Tremaine Sails-Dunbar

Tremaine Sails-Dunbar is a PhD student studying homelessness, mental health, and organizations that provide services for homeless men.

His background

I did a Master's of Divinity at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and then I transferred to public health. I had very little quantitative background, so I wanted to join the Summer Program to strengthen my quantitative skillset and build the foundation, and hopefully one or two advanced techniques, that I could employ in my own research.

I plan to use the methods I’ve learned here in my dissertation, but I've also made some wonderful contacts with people in fields such as criminology, and we have discussed the possibility of co-authoring a paper.

The instructional staff

The TAs have been very helpful. I visited the TA for one of my courses outside of class time, and I visited other TAs during class times, and the instructors are very receptive to questions, whether they are advanced or foundational. The faculty provide a comprehensive approach to teaching statistics and quantitative methods. They've been very helpful.

My favorite moments are being able to ask questions that pertain to standard deviations or confidence intervals, and then get responses on what those are and see those answers balloon into interaction terms and moderation effects. It really is great to grow in such a short amount of time and see that I can really apply these tools whether I go into the industry or the academy and become a competent and fully-functioning scholar.

Chances to meet with other participants

It's a pretty great community. We all eat lunch together. We walk to classes together. I met people at the airport and we've just kind of hung out together. I met people from across the globe, from Japan to France to China, to other parts of the United States, to Canada, to England. It's really a global community and it's great to have a global network at your fingertips and meet the next wave of scholars while they're in the early phase.

What to know before you get here

If you're a doctoral student in the social sciences, or considering doctoral work in the social sciences, and you feel that your quantitative skillset is lacking or that you want to brush up on some of the concepts you've learned, I'd recommend ICPSR.

I'd say coming here for the first time, be open. You have the opportunity to tailor your schedule to your strengths and weaknesses. Be open to that. And be open to meeting an international community of really talented and intellectually astute researchers and faculty members. I've met doctoral students, master's students, even an undergrad student in one of my lectures. So be open to that type of community, be open to learning as much as you can, and be prepared for a rigorous, but very much fulfilling, four weeks.

Next summer and beyond

ICPSR is great. I hope to come again in the future and take some of the courses I wasn't necessarily prepared to take this year. As scholars, we always have to maintain a continuing education and we have to continually update ourselves on the intellectual conversations that are going on. And having a statistical background as robust as the one provided by ICPSR will definitely help me in maintaining my scholarly functioning.

"You have the opportunity to tailor your schedule to your strengths and weaknesses."