The 2024-2025 school year was a big leap for the Statistics Club at UCLA. My biggest goal as president this year was to establish Stats Club as a central hub for all students interested in statistics or related fields – not just as a place to learn through our professional development and technical workshops, but a space where students could truly feel a sense of community. We hosted a plethora of new socials this year, ranging from our brand new kickoff event in the fall to a competitive Stats Club pickleball tournament in the spring. Furthermore, we developed Stats Club’s internship program, a system allowing for transfer students and underclassmen to have a chance to work together with our board members and feel more involved in the statistics community as a whole.
Through our newly established general meeting schedule, Stats Club was also able to host a record number of workshops this school year. Our career development and mentorship chairs worked together all year to develop highly impactful workshops in developing and tailoring a resume, finding summer internships and research opportunities, and networking with industry professionals and school alumni. The workshop chairs similarly were able to deliver workshops in both foundational tools such as SQL, Tableau, and Python, while also being able to cover more advanced topics such as large language models and reinforcement learning. Stats Club also worked to develop the first ever Stats Club Datathon – a casual but educational hackathon dedicated to teaching our underclassmen students how to participate in a data science hackathon without needing any technical experience. We had over 30 teams and 90 participants, making it a unique opportunity to create an inclusive learning environment for a large number of students. Overall, this year was a testament to what a passionate community is able to achieve, and I’m incredibly proud of how Stats Club has grown into a space that empowers, educates, and connects students across all levels.
Kevin Hamakawa, President of Statistics Club @ UCLA