Miscellaneous

Departmental Activities

Colloquiums

Every Thursday and occasional Tuesdays, the graduate students and faculty from the Statistics Department gather in the department conference room (327 Thomas) at 3:30 p.m. to eat cookies and drink coffee or tea. Then at 4pm, the group attends a departmental colloquium. Usually, the colloquium talk is given by someone from another university who has been invited to present and discuss their current research. There are always a wide variety of topics and applications. Notification is made by an email sent a few days before the scheduled day of the talk which contains the speaker's name as well as the title and abstract of their talk. As a graduate student, you are strongly encouraged to attend the department colloquia. It is a great way to meet faculty, other graduate students, and be exposed to the ``hot'' (and sometimes controversial!) topics in statistics.

Student Organized Seminars (SOS)

Every Friday at lunchtime there is a brownbag student organized seminar (SOS). These seminars are organized by the SAC (see below) and are geared to the graduate students in the department. Topics of the talks include: summer internship experiences, current masters and PhD students' research, and presentations by industry representatives or alumni about employment opportunities. All graduate students are encouraged to attend these weekly seminars -- bring your lunch and we'll provide the cookies!

Committees

Students are also encouraged to become involved with committees within the department and the graduate school as a whole. Some examples of committees are:

• Student Advisory Committee (SAC)
  In the fall, students from each year in the program elect one or two people from their year to be on the SAC. The SAC has a wide range of functions which serve the graduate students and faculty within the department. The SAC organizes social activities, such as department tailgates and happy hours, as well as the SOS brownbags. The SAC also works hard to maintain this ``Guide to Survival in the Statistics Department!''
• Graduate Student Association (GSA)
  The GSA is a great organization to join if you are interested in meeting graduate students from other departments and seeing some of the political side of graduate school life. Each year the Department of Statistics elects two graduate students to serve as representatives at the GSA meetings. The GSA does a lot on campus to serve the graduate student community. For example, it shows foreign and alternative films for free every weekend, holds blood drives, and provides garden plots. The GSA has two meetings every month (usually Tuesday evenings), and the meetings last about an hour. It's a fun way to get involved and does not require a huge time commitment.

Other Activities

There are several other department-sponsored events that you will be invited to attend: the Fall picnic in September, the Holiday party in December, and the Ice Cream Social in April. These events are a lot of fun and are a good way to get to know the other members of the department in an informal setting. We encourage you to take advantage of all such opportunities.

As mentioned previously, there are a number of graduate students in the department who enjoy going to the football games together. However, football is not the only sport at Penn State; many students also enjoy going together to watch the men's basketball team play. Basketball season tickets go on sale in October, so if you're a Hoops fan, keep your eyes and ears open. There are also smaller groups of students who enjoy watching some of the less marquee sports at Penn State, like hockey, soccer, baseball, volleyball, wrestling, and gymnastics. Penn State is very competitive in many of these sports, and most offer free admission. If these or other sports interest you, please ask around; you'll probably find someone else who is interested as well.

There are also groups of students from the department who have actively take part in Intramural competition. In the past years, we've had teams represent the department in sports like coed volleyball and men's soccer. And these teams have done well, too. The Fall 1996 coed volleyball team finished in 2nd place in their division with a 5-1 record and the Spring 1995 men's soccer team won the Intramural Championship!

Another major event held in the Spring semester is the Alumni Workshop. The intent of this workshop is to provide an opportunity for current graduate and undergraduate students to network with alumni from our department. During this event, alumni give talks about their research, job and/or their companies. Interviews may also take place during this event for internships and job opportunities.

Assistantship Opportunities

Many graduate students are TA's for Stat 200 during their first year in the Department of Statistics; however, there are many other possibilities for assistantships as you continue through the program. These opportunities include:

• teaching an undergraduate statistics course
• grading for one or more statistics courses
• research assistantship
• Statistical Consulting Center assistantship
• Biostatistics assistantship at The Hershey Medical Center
• Ecology assistantship with the Center for Statistical Ecology and Environmental Statistics
• Population Research Institute consulting assistantship
• Minitab assistantship
• Dupont assistantship

Pre-Doctoral Lecturers

Between the time you finish your Ph.D coursework and pass the Graduate School Comprehensive exam, you will be classified as a Pre-Doctoral lecturer. If you are an instructor, you will be paid 4 times during each semester instead of the usual 5. In the fall, you will be paid in September through December and in the spring, you will be paid in January through April. In addition you are responsible for paying for your own tuition and fees as well as health insurance at the beginning of each semester. The department will reimburse you for these expenses through the 4 paychecks plus add additional money to cover the increased taxes.

Taxes

Every year, the Graduate Student Association publishes The GSA Tax Guide to aid Penn State graduate students in understanding and completing their taxes. This publication is free of charge and may be obtained from the GSA office in 111B Kern. It is also available online through the GSA homepage at http://cac.psu.edu/~gsa. Tax regulations for graduate assistants may change on a yearly basis, so it is important to be aware of how the regulations may affect your tax status. For example, research assistants who are doing research toward their degree may have different state tax obligations than other types of assistantships. To find out more about these PA state tax regulations regarding, contact the GSA tax office during tax season.

Career Resources

As graduation approaches, your thoughts include what career path you want to pursue. There are several resources that may help you in this search. During the Alumni Workshop, various companies conduct interviews. This is a great way to network with alumni and learn more about their work. Another resource is the Penn State Career Services, They provide interviews with different employers every week throughout the year. Check out http://www.sa.psu.edu/career for more information. They also hold a Career Fair each semester. Finally, from our department homepage we have links to other statistical websites, such as the ASA webpage, which has links to postings for various statistical positions.