Melissa Lee is an Associate Professor of Teaching in the Department of Statistics at the University of British Columbia, teaching and coordinating both statistics and data science courses.  She received a Bachelor of Science degree in 2011 from McMaster University in Mathematics and Statistics and a Master of Science in Statistics from UBC in 2013. Melissa taught at UBC as a lecturer and sessional instructor from 2013-2020, and then was hired in a tenure-track teaching-stream position, receiving tenure and promotion to Associate Professor of Teaching in 2024. Melissa has played a fundamental role at UBC in developing innovative curriculum and incorporating engaging evidence-based teaching techniques in a range of statistics courses, including introductory statistics, data science and case studies.  Much of this material has been published as Open Educational Resources, benefiting the broader community.

Melissa’s first major role in the development of statistics resources was through the Flexible Learning in Introductory Statistics initiative, that had its beginnings as an interdisciplinary group devoted to development and sharing of open-source resources for teaching introductory statistics.  Melissa was a key player from the beginning, helping to create both the resources and the structure of the well-known   repository hosted at UBC: StatSpace (https://statspace.elearning.ubc.ca/).  Melissa has become a group leader, providing her expert input on a range of activities, and inspiring Graduate Academic Assistants through her direction on projects such as her current investigation into the impacts of written assessments on English Language Learners’ performance. 

Melissa has also been a major contributor to the department’s initiatives in Data Science education. She has co-authored two widely-used open-source Data Science textbooks that focus on coding, exploration, visualization and clustering, Data Science: a First Introduction (with R) and Data Science: a First Introduction with Python.  She has been an important member of UBC's data science curriculum development team, creating in-class activities, including interactive coding exercises, to support students’ learning.  Recently Melissa worked with a faculty member from Computer Science to develop a new fourth-year course, Fairness, Accuracy, Transparency and Ethics in Data Science. As part of her support of the department, she has been a long-time mentor, taking charge of the department’s training program for undergraduate and graduate teaching assistants. Through co-teaching initiatives, she has also mentored beginning faculty members, easing their transition into their teaching roles and encouraging them in the use of sound pedagogical techniques.

Melissa's dedication to creating an inclusive environment manifests itself through her leadership positions, her dedication to, and passion for, EDI, and the collegial atmosphere that she creates. She has been actively involved in raising awareness among Statistics faculty by co-organizing EDI seminars that target departmental interests and activities. Melissa also initiated the formation of the department’s EDI committee and has developed departmental EDI resources, and has been involved in a variety of activities at the university and Vancouver level. 

Nancy Heckman and Wesley Burr were responsible for gathering this material.