The Department of Statistics endeavors to be open, welcoming, and inclusive in all of our activities – teaching, research, and service. We are a small but growing department formed in 2006. We maintain a democratic, open governance structure and a friendly culture. New faculty are guided by the Department Chair, supported by colleagues, and given opportunities for leadership that increase appropriately with tenure.

Many life-experiences with the challenges, and rewards, of diversity are represented by our current faculty and students, while many others are not. We each take responsibility to educate ourselves about the challenges members from underrepresented groups in Statistics face as well as about the best practices to welcome underrepresented groups to our discipline. Further, we pledge to act as allies and to verbalize and address inequities when they arise. Our goal is to continually foster an environment of inclusive excellence in which all of our members feel supported and can achieve their best.

The Department of Statistics actively works to identify and avoid potential bias and discrimination in departmental practices, especially hiring and student admissions. Doing so is our collective moral obligation. Moreover, supporting diverse faculty and student cohorts helps the department to improve decision-making, increase the accessibility of our pedagogy and teaching resources, improve our ability to recruit new students and faculty. Greater diversity also in turn helps the department to identify potential sources of discrimination and bias. Thus, we strive to develop a department that is diverse in many dimensions, including, but not limited to, color, race, ethnicity, and national origin; sex and gender identity; sexual orientation; disability; and socioeconomic background.

(Ratified on October 1, 2020 by departmental vote)