Shane Singh

Dr. Shane Singh is the Joshua W. Jones Professor of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia. He currently serves as co-Graduate Coordinator for the MA/PhD Program in Political Science and International Affairs. Professor Singh’s research focuses on comparative politics, with an emphasis on comparative political behavior and elections. He teaches “Statistics and Data Analysis II: The Basics of Regression” in the Summer Program.

His reasons for attending, and returning to, the Summer Program

I wanted to attend the Summer Program way back in the summer of 2005 because of its reputation as both a place where you can get world-class instruction in quantitative methods, but also as a place where you can meet people who are doing the same thing and who are working on similar topics. Substantively, it's a great setting for networking in addition to just picking up some of the most cutting-edge skills that you need for your own research later on. And this is now my 10th year as an instructor.

I love being an instructor because the Summer Program is a place where participants are excited to come learn about statistics. They want to be here. They're eager to be here. We have participants from all over the world. They're some of the most engaged learners I've ever worked with. It's a great privilege to be able to teach people who are excited to learn about statistics and are going to take the skills that they learn back to their home institution or home country and apply them to their own research.

Participants from all walks of life

I've gotten a chance to meet and work with participants from dozens of different countries, from dozens of different disciplines, and from many, many different sociodemographic and religious backgrounds. I have had participants in my courses from disciplines including political science, sociology, education, health research, public policy, and many, many more. I've also had students at the undergraduate level, the graduate level, and the post-doctoral level. I've had assistant, associate, and full professors in my class, and I've had professionals who are working for a city government somewhere, or even for a school system or a private company. It's really great because here you get that diversity of participants both in terms of country-of-origin and discipline, whereas at your home institution, you're probably often teaching students from the same discipline with the same types of goals. That diversity really enhances both the social experience and the educational classroom experience.

Could you describe the Program to someone who is not familiar with it?

First of all, it's relaxed. Oftentimes people are intimidated about learning statistics, especially if they're at the beginning level. I assure interested participants that you're going to go there and the instructors are going to be accessible, probably more accessible than they are at their home institution. They're going to be nice and they're going to go at a pace which is conducive to learning for everybody in the classroom. So I would definitely describe it as accessible and welcoming and friendly, but I would at the same time describe it as rigorous.

I would also describe it as a great place for networking. The Summer Program has plenty of opportunities outside the classroom to interact with your fellow participants and with the instructors. These are individuals that you will probably stay connected with throughout your career. You'll see them down the road at conferences, and you might end up co-authoring papers with them. That definitely happened to me: I ended up meeting co-authors here at the Summer Program.

How co-authors meet across disciplines at the Summer Program

One of the first years I was here I took a class in scaling and dimensional analysis, and a couple weeks later I got an email from an individual that I met in that class. And we had a few interactions during that class, but I wouldn't say that they were interactions that I knew would be long-lasting. This individual was actually a professor in a business school, which was well outside my discipline. At the time, I was a graduate student in political science. So we were far apart in terms of career stage and discipline. However, he was working on a paper where he thought that I could be helpful with the quantitative portion, and he asked me if I would like to join him as a co-author on this paper, along with another co-author. I said, yes. This was an exciting opportunity for a third-year graduate student. We worked on that paper and it ended up being my very first peer-reviewed publication. To this day, it's actually one of my more highly cited publications. So I'm really grateful for the opportunity to have met an individual that turned into a co-author that I would've never met had I stayed within my disciplinary confines.

"It's a great privilege to be able to teach people who are excited to learn about statistics."