Orienting Our New Graduate Students

The Department of Statistics held its new graduate student orientation on Aug. 18. This year, the Department welcomed 51 graduate students, one of the largest classes in its history. The orientation was led by the co-directors of the Statistics Graduate Program (co-DGPs), Howard Bondell and Donald Martin. Lanakila Alexander helped to organize the orientation with the co-DGPs.

Orientation leaders not only answered questions about graduate stipends, travel support and other day-to-day issues, they also provided information about the diversity of the incoming class. Students also learned the following: there should be enough interested people to form a graduate student soccer team this year; one graduate student has a baby bull dog; quite a lot of students have kids; and one student is from Brazil and speaks Portuguese.

In terms of musical interests, one student plays cello, another plays drums, and one is a serious alto sax player. There are a number of guitar and piano players as well. Who knows, we just might have a new NC State Statistics Band coming on!

The orientation was a great opportunity for the new graduate students to socialize with each other and meet their statistics friends face-to-face.