Welcome to my personal website. Prior to academia, I worked in the medical device industry as a Statistician for 8 years before earning my PhD in Statistics Education at the University of Minnesota (advisors: Joan Garfield & Robert delMas) where I had previously earned an MS in Statistics (advisor: Douglas Hawkins). I lead a Statistics & Data Science Education Research Lab in the Department of Statistics at Penn State (jointly with Neil Hatfield) and I'm Executive Director of the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education (CAUSE). My primary research interests are oriented toward Statistics and Data Science Education, particularly with respect to assessment development and practice.
Recent Highlights and Activities:
- [Teaching] 2025 Waller Education Award; American Statistical Assocation; Story in Penn State "Science News"
- [Research & Teaching] 2025 NZSA Visiting Lecturer; Speaking tour sponsored by the New Zealand Statistical Association; NZSA Announcement
- [Service] Chair of the local organizing committee for the 14th International Research Forum on Statistical Thinking, Reasoning, and Literacy (SRTL-14; State College PA)
- [Service] Topic Chair for Program Committee of the 12th International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS-12; Brisbane, Australia); Event Website
- [Research] PI for NSF:IUSE Project CLASSIFIES which is investigating and developing tools that leverage NLP with a goal to assist STEM instructors in large-enrollment classes with providing student feedback on short-answer tasks; PI for related work sponsored by the Penn State Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence studying influence of linguistic diversity on LLM tool development for educational use.
Additional Detail:
Contact Information
Matthew D. Beckman, PhD
Associate Research Professor
Department of Statistics
Pennsylvania State University
461 Pollock Road
University Park, PA 16802
