Shonda Kuiper

Professor Kuiper’s courses at Grinnell emphasize the application of statistics to multiple disciplines, a topic she also emphasizes in her research. Prior to teaching, she worked as a senior engineer and consulting statistician for Hallmark Greeting Cards.  She also serves as a statistical consultant for student and faculty research. Collaboration with her Grinnell colleagues and students has led to published papers on such diverse topics as asthma prevalence, biochemical properties of acetylcholine receptors, and patterns of bird migration. Professor Kuiper has also frequently published and presented on statistics pedagogy with an emphasis on bringing interdisciplinary research into the classroom. She is currently chair of the American Statistical Association/Mathematical Association of America Joint Committee on Statistics Education. Partially supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement program, she developed Stat2Labs, a set of lab modules that enable students to apply statistical analysis to research problems from the sciences and social sciences, such as population growth modeling and global surface temperature estimation. This resource was awarded a MERLOT Classics Award in 2012. Her textbook, Practicing Statistics: Guided Investigations for the Second Course, was also a product of Professor Kuiper’s first NSF grant. This book aims to appeal to students from many disciplines by teaching advanced statistical concepts (such as multiple regression, nonparametric methods, and survival analysis) in the context of real-world research questions. She has recently received a second grant from the National Science Foundation, a collaborative work with the United States Military Academy, to develop a set of laboratory modules using Web-based games. In her spare time she enjoys spending time with her husband and two boys, painting, playing guitar, and training horses