Daniel & Christine Rand Scholarship

The Daniel and Christine Rand Scholarship was established in the Winona State University Foundation as an annual/endowed scholarship. The scholarship will benefit and encourage students who major in Statistics and Data Science at WSU.

Criteria

1. Each recipient must be an undergraduate student enrolled full-time or part-time and in good standing at Winona State University (minimum of 6 credits per semester, fall and spring.)
2. Each recipient must be a Sophomore, Junior, Senior or 5th year student.
3. Each recipient must be a declared Data Science or Statistics major.
4. Each recipient must have a GPA of 3.0 or higher.
5. As part of the application process for this scholarship, the student must submit an essay describing the following:
Statement of purpose
Why he/she has chosen Data Science or Statistics as a major
Future professional goals/objectives
Leadership by his/her involvement at WSU or community activities

Biography/Motivation

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.