At the Commencement Exercises held at Appleton, Wisconsin, Sunday, June 16, 2002, the Young Teacher award for 2002 was presented to Joy Jordan, Mathematics Department, Lawrence University.
The Citation
By Richard Warch, President of Lawrence University
Joy Jordan, in your hands statistics become not a dreary diet of dry formulas, but a vital and exciting mathematical study of uncertainty, probability, and prediction, a study not merely useful, but absolutely crucial today as journals, newspapers, magazines, and television flood us with statistical claims of all sorts. Students may not come to the study of statistics with wild enthusiasm, yet they leave your classes not only uniformly enthusiastic about your talents as a teacher, but with an appreciation for and an interest in statistics they never imagined having. Students overwhelmingly praise the clarity, organization, and content of your lectures, but they note as well the individual attention, guidance, and insights that you provide during one-on-one sessions in your office.
In the last two years you have changed the way students-and faculty-think about statistics. You have shown them the relevance of your subject to their disciplines and to life-a relevance they viewed only as a theoretical possibility before your course, but which becomes a practical certainty after. Their understanding of experimental method refines and sharpens thanks to the careful reasoning you teach and model. You lead students through the terrain of probabilities and possibilities, transforming mere calculation into true insight.
You are, as many have no doubt noted before, aptly named, since the "joyful" exuberance of your personality informs all your work as a teacher. But behind your frequent smile lies an abiding seriousness about your subject, your responsibilities, and especially the needs and difficulties of your students.
Colleagues in disciplines that use statistics-from biology and psychology to economics and anthropology-are overjoyed (there's that pun again) not only with the instruction you provide their students, but also with your work as a statistical consultant for their own research. Students on the volleyball team, for whom you have somehow found the time to be an unofficial assistant coach, watch with pleasure and amazement as you leap tall buildings for a kill, dive flat out to dig a ball off the floor, or, with precision and grace, loft a perfect set for your partner at the net-just as you set the ball, so to speak, for your students.
Joy, we are pleased to recognize you today as an outstanding young teacher on the Lawrence faculty.