Thank you. I credit the editorial staff (Kim Gilliam and her team at ASA) there was a space/word count limit. And a part of the description for Carol Redmond wasn't included due to the length.
And that was that I had just returned from a summer internship at NCHS a few days before classes were to begin. And back in the day a meeting invite was a handwritten note. I discovered I had a hand written message from Carol (or her admin) in my student mail box . That invited me to meet with carol. And at the meeting, Carol gave me the "bad news /good news"- I found out that the chair of the health administration department where I was considering getting my degree had passed. And my advisor, an economist , had taken a job at another university.. And! my public health scholarship had expired and I needed new funding. In short, there was no department until there was a new chair and I had no advisor and I had zero funding $
Carol was stepping in as my advisor while I got my degree program and funding sorted out.
In what I refer to as there was literally a "year/month/hour/minute" -when carol outlined a couple options for working part time. (with help from people at Pitt, I have been able to pin down that meeting to the year and month) Carol gave me a few choices, all very honorable and very public health oriented -but would have involved me having another professor as advisor. The third choice was to work for Carol- on the NSABP on cancer clinical trials. My advisor, and employer would be Carol. I asked to think it over for a day, and I'm pretty sure on the way out of her office figured out that if Carol was to be my advisor, then I should probably work on the NSABP. I promptly let her know of the choice. And quite literally from that year/month/day/hour I have been working on clinical trials. Carol is retired and in good health. I felt that was a unique experience - that after first getting permission from the Dean, (because typically what I did happens after someone passes) I endowed a fund for graduate students at the School of Public health in Pittsburgh. Because I had learned to program a (PDP-11) computer, in FORTRAN, SPSS , BMDP (and a long forgotten database type language i believe was called 1022) in one of her classes. at the time I think there was SAS v1.0 or maybe v1.5 :) That fund is called the "Carol Redmond Computational Public health fund". The biostatistics department chair can use the fund for financial aid for graduate students. And the fund terms are carefully written so that I am not in charge of the fund in any way, its the discretion of the department chair and the dean.
Sometime in the next year I will have the opportunity to visit Carol in Pittsburgh.
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Chris Barker, Ph.D.
2023 Chair Statistical Consulting Section
Consultant and
Adjunct Associate Professor of Biostatistics
www.barkerstats.com---
"In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds."
-Steve Lacy
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Original Message:
Sent: 08-17-2023 14:57
From: Jimmy Efird
Subject: August 2023 Amstat news - professional bio
Congratulation! cool write-up. J-
Original Message:
Sent: 8/17/2023 1:30:00 PM
From: Chris Barker
Subject: August 2023 Amstat news - professional bio
Dear section members,
In case you haven't received the August AMSTAT news -
At the midway point in my section chair role,
My professional bio, prepared with the very capable editorial assistance of ASA Staff (Kim Gilliam and others).
And credit to the several people, Paul Meier and Carol Redmond, who I credit with my career pathway and their inspiration to become a clinical trial (and later health economics) statistician
Page 10 of the August AMSTAT news
https://magazine.amstat.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/AUGUST23_AMSTATNEWSwp.pdf
------------------------------
Chris Barker, Ph.D.
2023 Chair Statistical Consulting Section
Consultant and
Adjunct Associate Professor of Biostatistics
www.barkerstats.com
---
"In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds."
-Steve Lacy
------------------------------