Faculty Meeting

Faculty meeting
Body

The regular meeting for the faculty of the Department of Statistics was held in a hybrid format via Zoom and in Padelford Hall, room C-301 at 12:30 p.m., January 12, 2026. Abel Rodriguez, Department Chair, presided at the meeting. Kristine Chan was recording secretary. 

 

Announcement 

  • Update on course and program proposals: 
  • Certificate in Statistics: The PNOI has been submitted, and we are waiting for the review period to end. 
  • PhD and MS curricular changes: These proposals have been approved. 
  • STAT 511 and STAT 507: The proposal for these courses is pending approval in the Curriculum Office. 
  • STAT 491/516 and STAT 492/517: The committee shared their slides. There will be a withering of courses starting in the 2026–2027 academic year to help navigate limited resources. More specifically, STAT 491 will be offered in parallel with STAT 516, and STAT 492 will be offered in parallel with STAT 517. 
  • History AI report: The Chair shared Department of History’s policy on AI to initiate a conversation with faculty about how to approach similar policies in our department and how they relate to student conduct. 

New Business 

  • Ice Breaker: All participants shared updates on personal news and achievements over winter break to allow faculty, staff, and graduate student representatives to get acquainted or reacquainted. 
  • CSSC Q&A session with CSSC Team: Zoie Hancock and Alyssa Galmish from UW’s Community Standards & Student Conduct (CSSC) shared slides about academic misconduct—including cheating, plagiarism, unauthorized collaboration, and misuse of AI—and emphasized the importance of clear syllabus expectations. The discussion aimed to help faculty understand reporting processes, conduct findings and academic penalties, and to provide space for faculty questions. 
  • Provost’s curricular refresh: Retiring existing courses—STAT 506, STAT 527 and STAT 547: These courses were part of the Computational Finance & Risk Management (CFRM) MS before the program moved to the Applied Mathematics department. These will be retired since they are no longer planned to be offered. Other courses were discussed as well, including STAT 518, STAT 539, and STAT 549—these will also be retired. Retirement of additional courses might be discussed in the future. 
  • Upcoming internal review of promotion and tenure guidelines: Deferred to the next faculty meeting. 
  • Open record requests, syllabi and faculty IP rights: Deferred to the next faculty meeting. 
  • MS and PhD admissions rubrics: Deferred to the next faculty meeting. 
  • Managing accommodations for TAs: Deferred to the next faculty meeting. 
     

Adjournment 

 

The meeting proceeded to the executive session at 1:55 p.m. and was later adjourned at 2:00 p.m.