Meet Laura Le!

Life as a (2nd year statistics education PhD)
graduate student...double-fisting espresso

Hello out there…

Laura Le reporting here.  I'm another Ph.D. graduate student in the Statistics Education department at the University of Minnesota, kicking off my second year in the program.  I obtained a mathematics/stastistics BA degree from Luther College in 2006 and continued on to get a Master's Degree in Statistics from the University of Minnesota.

The question I get a lot is, "how in the world did you get into statistics education?" Here's my story (short and sweet): My mama always told me i was going to be a teacher, but I was in denial about it for many years.  When I entered my Master's Degree program, I didn't know what I wanted to do with a statistics degree.  I knew I liked math and learning about a lot of different other fields so statistics seemed like a good fit.  Then the statistics department gave me the opportunity to teach my own class, and I got hooked on teaching statistics. The end.  :)

This semester, I'm taking three courses in the Educational Psychology department: Survey Design, Implementation and Analysis, Hierarchical Linear Modeling, and Qualitative Research Methods.  They are all really interesting topics and are a good balance for coursework.  In particular, Qualitative Research Methods intrigue me. It is a type of research methodology I haven't been exposed to much, but knew it was out there.  I'm learning a lot about the field, like how good qualitative research should be conducted and what are different types of qualitative methods (e.g., biography, phenomenology). I'm looking forward to one of the assignments in class, collecting observations from a public place.  I think this will definitely be useful for my career as a statistics educator.

This is Laura Le, signing out.