STATCOM (Statistics in the Community) at the University of Michigan is a community outreach program provided by graduate students across several departments, but primarily housed in the Department of Biostatistics. The program offers the statistical expertise of graduate students - free of charge - to non-profit governmental and community organizations in the areas of data organization, analysis, and interpretation.
STATCOM marks a multi-dimensional and innovative approach to solving challenging social issues. We maintain a consulting portfolio in collaboration with the Community Technical Assistance Collaborative at the University of Michigan's Edward Ginsberg Center.
Presidential Address
Dear Members, Students, Faculty and Staff,
This year, I am honored to serve as co-president of STATCOM alongside Annie Cohen. The UM chapter of STATCOM is rapidly growing, and I am so excited by all of the amazing work we have been doing for community partners in the greater Michigan area. As the fall semester draws to a close, I wanted to recognize some recent highlights and accomplishments.
For those who are unaware, STATCOM (Statistics in the Community) at the University of Michigan is a community outreach program provided by graduate students across several departments, but primarily housed in Biostatistics. The program offers the statistical expertise of graduate students - free of charge - to non-profit governmental and community organizations in the areas of data organization, analysis, and interpretation.
Since our founding in 2006, STATCOM has completed over 60 projects; this semester we have six ongoing projects with about 30 volunteers from six departments. Our leadership team has grown to nine graduate students across Biostatistics, Bioinformatics, and Survey Methodology. Our growth and continued outreach efforts have been recognized through several awards in the past year, such as the Department of Biostatistics Citizenship and Outreach award (honorable mention), School of Public Health Unsung Hero (honorable mention) award, and School of Public Health Rising Star award. This chapter of STATCOM is something to be proud of!
Over the past two years, we have prioritized the national presence of STATCOM by building relationships with other statistics and biostatistics programs, and tabling at statistical conferences. Through this relationship building, we have introduced the idea to other universities and helped them get their own programs started or revamped after a hiatus, and are working towards re-accreditation by the American Statistical Association.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge our strong relationship with the Community Technical Assistance Collaborative (CTAC). Through our partnership with CTAC, we have been able to expand the number of community partners we work with and the number of projects we complete each semester. We appreciate the collaboration, and are stronger because of it.
As we continue to grow, I am thankful for our amazing leadership team, excited volunteers, supporting faculty advisors, and involved alumni. STATCOM is a great way to get involved and gain hands-on experience in applying statistics to diverse sets of projects in the surrounding community, and it has been an integral part of my graduate school experience. Please reach out if you would like to be added to our mailing list to stay informed on new projects and opportunities!
On behalf of STATCOM,
Hanna Venera
2023 in Review: our Current Work and Future Goals
Oakland Livingston Human Service Agency (OLHSA)
TEAM: Sophia Luo, Kalpana Das, Shriya Ejanthker, Audrey Ruhana, Yikun (Aiden) Han, Andrew Nguyen, Will Tackett; Matt Zawistowski (faculty advisor)
Oakland Livingston Human Service Agency (OLHSA) was created to fight poverty in its namesake counties on several fronts. Individuals and families receive support in areas including education, economic security, emergency housing, health, and nutrition. During the pandemic, OLHSA conducted a survey to better understand the needs of the diverse population it serves.
SKILLS UTILIZED: STATCOM is leveraging natural language processing tools to perform sentiment analysis on free-text survey responses.
GOAL: The objective will be to create quantitative summaries and visualizations of this text data.
IMPACT: We aim to use these quantitative results to help OLSHA understand the needs of different segments of their clientele from a bird’s-eye view so they can improve the quality of their services.
Michigan Center for Youth Justice (MCYJ)
TEAM: Kevin Yang, Stephen Salerno, Ayush Shah, Nikita Mukkamala, Sarah Kang, Ashlan Simpson, Krittin Tangboriboonrat; Jean Morrison (faculty advisor)
The Michigan Center for Youth Justice (MCYJ) is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing youth justice policies and practices that protect young people and help them achieve their full potential.
GOAL: In order to better monitor conditions in juvenile justice facilities, MCYJ partnered with STATCOM to streamline a process for reviewing violations and documenting any concerning trends.
SKILLS UTILIZED: Our volunteers are using web-scraping and text extraction to compile incident reports from juvenile justice facilities, as well as descriptive statistics and data visualization to provide insight into geographical and other patterns of care at these facilities.
IMPACT: Upon completion, we will have an interactive dashboard that our clients may use to easily search for specific facilities, incident types, and infractions of interest. Rather than having to manually sift through pages of reports, they will have all this publicly available data from around Michigan at their fingertips, expediting the process of presenting findings and proposing policy changes to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
STARR Commonwealth
TEAM: Soumik Purkayastha, Elise Miller, Edward Shao, Christopher Crowe, Leyuan Qian, Yipeng Liu, Nathan Yee
The Student Resilience & Empowerment Center (SREC) is an educational initiative led by STARR Commonwealth that operates at the county level, with the goal of assisting middle school students in enhancing their academic and social development. The primary objective of the program is to establish a dynamic and supportive environment for middle school students, aimed at nurturing their resilience and boosting their self-confidence, positive self-esteem, and a growth mindset.
GOAL: STATCOM is working in partnership with STARR to monitor and investigate the impact of the 8-week SREC program on the behavior and engagement of students who return to school after completing the program.
SKILLS UTILIZED: This collaborative effort is focused on collecting and analyzing longitudinal data to assess the effectiveness of the SREC program in improving the overall well-being and educational outcomes of participating students.
IMPACT: The information gathered will help adapt the program to better meet the needs of the students and ensure its continued success.
Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum
TEAM: Hanna Venera, Kirill Sabitov, Stefan Eng, Jiatong Liang, Julia Plawker, Yeseul Ha, Ronen Huang, Charles Seely, Nan Shi; Cathie Spino (faculty advisor)
Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum (AAHOM) and Leslie Science & Nature Center is a non-profit with the mission to create moments of discovery that inspire curiosity, exploration, and respect for STEAM and the natural world. They provide over 280,000 experiences a year through their Museum and Nature Center sites, school visits, virtual distance learning programs and partnership with the Yankee Air Museum.
GOAL: In collaboration with STATCOM, AAHOM seeks to gain a more fundamental understanding of its membership program, overall visitor experience, and data management practices.
SKILLS UTILIZED: The joint effort will apply methods in data mapping, analysis, and visualization to a complex relational database of visitor and member statistics.
IMPACT: The findings of this project will empower AAHOM to optimize its operations, improve member relationships, and foster stronger community engagement.
Osher Lifelong Learning Institute
TEAM: Annie Cohen, Youqi Yang; Mike Elliott (faculty advisor)
The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) is a local volunteer-centered organization with membership of over 800 that provides learning opportunities for older adults including a year-round lecture series with speakers across many disciplines. Since the pandemic, the series has adjusted to a hybrid format and in-person attendance levels have not returned to pre-pandemic levels.
GOAL / SKILLS UTILIZED: STATCOM leaders are working closely with OLLI volunteers to design surveys of their membership and analyze the responses in order to gain insights on volunteer interest and members’ preferred lecture format and structure.
IMPACT: OLLI can use this information to make informed decisions based on the interests of their membership.
The People's Action
TEAM: Annie Cohen, Debraj Bose, Edward Shao, Suchitra Pudipeddi, Ziwei Tian; Jean Morrison (faculty advisor)
The People’s Action (TPA) is a grassroots non-profit focused on improving the lives of Detroiters in underserved neighborhoods through advocacy and direct programming.
GOAL: TPA collects survey data before and after introducing programs in specific neighborhoods of Detroit in order to understand the demographics of residents, their concerns about safety, crime and livability of the neighborhood, and issues that respondents find most important.
BIOSTAT SKILLS UTILIZED: STATCOM has been working with TPA to analyze this data and create visual reports of their survey responses.
IMPACT: These reports provide TPA with powerful information that they can bring to conversations with policymakers, funders, and other organizations hoping to provide services in these neighborhoods.
BUILDING A NATIONAL PRESENCE
Building a national presence: Over the past two years, we have prioritized our national presence by building relationships with other statistics and biostatistics programs, and tabling at statistical conferences such as the Joint Statistical Meetings and conferences of the International Biometric Society. Through this relationship building, we have introduced the idea to other universities and helped them get their own programs started or revamped after a hiatus, and are working towards re-accreditation by the American Statistical Association.