On behalf of the CAUSE (Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education) Board of Directors, I am very pleased to announce that Dr. Matthew Beckman has been appointed to a three-year term as Director of CAUSE, beginning on July 1, 2024. 

Matt is Director of Undergraduate Programs and Associate Research Professor in the Department of Statistics at Pennsylvania State University.  He earned his Ph.D. in Statistics Education at the University of Minnesota.  Matt’s research interests span a variety of topics in statistics and data science education, primarily at the undergraduate level, with a particular focus on assessment development.  He has been active in CAUSE activities for many years, including serving as Associate Co-Director for Research, along with Laura Le.

Matt will succeed Dennis Pearl as CAUSE Director, as Dennis will be retiring from Penn State and from his CAUSE on June 30 of this year.  Dennis has led CAUSE since its inception in 2002.  CAUSE has thrived under Dennis’s skillful leadership, with activities ranging from holding the conferences on teaching statistics to running competitions for undergraduate statistics projects and research, from compiling a collection of resources for teaching statistics to hosting repositories devoted to issues such as JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion) and fun (cartoons, poems, songs, …), and many more.  Thousands of statistics teachers, and even more of their students, from across the country and around the world, have benefitted from Dennis’s terrific leadership of CAUSE.

Many thanks and best wishes to both Dennis and Matt as they approach this stage of transition.  Thanks also to Penn State’s Department of Statistics for its continuing and generous support of CAUSE.

--- Allan Rossman, for the CAUSE Board of Directors, arossman@calpoly.edu