The Statistics Division of ASQ is pleased to announce that Dr. J. Marcus Jobe is recipient of the 2024 William G. Hunter Award. The William G. Hunter Award was established by the Statistics Division in 1987 to recognize the many contributions of its founding chair at promoting the use of applied statistics and statistical thinking. The attributes that characterize Bill Hunter's career - consultant, educator for practitioners, communicator, and integrator of statistical thinking into other disciplines - are used to help decide the recipient.

 

 

Being awarded the William G. Hunter Awardis a great honor and I am truly grateful. I want to express appreciation to Michael Pokojovy for the nomination and the Hunter Award committee led by Bill Rodebaugh for their diligence and ultimate selection.

I did not meet William G. Hunter personally.  I first became aware of his work in the late ’70s as a statistics graduate student at Oklahoma State. The inspirational lectures of D. Weeks helped develop my interest in experimental design and led to my familiarity with Prof. Hunter’s famous text Statistics for Experimenters. 

 

During my graduate studies at Iowa State, I frequently taught intro business statistics. In ’82, I discovered a set of videos on Quality by Dr. Edwards Deming. Bill Meeker was the faculty member responsible for the graduate students teaching business statistics and he supported my use of Deming’s videos in class. It was
in this period of my education that I first read about a team of professors at the University of Wisconsin - Madison including William Hunter, that was very active with quality assurance seminars, lectures and consulting endeavors. 

 

Inspired by the practicality and role statistical methodologies play in quality improvement, I attended a course on statistical quality assurance taught by S.B. Vardeman. Little did I know that many years later he would include me as a coauthor of two statistical quality assurance texts, one engineering statistics text and a Ukrainian language text on statistical quality assurance distributed gratis to universities and colleges across Ukraine. 

 

I notice from his CV that William G. Hunter spent extensive time overseas where he promoted development of the statistics discipline. I was fortunate to lead three projects funded by the US State Dept. for statistics/quality improvement/data mining, teaching and curriculum development in Ukraine.

 

I would like to have sat with Prof. Hunter at an outdoor café and share perspectives on issues such as grading, curriculum, teaching methods, classroom management, student life and faculty expectations in cross-cultural, foreign university settings. I’m sure the treasure chest of perspectives and experiences he accumulated on these matters were priceless. I am aware he earned academic degrees in chemical engineering and statistics. He went on to make outstanding contributions as a statistician, especially in disciplines outside statistics.

 

My initial consulting experiences began as a graduate student at Iowa State in the agricultural experiment station and the national animal disease lab in Ames, Iowa. I recall a perspective on consulting given by O. Kempthorne. He observed the
most effective consulting requires the statistician to have expertise in the discipline being served. Bill Hunter’s outstanding consulting contributions strongly validate O. Kempthorne’s insight. 

 

Consistent with the same understanding, Prof. Folks at Oklahoma State desired to attract students to the statistics graduate program whose undergraduate studies were not primarily in mathematics or statistics. As I read different accounts of Prof. Hunter’s teaching, consulting and international efforts, I was impressed with his energy level and perseverance. Undoubtedly, he encountered resistance and opposition, yet undaunted, he continued with his mission. His efforts to teach quality improvement methodologies to public school teachers reminded me of my father, a mathematics professor at Oklahoma State, who did something similar with the metric system for public school teachers across Oklahoma.

I highly appreciate my professors at Iowa State, Oklahoma State and Central State. I am forever grateful to my Ph.D. advisors H. T. David and S.B. Vardeman for the support, time, direction and opportunities they so generously directed my way. The classroom was the best part of my job at Miami. Thank you to the multitude of talented students and the wonderful professional opportunities made available to me by Miami. 

 

I am forever indebted to my mother and father for their love and support.

 

In conclusion, William G. Hunter's contributions to applied statistics and his untiring efforts to promote and implement appropriate statistical methodologies for improving decision making, especially with regards to quality issues and engineering opportunities are monumental. His significant accomplishments extended internationally, remarkable indeed.

 

Thank you for awarding me the William G. Hunter award.

 

J. Marcus Jobe, Professor Emeritus, Information Systems and Analytics, Miami University

Dr. Jobe earned a B.S. in Physics from the Univ. of Central Oklahoma, an M.S. in Statistics from Oklahoma State and a Ph.D. in Statistics from Iowa State. In ’84, he joined Miami (OH) University’s Business School where he taught courses on applied statistics, experimental design, statistical quality assurance and data mining for almost 30 years. 

 

Dr. Jobe taught the first Data Mining course in the Farmer Business School and led creation of a Business Analytics major (’12). He was the winner of Miami’s All
University Outstanding Professor Award (’95) and the Senior Teaching Excellence Award (’08) selected by Farmer Business School faculty. Jobe is a two-time Senior Fulbright Scholar to Ukraine and the Principal Investigator (’00-’04) of a New Independent States College and Univ. Partnership Program (NISCUPP) with Ukraine, funded by the US State Dept. As part of the partnership program, Dr. Jobe
coauthored a Ukrainian language text Statistical Quality Assurance (SQA, ’03).

 

He extensively consulted for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Westinghouse Environmental Management and geologists from oil and gas companies. Jobe taught (’93) a graduate course on applied statistics and statistical quality assurance to General Electric engineers and big data analytics to professionals from multiple oil and gas companies.

 

He coauthored with S.B. Vardeman three well- regarded statistical quality assurance/engineering statistics books and one online free-access engineering statistics text. A primary theme of Dr. Jobe’s published research articles encompassed outlier detection, quality assurance methodologies and statistical applications (engineering and geology). Since ’93, Dr. Jobe visited Ukraine 45+ times. Additional information about Dr. Jobe can be found at his website.