Meet Elizabeth Fry!

Hi! My name is Elizabeth Fry, but a lot of people call me Liz. I’m a brand new student in the statistics education PhD program at the University of Minnesota. I was born and raised in Mexico City, Mexico, and when I finished high school, I moved to the U.S. to start college at Valparaiso University in Indiana, where I majored in math and French. By my senior year, I knew that I enjoyed statistics and was interested in teaching, but needed a little break from school–so after graduation, I spent a year doing Lutheran Volunteer Corps, where I worked with youth in Chicago. 

From Mexico to Minnesota, welcome Liz!

After that year, I got married to my husband Matt, and we moved to Columbus, Ohio, where I started graduate school in statistics at The Ohio State University (OSU). While I was at OSU, I was a statistics TA for a year, and I also pursued a Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in College and University Teaching (yes, that’s a mouthful, but we also call it GIST for short). As part of the GIST, I was mentored by Dr. Jackie Miller, who introduced me to research in statistics education–who knew that there was a discipline that combined my interests in statistics and teaching so perfectly? And who knew there was a whole PhD program in it? After leaving Ohio State with my Masters in Statistics, I taught introductory statistics at Columbus State Community College for a year, applied and got in to the statistics education PhD program, and now here I am in Minneapolis, Minnesota! I’m excited to be in a new Midwestern state!

This semester I am taking three classes:  EPSY 5221 (Principles of Educational & Psychological Measurement), EPSY 5244 (Survey Design, Sampling, & Implementation), and EPSY 5247 (Qualitative Methods in Educational Psychology). I’m also a research assistant for the e-ATLAS (Evaluation and Assessment of Teaching and Learning about Statistics) project. I am looking forward to learning a lot this semester and advancing in my career as a statistics educator!