Editor,
As a graduate student in statistics at UNM, I was glad to see Monday’s Albuquerque Journal article about the dire situation our program faces. The more coverage of this under-reported problem, the better. But Provost Suzanne Ortega’s chilling short-sightedness in that article left me speechless. Monday’s article attested to a two-year-old academic review stating that the program “is in an emergency state and immediate action is critical.” At the time this report was conducted, the statistics program had eight faculty members. Next semester there will be four statistics faculty. And Ms. Ortega believes that the department is not yet in a state of crisis?
Perhaps most troubling was Ms. Ortega’s assertion that there is no evidence to support that the loss of statistics faculty is impacting undergraduate education. The University teaches introductory statistics to approximately 2,000 students each year. Graduate students account for most of the instructors, but as Monday’s article reports, graduate students are being forced to leave because of the unavailability of higher-level classes and mentoring resources. I understand how Ms. Ortega may want to allay the firestorm that would ensue if the University knew how threatened its statistics resources were, but her assertions are simply untrue.
When four faculty members are asked to do the work of 10, quality will suffer at all levels. It’s a wonder that the program is still able to offer a bachelor’s degree in statistics, with so few faculty left to teach upper-level undergraduate courses.
Ms. Ortega is right that this problem predates her tenure as provost, but that doesn’t excuse her inaction. A crisis can’t be swept under the rug simply because it began under other provosts. The sorry state of institutional support for statistics must be corrected now. Otherwise, the University is simply consigning itself to long years of mediocrity until a new administration has the courage to drag itself into the 21st century.
Fletcher Christensen
UNM Graduate student
