Harkness Awarded Carver Medal
William Harkness, professor emeritus of statistics at Penn State, has been awarded the 2007 Carver Medal by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) "for his years of distinguished service as Program Secretary and on various committees of the IMS." The presentation of the medal took place on 30 July 2007 at the IMS Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City.
Harkness has been a statistics professor at Penn State for 48 years, and has dedicated much of the last 17 years to improving statistical education at the University and beyond. He served as a co-principal investigator on a $200,000 grant from the Pew Foundation's Learning and Technology Program, sponsored by the Center for Academic Transformation, to redesign Penn State's course titled Introduction to Statistics. He also was a co-principal investigator on a National Science Foundation grant to transform biological and engineering statistics at Penn State. Harkness has collaborated extensively with researchers in instructional design on pedagogical issues in statistical education and curriculum and instruction, and in August 2004, he gave both the keynote and closing addresses at the annual conference titled Beyond the Formulas, which is devoted to teaching statistics.
Harkness joined the Penn State Department of Mathematics in 1959. He became a member of the faculty of the Department of Statistics at its inception in 1968 and served as department head from 1969 to 1987. He has continued to teach elementary statistics since becoming professor emeritus in 2002. Among his many awards and honors, Harkness has received the Sloan-C Award for Excellence in Online Cost Effectiveness, the Schreyer Institute for Innovation in Learning Award for Best Departmental Educational Project in Reforming Courses, and the Eberly College of Science Distinguished Service Award. He received his doctoral degree in statistics and his master's and bachelor's degrees in mathematics from Michigan State University in 1959, 1956, and 1955, respectively.
The Carver Medal was created in 2002 in honor of Harry C. Carver, founding editor of the Annals of Mathematical Statistics and one of the founders of the IMS. Instituted in 1933, the IMS is a member organization that fosters the development and dissemination of the theory and applications of statistics and probability. It has 4,500 active members throughout the world.
CONTACTS:
William Harkness: (+1) 814-865-1290, wlh@psu.edu
Barbara Kennedy (PIO): (+1) 814-863-4682, science@psu.edu