Autumn is a busy time for the Society, with the budget to finalize, plans coming together for next year’s activities, and many key decisions taken at our October board meeting. I provide here a summary of important discussion points for your information.
Our new website was seamlessly rolled out earlier this fall. I wish to extend a big thanks for electronic services manager Angelo Canty and electronic services administrator Clayton Forrest for ensuring that this happened so smoothly in time for invited proposal session submissions for the 2025 annual meeting.
Plans are in full swing for the 2025 annual meeting, which will be held May 25–28 at the University of Saskatchewan. Dr. Rebecca Hubbard has agreed to deliver the presidential invited address. Dr. Hubbard’s research is devoted to developing statistical methods designed to address the complexities and imperfections of real-world data including claims data and electronic health records.
In other meeting news, the CSSC has continued to be very successful both scientifically and financially. In recognition of this, the board passed a motion to affirm that any profit from the CSSC in a given year will be allocated to the benefit of students in the following year. It is encouraging to see the next generation of statisticians demonstrating such strong leadership.
The board also passed a motion to create a new category of associate membership for K–12 and 2-year college instructors, as part of our ongoing commitment to bringing statistics to a wider audience, and particularly to educators.
In prizes news, the prize which was based on having abstracts in both languages will be changed to a prize given to a French language presentation (slides/posters or oral presentation) at the annual meeting in an effort to encourage a more bilingual meeting experience. As before, this prize will be selected via a random draw.
As you can see in the update from publications officer Rhonda Rosychuk in this issue of Liaison, there is important news from CJS. Rhonda has been very busy with her many roles; it is very energizing working alongside her! I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Johanna Nešlehová, the outgoing editor of CJS who has done excellent work and raised the journal’s profile.
Accreditation, the Biostatistics Section, SARGC, and the EDI committee all expect to be hosting online seminars or workshops between now and the summer. Also, as noted in the October issue of Liaison, we are partnering with CANSSI to offer a new series of talks, under the banner CANSSI-SSC Seminar on Innovations in Statistics and Data Science. Please see the message from Karen Kopciuk, chair of WISC, elsewhere in this issue for news of an exciting new pilot program, and stay tuned for the next issue for other upcoming events. In professional development news, please see the interview with InStats director Michael Zyphur in this issue for details on how our members can benefit from SSC’s new partnership with InStats.
While many of our members are familiar with SSC activities such as the annual meeting and CJS, I would also like to highlight some of the ways that the SSC is bringing statistics to younger learners. The SSC offers important initiatives such as the Census at School Program and the International Statistical Literacy Project (ISLP) Competition, and is launching support for Florence Nightingale Days. Please consider giving in our upcoming fundraising drive (or donate now via this link) so that we can continue to foster the next generation of statisticians.
I wish you all a very restful holiday break, and a statistically joyful year ahead!
Erica Moodie
McGill University