The idea for SSPA stemmed from a series of discussions occurring during meetings of ASA Committee on Membership Retention and Recruitment (CMRR) in 2007. The CMRR consisted of eight members and each member's role was to contribute ideas on how to grow membership. One member, Dr. Mingxiu Hu, recognized that statistical programmers and analysts, who were a substantial part of the workforce of statistical professionals, were underrepresented in ASA. Another member, Monica Johnston, could see that master's degree statisticians were underrepresented in ASA relative to their presence in the workforce of statistical professionals. When Dr. Hu became chair in 2007, he asked Ms. Johnston to take the lead in developing and supporting a group of statistical programmers and analysts through the process of becoming an ASA Section.
In late 2007, Dr. Hu arranged for a group professionals interested in statistical programming and analysis—people with bachelor's, master's and PhD's—to met by telephone. By 2008, an acting Executive Committee of eight officers were identified. They drafted a charter and collected signatures from supporting ASA members. After various revisions and choosing one of about 25 Section names suggested by the acting Executive Committee, the charter was approved and the group was named the Section for Statistical Programmers and Analyst. In 2009, we were permitted to organize sessions for JSM, even though it wasn't until May 2009 that we elected our first slate of officers and members approved the charter. Thus, it wasn't until January 1, 2010 that we were officially recognized as a Section of the ASA. By the dedication and continued emphasis of teamwork, SSPA had over 750 members and over $20,000 by January 2012.
In our Winter 2017 newsletter, SSPA chair Mike Carniello reports that membership has reached 1285. Our treasurer (Nakisha Boulware Reid) reports we had a positive balance of more than $53K in November, 2017.