New master's degree collaboration with State Farm Insurance

Our department of statistics serves as an important nexus - instructing majors and graduate students, master's students from other disciplines and providing modeling and analysis for research projects around campus. It's terrific reputation is well-earned and now that renown has dveloped into a promising corporate partnership:

[The department of] statistics and State Farm Insurance Companies will cooperate on a new program beginning this fall that will partner students pursuing a master's degree in statistics with the Fortune 50 company.

The Modeling and Analytics Graduate Network, or MAGNet, program will provide participating students with support—such as paid tuition and fees and financial compensation—while they pursue a master's degree at UGA. In return, students will spend 20 hours a week—40 hours a week during the summer semester—conducting real-life research on projects directed by the Strategic Resources Department of State Farm.

"Our aim is to attract between two and four students for the MAGNet program at the University of Georgia this fall and eventually increase that number to as many as eight students," said Laurette Stiles, vice president of the Strategic Resources Department for State Farm. "Our department is experiencing a growing demand to provide analytics skills and expertise to areas across State Farm as the company enhances our ability to identify and meet customer needs."

The UGA statistics department "is very excited to partner with State Farm on building the MAGNet program at the University of Georgia," said John Stufken, a UGA professor and statistics department head. "The partnership creates a win-win situation by helping us attract strong (master's) degree students who will acquire the skills needed to help State Farm in meeting their growing analytics demands."

Great news all around that stands to substantially benefit our students.