The Jeanne E. Griffith Mentoring Award

On receiving the Roger Herriot Award in June 2001, Jeanne E. Griffith said: “One of the most rewarding aspects (of Federal statistics) for me was the opportunity to promote creative activities and energies among my staff…When I have had the blessing to mentor young people in their careers, I have tried to emphasize…(that) only they, themselves, can make the most of (the)…chances that life presents.”

Dr. Griffith died in August 2001 after working for more than 25 years in the Federal statistical system. Throughout her career, and especially in her latter senior management positions at the National Center for Education Statistics and the National Science Foundation, one of Jeanne’s highest priorities was to mentor and encourage younger staff at all levels to learn, to grow, and to recognize and seize career opportunities as they came along.

The Jeanne E. Griffith Mentoring Award has been established to encourage mentoring of junior staff in the Federal statistical system. It is presented annually to a supervisor, technical director, team coordinator, or other member of the Federal statistical staff who is nominated by co-workers and supervisors, and chosen by the Award Selection Committee.

The award is co-sponsored by the Interagency Council on Statistical Policy, the Council for Excellence in Government, the Washington Statistical Society, the Social Statistics and Government Statistics Sections of the American Statistical Association, and the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics.

Nominations for 2009 will be accepted beginning in January 2009. The last date for submission of nominations is March 27, 2009, and the Award Committee will make its determination of the award winner by May 8, 2009. The award will consist of a $1,000 honorarium and a citation, which will be presented at a ceremony arranged by the co-sponsors in June 2009.

The winning mentor will be selected for his or her efforts in supporting the work and developing the careers of junior staff. Examples of typical mentoring activities include:

  • Advising junior staff to help them create career opportunities, networking skills, and contacts for growth and development;
  • Counseling junior staff and providing resources to help develop their technical writing, analysis, presentation and organizational skills and knowledge;
  • Encouraging junior staff growth and career development through attendance and oral presentations at meetings with higher level officials, staffs of other agencies, professional associations, training courses, and conferences;
  • Motivating junior staff and building self confidence through feedback on their efforts, being a listener when that is needed, and creating a caring and supportive environment;
  • Serving as a role model for junior staff through professional expertise, information and insights, balancing collegial and personal roles, and including everyone across rank, race, ethnicity, and seniority.

For further information on the award, contact Monica Clark at (703) 684-1221 ext 1858 or at monica@amstat.org.

The nomination cover sheet and guidelines form-or a photocopy of it-should be attached to a nomination memorandum or letter. A nomination form can be obtained by downloading it from http://www.amstat.org/sections/sgovt/JEGform09.doc in MS Word format or http://www.amstat.org/sections/sgovt/JEGform09.pdf in Adobe pdf format.

All nominations should be mailed or emailed no later than March 27, 2009. Please send to:

The Jeanne E. Griffith Mentoring Award Committee
c/o Monica Clark
The American Statistical Association
732 N. Washington Street
Alexandria, VA 22314-1943
monica@amstat.org.

Resources for Mentoring Statisticians http://www.amstat.org/profession/mentoring/

The 2009 Selection Committee:

Emerson J. Elliott, National Center for Education Statistics (Retired)
Carol House, Department of Agriculture
Dan Kasprzyk, Mathematica Policy Research
Beth Kilss, IRS, Statistics of Income (Retired)
Stephanie Shipp, Science and Technology Policy Institute
Clyde Tucker, Bureau of Labor Statistics

Past Award Recipients:

Citations on the Jeanne E. Griffith Mentoring Awards: in MS Word (.doc) format and in Adobe (.pdf) format

In 2003 the Jeanne E. Griffith Mentoring Award Committee announced that its first award has been given to Richard D. Allen, Deputy Administrator for Program and Products for the National Agricultural Statistics Service. Rich Allen is recognized for his impact on the lives and careers of junior staff.

Richard D. Allen's describes mentoring in the following: Mentoring: A Skill Professional Statisticians Can Develop - A point of view offered by Rich Allen

In 2004 the Jeanne E. Griffith Mentoring Award Committee announced that the second award has been given to Beth A. Kilss, Supervisory Statistician and Chief, Statistical Data Section, Special Studies Branch of the Statistics of Income Division (SOI) of the Internal Revenue Service. Beth is recognized for her impact on the lives and careers of her immediate staff, other SOI staff, and for her encouragement and support for training and development activities, as well as her support for statistical interagency mentoring activities.

In 2005 the Jeanne E. Griffith Mentoring Award Committee announced that the third award has been given to Renee Miller. Renee Miller has been a supervisory mathematical statistician in the Statistics and Methods Group (SMG) of the Energy Information Administration (EIA) since 1997. She coaches and mentors a team whose responsibilities include the clearance of EIA data collection forms, management of EIA's workshop program, and the provision of statistical and analytic support to EIA program offices. In addition she has been a mentor to a Presidential Management Fellow. For most of her twenty-five years at EIA, Ms. Miller has been involved with data quality issues. She was the principal author of a series of reports assessing EIA data quality (known as the "State-of-the-Data" reports) and also performed quality control audits.

Guy Caruso, Administrator of EIA says of Rene that he can see "the fruits of her efforts." "I have been able to recognize her influence as their work (junior staff members) matured under her guidance."

Recently, she has been working on data integration issues. One aspect of this work pertains to identifying and resolving cross-cutting data issues at EIA by coordinating the work of EIA's Inter-office Issues Group. An accomplishment of this group was the development of a revision policy for data that had been declared final. Ms. Miller, working with one of the newer people in SMG, presented the results to the American Statistical Association Committee on Energy Statistics.

Ms. Miller oversees the development of new and revised energy data definitions, coaching an SMG team member on coordinating their development. Previously she had chaired EIA's Common Data Definitions Team from 1998, when it was chartered to ensure that EIA has common and accurate data definitions, to 2001 when the agreed-upon work was completed.

Her inter-agency team participation includes program chair of the 2003 Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology Research Conference. In addition she has been on Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology subcommittees on data quality, statistical training, and data editing and was EIA's liaison to the American Statistical Association Committee on Energy Statistics for a number of years.

Prior to coming to EIA, Ms. Miller worked at the U.S. Bureau of the Census. She began her statistical career in the Poverty Statistics Branch and later worked in the Statistical Methods Division. She has an MS in Economic and Social Statistics from Cornell University and a BA in Mathematics from Queens College of the City University of New York. For the past five years she has been participating in the Everybody Wins reading mentoring program, helping elementary school students hone their reading and learning skills.

Renee Miller view on mentoring can be found at: Mentors - Accidental and Other Types - Renee Miller, 2005 Social Statistics Program Chair

In 2006 the Award Selection Committee announced that the winner was Martin O'Connell, Chief, Fertility and Family Statistics Branch, Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau. Martin has held that position for the past 10 years, and over the course of his 30-year career at Census, he was first a statistician in the Fertility Statistics Branch (1976- 1980) and then its Chief (1981-1996). Prior to coming to the Census Bureau, Martin was a research associate at the Population Center at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he has both masters and doctoral degrees in Demography. He also received a bachelor’s degree in Economics from New York University.

In his current position at Census, Martin’s staff is responsible for the Census Bureau programs that develop and analyze fertility and child-related data (child care, maternity leave, and child-well being issues) and the general areas of family, household and living arrangements. This includes surveys such as the Current Population Survey and the Survey of Income and Program Participation as well as the decennial census and the American Community Survey. His current research interests range from child care and maternity leaves issues to the study of new and emerging complex family structures and living arrangements. Integral to these studies are the examination of how different collection and processing methodologies can influence the quality of data reported on surveys.

Important projects that his staff is now undertaking involve the development of a new series of demographic reports on family and child-related topics from the American Community Survey to demonstrate how examining data from the regional and state-level perspective can increase our understanding of the diversity of demographic patterns at the national level. On the methodological front, Martin’s group is also concluding a team project that will significantly improve the estimates of unmarried couples derived from the Current Population Survey. In addition, several members of the Fertility and Family Branch are also working on a project to evaluate the various weighting methodologies employed by the American Community Survey to produce more consistent estimates of married and unmarried couple households and person-level estimates of spouses and partners.

Recently, the Census Bureau recognized Martin for his mentoring skills when he was awarded the Bureau’s 2006 Outstanding Mentor Award. And in 1992, he was also awarded the Department of Commerce Bronze Medal for Superior Service.

The 2006 Jeanne E. Griffith Mentoring Award was presented to Martin on June 7, 2006, at an award ceremony held at the Bureau of Labor Statistics Conference Center, 2 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC.

In 2007 the Award Selection Committee announced that the winner was Stephanie Shipp. Stephanie Shipp is the Director of the Economic Assessment Office in the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). Stephanie directs a staff of economists and statisticians who conduct economic research and program evaluation that examine the transition from scientific innovation to commercial innovation. Under her leadership the staff conducts and analyzes surveys of ATP awardees. The staff also conducts research, and writes case studies on ATP projects, computes performance metrics, and directs studies with external researchers that contribute to the technology policy literature.

Stephanie has a background in surveys, public finance, and research. She started her career at the Federal Reserve Board, working on the Industrial Production Index. She then moved to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, working on the design of the Producer Price Index analytical system. Her next challenge was leading the information and analysis work for the Consumer Expenditure Survey and collaborating on income and expenditure inequality and poverty measurement research.

At the Census Bureau, starting in 1997, Stephanie worked on developing the Industry and Occupation coding system for the Census 2000, guiding the analytical efforts for a welfare reform survey, the Survey of Program Dynamics, and spearheading a major hiring effort for her division. Stephanie is active in professional organizations and is a regular presenter and discussant at the American Statistical Association (ASA) annual meetings.

Stephanie received her Ph.D. in economics from George Washington University in 2000.

Connie Chang, Supervisory Economist at NIST, noted that “Stephanie encourages staff to apply for developmental assignments and training programs. I have often heard her tell staff that even if their odds of acceptance are low the practice of writing these application essays will help them understand where they want to go, and that with practice they will get better at communicating what they have accomplished. Beyond mentoring the staff in our office, Stephanie also finds time to mentor several others of the ATP staff who have sought her advice and mentorship because they feel she genuinely cares and is interested in their development. Through exchanges with colleagues of Stephanie’s I discovered that Stephanie’s reputation for mentoring junior staff was established long ago.”

Others who work with Stephanie state:

“She always took the time to monitor my progress in assignments and to shape those assignments in a way that presented me with the opportunity to acquire a comprehensive background in those areas required to advance”

“Left on my own, I do not believe that I would have been able to accomplish what I have in the short time of my employment. I recognize that most of my professional fulfillment is the result of Stephanie’s efforts to guide me in the direction of success.”

“Dr. Shipp has been my mentor since 2003. She not only provides me with advice, support, and encouragement for my career development, but also allows me to discuss my personal and family life when it is related to my growth.”

“Whenever I needed to speak to her, she took the time to listen and based on her vast experience offered explicit advice or and enabled me to find a solution that was appropriate to my needs and concerns.”

In 2008 the Award Selection Committee announced that the winner was Rosemary D. Marcuss.

Rosemary Marcuss, Deputy Director, Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce, is the winner of the 2008 Jeanne Griffith Mentoring Award. She has been the Deputy Director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis since she joined the agency in 1998. Before that, she served for fifteen years as the Assistant Director for Tax Analysis of the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. Rosemary started her career in Washington as a junior staff member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors. Rosemary holds a PhD in economics from the University of Maryland. She was a National Science Foundation fellow during her graduate studies at the University of Maryland.

Rosemary maintains a special interest in making economic statistics and economic analysis accessible and comprehensible to as many people as possible. In 2005, she served as President of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE, the organization most clearly identified with representing the interests of the Federal Government statistical agencies and the needs of American business for timely and top quality economic statistics. In addition, Rosemary has served on the board of directors of the National Tax Association an the Washington D.C. National Economists Club. At present, she serves as a member of the Advisory Board of the George Washington University School of Public Policy and Public Administration.

Steve Landefeld, Director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, says that during her time at BEA, Rosemary has made mentoring and career development a central focus of the Bureau’s work. Shortly after coming to BEA, Rosemary redesigned BEA’s mentoring program, making it a model for other units in the Department of Commerce wishing to develop their own programs.

Rosemary is continually redesigning BEA activities, from external outreach to internal presentations, to involve more junior staff. She works with individual staff to develop their presentations.

Each year, Rosemary also finds time to serve as a mentor at BEA. She has guided staff throughout the Bureau-ranging from accountants, to economists, to administrators-and consistently has been a major influence in these individual’s lives. All have benefited from the experiences and many have advanced to leadership roles with the Bureau or other agencies. Rosemary’s corporate and individual mentoring efforts have positively affected not only the entire Bureau but also other government statistical organizations.

Others who work with Rosemary state:

“Rosemary Marcuss has been an avid champion for the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ development programs and efforts. She has played an integral role in finding innovative ways to develop employees, as well as sought input from executive staff, division chiefs, managers, and employees to ensure that all programs are relevant to the need of our employees.”

“Over time, Rosemary was instrumental in not only helping me better focus my energies in some very fulfilling way, but also in helping me secure a number of rewarding professional assignments that literally changed my career. She is also dedicated to doing this for others. She enthusiastically supported BEA’s mentoring program, and earlier this year, Rosemary launched an improved, more comprehensive mentoring program for BEA.”

Government Statistics Section pages prepared by:     Bill Wong.
Last updated:     February 20, 2009.