Upon completion of my master's degree, I joined the mathematics department at the College of William and Mary where I taught statistics, probability, numerical analysis and calculus courses for five years. I loved teaching and applied research and therefore, I went back to graduate school to pursue a doctoral degree in statistics at Texas A & M University in order to get my “union card.” My doctoral work included learning statistical techniques and procedures that were especially relevant to the biological sciences and medicine.

I joined the Department of Biometry and Statistics at the Emory University School of Medicine after completing my doctorate. I worked on several interesting studies at the Clinical Research Center. In the cancer area, we showed that providing nutritional supplementation to undernourished advanced colon cancer patients actually worsened their survival outcome. In the surgery area, I was fortunate to work with several surgeons who believed in randomizing patients to determine the best treatment alternative. Here I was able to design and conduct randomized controlled clinical trials to compare surgical outcomes in liver disease.

In addition to working on clinical research studies, I was also publishing methodological research papers in statistical journals. My research interests in linear statistical models afforded me the opportunity to join John Neter and William Wasserman as co-authors on Applied Linear Statistical Models, 2nd edition. This popular textbook is currently in its 4th edition and is continually referred to as the “Bible.”