What might a twenty-year old conference tell us about the future of our profession?

The 1993 inaugural issue of the Journal of Statistics Education (JSE) published an article about a
small conference for Principal Investigators (PIs) and co-PIs of twelve projects in statistics
education funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). This twenty-year retrospective (1)
offers some personal memories related to the founding of JSE, (2) offers some thoughts about the
legacies of the twelve funded projects, (3) sets out a sense of how the conference themes have
fared over the last twenty years, and (4) indicates what this might suggest about the future of our
profession. In conclusion, I argue (briefly) that at this moment in its history, statistics education
faces the biggest opportunity and challenge of its last 40 years.