"My educational background for mathematics and statistics consists of a BS Mathematics and a Ph.D. in Statistics from University of Florida. I earned my 4-year degree in only 2 years and received the Four Year Scholar Award as valedictorian.

My love of mathematics and statistics was fostered by my father who was a NASA engineer at Kennedy Space Center. Moreover, while working my way through college I was fortunate to have summer jobs working at NASA working with those on the space program. That was exciting and further had me understand the applicability of mathematics and statistics to increasing our country's technological capabilities.

I began teaching at University of Florida at the age of 20 in the Mathematics department while also working as a teaching assistant in the Department of Statistics. I always wanted to better understand how to make mathematics and statistics "come alive" to the students. Therefore, I would attend the classes of other professors as I wanted to learn how to get across various statistical concepts. Also, I worked as an assistant to a few professors who wrote well known text books.

For 6 years I taught at University of Florida and enjoyed every minute. Although I taught all levels of statistics courses I found satisfaction in teaching introductory courses in statistics and my course reviews indicated that I made statistics "come alive" with the students.

My teaching led me to participate on the National Quantitative Literacy project sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the American Statistical Association. Through in-service training of elementary and secondary school faculty, teachers were taught how to create excitement and increased student participation in mathematics and statistics courses.

Interestingly, many of the class exercises we used in the Quantitative Literacy workshops were also utilized in the training of corporate leaders as part of what became Six Sigma performance improvement which was originated by Motorola. Perhaps it is not so surp" less...