When people think of a field of study that students might consider fun or deeply connected to the “real world,” they don’t usually come up with statistics. But that’s because they’ve never attended a class taught by Department of Statistics lecturer Michele Bird.
In fact, Bird has made her classes not only fun and relevant, but highly influential in helping students prepare for their careers after college. That is why WYO-Gold Student Alumni Association, the UWAA student organization, has selected Michele Bird of the Department of Statistics as this year’s Outstanding Faculty Award recipient. She will be honored at the president’s commencement dinner in May.
According to Colten Clark, treasurer of WYO-Gold and the student who originally nominated Bird for the award, “Michele makes sure that every student has an opportunity to succeed and learn in her classroom. She is always friendly and willing to help her students.”
Bird has taught at UW since 2012 and is the department’s supplemental instruction coordinator. The job title reflects her start with the department managing tutoring. Now she also teaches a 2000-level statistical literary course called Statistics and the World, and a large lecture course called Fundamentals of Statistics.
Her focus is on helping students see the application of statistics to their daily lives. “We talk about things that are interesting in the real world, instead of nebulous topics,” Bird says. For example, they consider how “happiness” is quantified, or how social media can influence decisions and perceptions.
Bird started her academic career at UNLV, earning her B.A. in psychology and her M.A. in general psychology from that school. Her areas of interest were autobiographical memory and false memory. Her area of research focus was cognitive psychology, plausibility of autobiographical memory, recreational and pathological gambling.
All of these interests have combined in a professor who is well aware that some knowledge one gains in school is quickly forgotten, once the class is over. “Our task is to help students develop excitement for seeing numbers in real world, to develop confidence that they can do their own research,” she says.