Daniel & Christine Rand Scholarship

I (Daniel) went to Purdue in 1971 to major in Statistics, a degree which wasn’t known or desirable in the 1970s. But I received a scholarship and work study money from Purdue, and that allowed me to obtain a Bachelor’s degree and then a Master’s degree in Applied Statistics. I worked at IBM for 17 years and was able to eventually get a position as an internal statistical consultant, a job that didn’t exist when I started at IBM. I left in a downsizing and returned to school at the University of Minnesota to get a PhD in Industrial Engineering. My wife continued to work at IBM and support my return to school. I became the primary caregiver for our two sons, as I was an early entrant in distance learning in the mid-90s. Upon completion, I expected to consult or teach at a university. Through good fortune, I landed a job at the university closest to me, Winona State University, to teach statistics. In recent years, my colleagues had the foresight to develop a new program in Data Science. This seemed to foresee a future need, much like going into statistics in the ‘70s. Upon retirement from my second career at Winona State after 16 years, I want to help young people fund their education in these more expensive times. I want to encourage those young people to explore their interest in statistical methods, analytics, and data science.

Scholarship contact is Daniel.