Catherine Case Takes STEW’s Reins

The ASA-NCTM Joint Committee on Curriculum in Statistics and Probability is excited to announce Catherine Case as the new editor for STEW. Catherine brings a wealth of experience in working with statistics at the school level. She is passionate about advocating for the necessity of helping all school-level students develop statistical reasoning skills and knowing how to make sense of data. Her energy is contagious.

Catherine is in her fourth year as a lecturer in statistics at the University of Georgia (UGA). Even though she is early in her university teaching career, she has already been recognized by UGA as an award-winning teacher. Her classroom environment is invigorating, and students praise her enthusiasm for statistics and her desire for all students to be successful.

Before coming to UGA, she earned her master’s and PhD degrees at the University of Florida, where she developed as a teacher by teaching introductory statistics and statistical methods courses and AP Statistics at a local high school. She also teaches statistics courses for future school-level teachers. In spring 2020, she will be class testing new visionary materials—developed by statistics teacher educators for the NSF grant MODULE(S2)—with UGA pre-service teachers.

Not only is Catherine an outstanding teacher, she has contributed and continues to contribute to research in statistics education. She was a major contributor to the NSF Levels of Conceptual Understanding in Statistics (LOCUS) assessment project and a writer for the ASA Statistical Education of Teachers (SET) document, published in 2015. She has published in such major journals as the Statistical Education Research Journal, describing her research in student learning of inference from a simulation-based approach. She has given more than 20 presentations at state, national, and international conferences and workshops. She is actively involved with AP Statistics as a reader and an adviser to the Northeast Georgia AP Statistics Teacher Learning Community.

Asked about her goals as the new STEW editor, Catherine said, “I’m excited to pick up and continue the work that past editors like Tim Jacobbe have contributed to STEW. Recently, my associate editors and I have been working to streamline the template, hoping to make it even easier for teachers to find STEW lessons that match their objectives and apply them in the classroom.” She continued, “My associate editors bring experience from middle school, high school, two-year colleges, and four-year colleges, and it’s exciting to collaborate with educators who have different experiences but the same goals. We see STEW as a resource for teachers of statistics at all levels, and we look forward to working with others from the statistics education community to create a structure that allows more [accessibility to] high-quality statistics lesson plans.”

We are fortunate to have Catherine’s leadership. Jessica Cohen, editor of Statistics Teacher (ST), and Christine Franklin, managing editor of ST, are looking forward to working with Catherine as she and her associate editors bring relevant and peer-reviewed lesson plans to ST, supporting teachers of statistics.

Christine, who is also the ASA K–12 Statistical Ambassador, noted she has worked closely with Catherine since 2013, beginning with the LOCUS project, SET document, and as a colleague at the University of Georgia. She commented, “Catherine is dedicated to student learning and understanding, to teacher education, and to bringing vision to the future of statistics education—she is one of the kindest and most generous of colleagues.”