This semester, students from STS 4980 "Statistics Practicum" collaborated with partners from Labcorp, DLH Corporation and the Animal Park at the Conservators Center to complete impressive data-driven projects.
The Statistics Practicum is a capstone experiential learning class that offers statistics and data analytics majors the opportunity to learn some tools and best practices for statistical consulting and then use those tools as they work on real-world projects proposed by external collaborators.
This fall, 13 seniors in the class collaborated with partners from Labcorp, DLH Corporation and the Animal Park at the Conservators Center. Course instructor Mark Weaver, associate professor of statistics, worked with the external partners to organize the projects before the start of the semester, forming the students into teams comprising of complementary skill sets and mentored the teams through to project completion.
The team that worked with Labcorp included team lead Jack Autieri, along with Elizabeth Blandin, Logan Laszewski, Claire Rainey and Evan Wu. This team was tasked with building a dashboard in Tableau to help visualize and analyze the productivity and efficiency of Labcorp’s cytotechnology screening processes across their entire national enterprise. The resulting dashboard will provide a key component in the efforts of Labcorp’s Supply Chain Operations group to optimize turnaround time of cytology specimens.
The team that worked with the Animal Park at the Conservators Center included team lead Rebecca Prisand, along with Danny Liu, Adriana Shea and Marques Walker. These students used Tableau, SAS and R software to generate a large number of impressive data visualizations to help their collaborators explore the relationships between social media engagement and visitations and donations to the Animal Park.
“As an Elon faculty member, I value opportunities for students to apply their academic and personal talents in a context beyond the classroom,” said Kim Epting, professor of psychology. “As a volunteer staff member at the Animal Park, I deeply appreciate supportive work from groups in the area who wish to lend their expertise in service of the nonprofit and its core mission to care for animals and educate people. This was an opportunity for the best of both worlds.”
Team lead Hannah Enck, JB Buckner, Tobias Coker and Lainey English had the opportunity to work with statisticians from DLH Corporation (including Angela Jeffers ’20, a Practicum alum). This team used R software to conduct simulation studies to estimate statistical power for nonparametric tests in rodent toxicology studies conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. This project exposed the team to theoretical work that would be more typical for a masters-level statistician.
All three teams conducted highly professional presentations of their work for their partners. Following the semester, Elizabeth Blandin, who worked on the Labcorp team, commented, “I didn’t feel like a student in this course but like an actual consultant.”