Bethany White is an Associate Professor, Teaching Stream in the Department of Statistical Sciences at the University of Toronto. She completed her PhD in Biostatistics at the University of Waterloo in 2007 and taught at the University of Western Ontario (now Western University) from 2007 to 2016 before moving to her current appointment. Throughout her career, she has developed an impressive record of advocacy, innovation, and leadership in statistics education in Canada and around the world, and is a widely respected scholar in statistics education.

At the University of Toronto, Bethany teaches a breadth of courses in Statistical Sciences, primarily foundational courses in statistical reasoning, practice, and theory. Her courses are grounded in scholarship, both the evidence for effective learning and her own research. A significant area of interest for her is the impact of statistics training on quantitative practices in life-sciences research. This work was brought to life in an innovative collaboration with an immunologist to develop and teach STA288: Statistics & Scientific Inquiry for the Life Sciences for the Human Biology Program. This course incorporates the absolute best practices for student engagement and authentic practice, with equitable learning experiences, and has been a resounding success in developing students' critical thinking about statistical reasoning. Informed by her research, Bethany has continued to innovate and renew the course structure, moving it to a hybrid model to further enable the deepening of students' understanding.  Bethany's scholarly interests also include the impact of technology-enabled class activities and course formats on students' learning and attitudes towards statistics, and the exploration of the interaction between technology and learning.  This work has been recognized through significant funding from university and provincial curriculum and teaching resource development awards.  And the expertise developed through this innovation and scholarship has been passed to the next generation through Bethany's development of graduate courses in how to teach statistics.

Bethany is a recognized educational leader. In Toronto's Department of Statistical Sciences, Bethany served as Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies from 2019-22, through an extremely challenging period in education with pandemic lockdowns and uncertainty ever-present. She established a Community of Practice to support the educators in the department and acted as a mentor to a number of junior faculty. Bethany shared her expertise in technology-enabled learning across the University, offering sessions for other departments on online learning 'best practices'. The Canadian statistics community also benefited from her expertise and experience via an SSC webinar.

From the beginning of her career, Bethany has been deeply committed to the development of the Canadian statistics education community. She served as one of the first presidents of the Statistics Education Section, during which she led the organization of a gathering of statistics educators designed to simulate activity in statistics education research and practice in Canada, an influential precursor for future meetings. She presents most years at the SSC annual meeting on the latest innovations in curriculum, pedagogy, and scholarship of teaching and learning,  Her contributions to statistics education extend internationally.  She has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education,and has co-organized the 2023 International Association for Statistical Education satellite conference in Toronto and poster sessions for eCOTS and USCOTS for the decade from 2014-2023.

Bethany is a model for statistics educators across Canada and the world, both as a thoughtful, scholarly teacher, dedicated to her craft and to pedagogical innovation , and as an educational leader devoted to the development of her community and to the future of statistics education. Those who have benefited from her mentorship have not just learned how to be better teachers, but also how to teach themselves about teaching, an impact that will continue to echo in generations to come.

Alison Gibbs and Wesley Burr were responsible for gathering this material.