Image: As many of you probably know, the UGA Statistical Consulting Center (or SCC) is a unit of the Department of Statistics as well as a Core Facility of the UGA Office of Research. Its mission is to both support the university’s research mission by providing statistical support to students, staff, and faculty investigators across campus, and to provide training and practical experience to our staff of student consultants and our student volunteers that they can’t easily get in the classroom. In addition to clients from all corners of campus, we also work with external clients, such as businesses, academics at other universities, government entities, and others. This broad client base makes the SCC a fun place to work; the variety of projects we get to be involved in is truly amazing! Just to mention a few, this year we collaborated on research into continuity of care among dementia patients, behavior patters of western lowland gorillas, management of invasive Callery pear, the factors associated with a decline in participation in two-year pharmacy residency programs, and the effects of GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) agonist use on sepsis risk. As I mentioned, SCC projects are endlessly varied and interesting! In addition to Director Dan Hall (me) and Associate Director Jinae Lee, the SCC is typically staffed by five or six statistics graduate students serving as consultants. We also have several students who are involved as volunteers at any given time. Working and volunteering at the SCC has many benefits; students improve their communication and people skills, they learn new statistical methods and become better data analysts, and they get opportunities to collaborate on interesting problems that sometimes lead to co-authored publications. But as much as our consultants and volunteers profit from the experience, Jinae and I benefit from working with some very talented and hard-working students. In academic year 2025-26, our core group of consultants is Kyle Fuentes-Keuthan, Hanna Kim, Laura Mathews, Yumo Peng, and Shaolin Xiang. These folks all do a fantastic job! Each year we recognize two students for exceptional contributions. In academic year 2024-25, Jameson Augustin, who worked on a volunteer basis in Fall 2024, was named Best Volunteer Consultant, while Jianing Xu was recognized (for the second time!) as Best Consultant. Both of these students have now graduated and taken exciting and promising positions in industry. We thank them and all of our current and past consultants and volunteers for their hard work and dedication to the SCC. If you’d like to contribute to the SCC, learn more about what we do, or if you just want to get in touch and share your latest news, I would love to hear from you! Feel free to e-mail me atdanhall@uga.edu. Or visit us on our website (www.stat.uga.edu/consulting), where you cansubmit a consultation request or sign up for our mailing list to learn about our Seminar Seriesand to keep abreast of other news. Dan Hall Director, UGA Statistical Consulting Center Type of News/Audience: Departmental
