Offerings in statistics at the University of Georgia in 1941 consisted of two courses. One course was an elementary course in business and economic statistics which was taught in the College of Business Administration. The second course (Math 356) was a basic course in statistics which was taught in the Department of Mathematics of the College of Arts and Sciences. Some statistics was also included in various courses in Psychology, Sociology and Education. Very little progress in developing the statistics program at UGA occurred during the war years of 1941-1945. When World War II ended, Dr. Tomlinson Fort was hired from Lehigh University to head the Department of Mathematics at UGA. Dr. Fort was charged with developing a graduate program in mathematics which would also embrace a program in statistics. Dr. Theodore Bancroft was recruited to head up the statistics program. Dr. Bancroft arrived in Athens in September 1946, but remained at UGA for only one year before accepting an appointment at Auburn University. During this year he taught the elementary statistics course, Math 356, and added a two-course sequence in statistical theory (Math 451-452) for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students. This sequence, under the name Stat 4510-4520, currently forms the required mathematical statistics sequence of the Bachelor’s degree program. Also in 1946, the Agronomy Department of the College of Agriculture began offering a first course in statistical methods for agricultural workers with Professor Edwin James as the instructor. Dr. A. Clifford Cohen (pictured above) joined the Department of Mathematics in June 1947 as a replacement for Dr. Bancroft. For several years, Dr. Cohen taught the elementary statistics course and the statistical theory courses and provided limited consulting service for graduate students and faculty members in Forestry, Agriculture, Education, Psychology and other disciplines. In 1952, the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), a public agency of fifteen member states cooperating to improve education in the region, sponsored a Southern Regional Conference on Statistics which led to the formation of the SREB Southern Regional Committee on Statistics (SREB-COS). The Committee's purpose was ". . . to provide a means of joint planning and cooperative action by which the member institutions can coordinate and supplement their respective educational, research, and service programs in statistics to meet more effectively the present and future needs of the region and nation." The first organizational meeting of the SREB-COS was in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 5-6, 1955, and the University of Georgia was represented at this meeting by E. Broadus Browne, a consulting statistician with the experimental research program at UGA. In accordance with a recommendation of the SREB-COS, a movement began at UGA to organize a centralized program in statistics, which ultimately led to the creation of an Institute of Statistics at UGA in 1958 with A. Clifford Cohen as Director. The Institute of Statistics at UGA was charged with responsibility for conducting and encouraging statistical research, for providing computing and consulting services and for developing programs of instruction in statistics. Computing services were rendered through the fledgling computer center headed by Dr. James L. Carmon, who also had a joint appointment in the Institute and later in the Department of Statistics. Membership in the early days of the Institute also included James E. Fortson of the Computer Center, two faculty members in mathematics (Cohen & C. H. Kapadia), a faculty member from business, a faculty member from psychology and a faculty member from forestry. Pursuant to recommendations contained in a University self-study and with the encouragement from the SREB-COS, a Department of Statistics was established at UGA on July 1, 1964 with Dr. Cohen as Acting Head. Dr. Kapadia was the only other full-time faculty member of the department, but former members of the Institute of Statistics were included as adjunct members. For the first two years, the Department was housed in the Geography, Geology and Mathematics Building of the Science Center. It later occupied the Lumpkin House (aka Rock House) for two years before moving to the Graduate Studies Building upon its completion in 1968. The name of the Department was at that time changed to Department of Statistics and Computer Science. In 1984, when it was again renamed as Department of Statistics, the Department moved to its present location, the Statistics & Computer Services Building. 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>
