American Statistical Association Announces April 1 Deadline for Gertrude M. Cox Scholarships
Sponsored jointly by the ASA Committee on Women in Statistics and the Caucus for Women in Statistics, and named for a female pioneer in statistics, the scholarship is designed to encourage women to enter statistically oriented professions. The scholarship is open to women who are citizens or permanent residents of the United States or Canada and who are admitted to full-time study in a graduate statistical program by July 1, 2007.
Alexandria, VA (PRWEB) March 1, 2007
The American Statistical Association (ASA) has announced an April first deadline for the annual Gertrude M. Cox scholarships. Sponsored jointly by the ASA Committee on Women in Statistics and the Caucus for Women in Statistics, the scholarship is open to women who are citizens or permanent residents of the United States or Canada and who are admitted to full-time study in a graduate statistical program by July 1, 2007.
Cox was President of the American Statistical Association in 1956. ASA established the scholarship in 1989 to honor her contributions to the field and to encourage more women to enter statistically oriented professions. Cox, who was born in 1900, was a pioneer in the newly formed, predominantly male discipline of statistics and one of the first women in the field. She became the first woman -- and the first person -- to receive a master's degree in statistics from Iowa State University. In 1939 she was appointed an assistant professor of statistics at Iowa Sate, then became a professor of statistics at North Carolina State University at Raleigh in 1940. She helped to establish the Department of Experimental Statistics at North Carolina State University, the Institute of Statistics of the Consolidated University of North Carolina, and the Statistics Research Division of the Research Triangle Institute. In 1949, she became the first female elected into the International Statistical Institute; she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1975.
Today, more and more women are entering the field of statistics. Last year, for the second year in a row, the statistical sciences produced the highest percentage of female new doctoral recipients, according to the First Report of the 2006 Annual Survey of the Mathematical Sciences in the U. S. For 2005-2006, female recipients in the statistical sciences made up 47 percent of the total new statistical doctoral degrees reported in the survey.
Women who are entering, or who are in the early stages of, graduate training (MS or PhD), are especially encouraged to apply for the Cox Scholarship. All applications must be in by April 1, 2007. Applicants must submit an application form and academic reference letter, both of which can be downloaded at http://www. amstat. org/awards/CoxApplicationForm. doc (http://www. amstat. org/awards/CoxApplicationForm. doc). The awards are in the amount of $1,000 each, and winners are announced at the annual Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in Salt Lake City in August. For more information about JSM, please visit http://www. amstat. org/meetings/JSM/2007/ (http://www. amstat. org/meetings/JSM/2007/)
About the American Statistical Association
The American Statistical Association (ASA), a scientific and educational society founded in Boston in 1839, is the second oldest continuously operating professional society in the United States. For more than 160 years, ASA has been providing its 18,000 members serving in academia, government, and industry and the public with up-to-date, useful information about statistics. The ASA has a proud tradition of service to statisticians, quantitative scientists, and users of statistics across a wealth of academic areas and applications. For additional information about the American Statistical Association, please visit the association's web site at http://www. amstat. org (http://www. amstat. org) or call 703.684.1221.
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