Faculty Updates
Matt Carlton
This has been a refreshingly low-key year for me professionally. I spent the better part of this summer putting the finishing touches on an applied probability textbook, which should be published in early-to-mid-2014. Other than that, I’ve been working with my frequent co-author Bill Stansfield, a retired geneticist, on a couple of short articles on probability models for genetic sequencing and for gender distributions in families.
Beth Chance
I enjoyed some fun travel this year, including ziplining with my family in Costa Rica. I am also looking forward to continued work on my new introductory statistics text with Allan Rossman and Soma Roy. If you have any interest in javascript programming, let me know!
Peter Chi
Since last year, I earned my doctorate, moved to California, and started working in this department as a new assistant Professor. I also got married. This will be a tough year to beat!
Jimmy Doi
I just completed my 10th year of employment at Cal Poly and it's hard to believe how quickly the time has flown by. Last year was a busy but fun year. For several years, I had worked on a consulting project with Louise Berner, a food science professor, on the characterization of dietary protein among older adults in the U.S. This work finally hit the presses in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics in June 2013. For the past 18 months, I had also been busy working on a textbook — the third edition of "Applied Statistics for Engineers and Scientists" with co-authors Jay Devore and Nick Farnum. It was my first experience working on a book project, and I learned a lot! This past summer, my family and I enjoyed a six week trip to Japan, though it was quite the challenge traveling overseas with an increasingly curious and vivacious 16 month old daughter.
Samuel Frame
Last spring, I was awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor. Recently, I published a paper titled Using Value Line’s Median Appreciation Potential to Forecast Long-Horizon Market Returns in the Journal of Wealth Management, and I have two papers currently under review. My current research projects include using Value Line's Median Appreciation Potential to forecast Value Line's Composite Index Fund, studying the dynamic volatility of the S&P 500, and developing metrics to quantify and classify the growth of publicly traded companies.
Gary Hughes
Teaching new courses this year has definitely been fun and challenging. I also enjoyed the many projects that have materialized over the past year. Student projects that I am involved with include mapping soil radioactivity in Poly Canyon, modeling wind fields along the California coast, characterizing and grading driving maneuvers, improving process capability for manufacture of aircraft interiors, and thermal imaging for various endeavors including pedestrian detection and endangered species monitoring. And of course working on the planetary defense project called DE-STAR has also been very exciting and rewarding; see a short description of the project at http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu.
Ulric Lund
I moved to a different office this year. Alumni, please visit me now on the second floor of Faculty Offices East, where I enjoy a lovely view of Bishop's Peak and Cerro San Luis.
Karen McGaughey
Professionally, I've recently achieved tenure and have been involved in many added service responsibilities, most recently serving on the Academic Senate. In addition, I am continuing my research activity in statistics education and my support of researchers in the Communications Studies Department, College of Engineering and Kennedy Library on their research projects. Personally, I spent the summer learning to fly fish, which culminated in a trip to the Madison River in Montana where I caught a 17-inch brown trout. I'm not sure whether I'll take up fly fishing as a hobby, but it was a great experience. I loved being on the water fishing catch and release.
Les Pennelly
Thirty five years’ experience as a research statistician in the pharmaceutical industry. Hopefully, I have made an impact on treatment of diseases and the length/quality of life for many.
Kevin Ross
My first year at Cal Poly was a great experience. I especially enjoyed getting to know many of the statistics majors and helping them build character in Statistics 426/427. In family news, our fourth child — Mary, the world’s happiest baby — was born in July.
Andrew Schaffner
This past year I've had the pleasure of leading our partnership with the Computer Science Department to develop a cross-disciplinary minor in data science. We hope to begin offering the minor in 2015. I'm also continuing to work with faculty members Suzanne Phelan and Todd Hagobian in the Kinesiology Department on obesity prevention during pregnancy.
Jeff Sklar
This is my first quarter at Cal Poly that I'm not teaching any courses. I'm currently on sabbatical working on an Association for Institutional Research (AIR) grant-funded project examining the impact of changing majors on time to graduation using generalized hierarchical linear models. This has been an exciting opportunity to apply advanced statistical methodology to address important topics in educational policy. I will be presenting the results of the study at the annual AIR Forum meeting in Orlando, Fla., in May 2014.
Bob Smidt
I have retired as department chair and faculty member, teaching part-time in the Faculty Early Retirement Program. During the past year, my wife Yvonne and I have cruised to Hawaii and traveled to the Yukon and Alaska. I continue to lead workshops in Advanced Placement Statistics, traveling to Minnesota, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Washington, Ohio and Sacramento (which one does not belong?). I continue to play racquetball and have taken up golf. My handicap is roughly 72.
Heather Smith
This year I worked on several survey research projects. One of them involved assessing workforce housing needs in San Luis Obispo and was a joint collaboration with Opinion Studies, a local survey research firm. In a second project, we investigated the publishing procedures that science journals employ when considering the publication of electronic theses and dissertations. A team of university library researchers from across the U.S. and Canada worked with a recent statistics graduate, Chelsea Kern, and me on this project. The project paper that will be published soon. I continue to enjoy working on consulting projects, especially when Cal Poly statistics students are involved.
John Walker
In 2013, I was a reader for the AP Statistics exam for the fourth straight year. I also visited Montreal, Canada, for the first time to attend the Joint Statistical Meetings. While there, I attended a workshop on Big Data and presented a paper on the effectiveness of using normal probability plots. The paper featured a contest between Cal Poly students and faculty to detect non-normal data using the graphs."
