Professor Taylor became Department Head in 1989, and Professor Billard was named Associate to the Dean of Arts & Sciences. Christine Franklin joined the Department in 1989 as instructor. The Department continued its steady growth in faculty and graduate students with four new assistant professors being recruited in 1990 including Gauri Datta. John Stufken left UGA to join the faculty at Iowa State. Steady recruiting of faculty members continued through the early 1990’s and compensated for other faculty departures as the Department grew to 20 faculty members. Among those recruited during this era, and currently still in the faculty, were Lynne Seymour and Dan Hall. Computerized instructional modules were added to the introductory statistics course, and the graduate program increased to 60 students. Graduate student offices were constructed in the Statistics Building along with a statistics lecture room and a computerized classroom. By 1997 enrollments in introductory statistics courses totaled more than 3,000 students per year with a total enrollment of 4,400 students in statistics courses. Kermit Hutcheson received the Honoratus award for being named Outstanding Honors Professor on five different occasions. In October 1991, the Department celebrated the 80th birthday of Professor Emeritus Cliff Cohen with professional activities which were attended by over 100 former students, colleagues and friends. The Cohen festivities were highlighted by the dedication of the Cohen Reading Room in the Department which houses the professional journals and books. Research Professor Ralph Bradley retired in 1992, and retirement festivities were attended by over 60 former students and colleagues. The retirement served as a fund-raising opportunity to establish an Annual Distinguished Lecture Series. In April 2011, Peter McCullagh was the 20th invited speaker in this lecture series. To honor Professor Emeritus Rolf Bargmann and his pioneering work in computing at UGA, twenty-seven of his former doctoral students spearheaded a drive to establish the Rolf Bargmann Computing Lab which was dedicated in May 1997. UGA statistics faculty members continued to receive unusual recognition with professional fellowships and appointments during the 1990’s. Professor Billard was named University Professor and received a UGA Creative Medal for Research in 1992. Professor Bradley received an ASA Founders Award in 1992, and Professor Taylor served as SCROS President in 1996. Professor Billard served as President of the International Biometrics Society in 1994-1995 and as ASA President in 1996. Professors Basawa and Taylor published the Selected Proceedings of the Sheffield Symposium on Applied Probability, and set the stage for the Department to host several international symposia on probability and statistics at UGA. In 1996 the UGA Symposium on Estimating Functions was co-sponsored by IMS, and the selected proceedings were published by Basawa, Godambe and Taylor. In 2000 the UGA Symposium on Inference for Stochastic Processes was co-sponsored by IMS, and the selected proceedings were published by Basawa, Heyde and Taylor. With kind permission from Springer Science+Business Media: <Strength in Numbers: The Rising of Academic Statistics Departments in the U.S., A Brief History of the Department of Statistics at the University of Georgia, 2013,381-393, John Stufken and Robert L. Taylor, editors Alan Agresti and Xiao-Li Meng>
