BS Revamp Update: The Chair shared slides that summarized the progress of the committee towards revamping the undergraduate program and solicited feedback from the faculty. 

 

Executive Session 

The discussion of affiliate renewals and graduate faculty status renewals were deferred to the next faculty meeting given there was not enough time to discuss these items. 

 

Adjournment 

The meeting was adjourned at 2:00pm.