Pickard Award

David PickardOnce every two years, the David Pickard Teaching Awards will be given. Here is information on the origin of these awards and associated lecture series, which you may watch on the playlist linked to here

The gifts of colleagues, students, and friends of David Pickard establish the David K. Pickard Memorial Endowment Fund. This fund celebrates the memory of David K. Pickard, who served as a junior faculty member in the Harvard Statistics Department from 1977 to 1985. Professor Pickard was known for his outstanding teaching, having won two major Harvard-wide teaching awards: the Phi Beta Kappa Prize in 1982 and the Levenson Prize in 1984. He also won the Hoopes Prize two years in a row for supervising and nominating a senior thesis. Professor Pickard had a strong influence on the Statistics PhD students at Harvard in that period. Sadly, Professor Pickard died of a brain tumor in August 1986 in Kingston Ontario, where he had moved after leaving Harvard. 

Income from this fund shall support a biennial lecture by an outstanding university faculty member on a topic to do with teaching and pedagogy.

The Harvard Statistics Department is grateful to all donors to the Pickard Fund for making these generous awards possible.

 

The 2014 Pickard Award for Teaching and Mentoring went to Dan Levy, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. The award citation reads:

FOR PEDAGOGICAL INNOVATIONS AND ELUCIDATING THE CONNECTIONS 
BETWEEN STATISTICS AND PUBLIC POLICY

Two doctoral students were named 2014 Pickard Teaching Fellows.

Daniel Cervone was commended for:

... excellence as a Departmental Teaching Fellow and for outstanding teaching of students at all levels.

Alexander D’Amour was commended for:

... excellence in teaching Bayesian and computational thinking to a wide variety of students.

The speaker this year was Deborah Nolan, who spoke on the relationship between Statistics and Data Science Curricula. 

The 2012 Pickard Award for Teaching and Mentoring went to Tirthankar Dasgupta, Associate Professor of Statistics. The award citation reads simply:

A COMMITTED, GENEROUS AND SKILLFUL 
TEACHER AND MENTOR

Three doctoral students and one AB/AM student were named 2012 Pickard Teaching Fellows.

Viviana Garcia Horton was commended for:

... excellence in serving as a teaching fellow in courses as diverse as Statistics 100 and 110, and for her generosity in working with struggling students.

Jessica Hwang, who is now studying at Stanford, was commended for:

... excellence in serving as a teaching fellow in Stat 110, teaching over 50 students while still supporting their learning as individuals, creating illuminating section materials, and generating enthusiasm for statistics.

Bo Jiang, who is now working at Two Sigma Investments, was commended for:

... excellence in serving as a teaching fellow in Stat 110, 123, and 265, revealing the connections between and within statistical and mathematical ideas, and helping students at all levels to grow.

Nathan Stein, who is now lecturing at the UPenn Wharton School, was commended for:

... excellence in serving as a teaching fellow in a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses, in serving as the departmental teaching fellow, and in demonstrating the interweaving of pedagogy and research.

The 2012 David. K. Pickard Memorial Lecture featured Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institude. He delivered his talk, "Fact-based world view."

The 2016 Pickard Faculty Award for Teaching and Mentoring went to Professor Brian Healy. Also recognized were PhD students Robin Gong and Iavor Bojinov, as well as Concentrator Matt DiSorbo, all of whom were honored as Pickard Teaching Fellows. 

The 2016 David. K. Pickard Memorial Lecture, in 2016, featured Nicholas J. Horton, Professor of Statistics at Amherst College. He was recognized for innovation and leadership in teaching Statistics. The title of his lecture was "Big Ideas to Help Statistics Students Learn to 'Think with Data."
The 2018 Pickard Faculty Award for Teaching and Mentoring went to Assistant Professor Pierre Jacob. Also recognized were PhD students Luis Campos, Sanqian Zhang, Zach Branson, and Regan Mozer, all of whom were honored as Pickard Teaching Fellows. 

The 2018 David. K. Pickard Memorial Lecture featured Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel, Professor of the Practice in the Statistics Department at Duke University. She was recognized for innovation and leadership in pedagogy and opening access to statistics and data science. The title of her lecture was "Let Them Eat Cake (First)!"

The inaugural Pickard Faculty Award for Teaching and Mentoring went to Professor Joseph Blitzstein. Also recognized were PhD students Kevin Rader, Cassandra Woles Pattanayak, and Xianchao Xie, all of whom were honored as Pickard Teaching Fellows. 

The 2010 David. K. Pickard Memorial Lecture featured Jeffrey Rosenthal, Professor of Statistics at the University of Toronto. The title of his lecture was "How to Discuss Statistics on Live Television," and you can view that talk at this link.