Amanda Kuhn receives H&S Dean's Award of Merit for 2025

Amanda has been recognized as one of four recipients of the School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award of Merit. This award began in 1999 to acknowledge the important role staff play in the success of the school and the university as a whole. The Department of Statistics is so pleased by this announcement and proud of all that Amanda has achieved to be included in such a prestigious group.

As Student Services Officer for the interdisciplinary Program in Data Science at Stanford, Amanda's work ethic and positive spirit have strongly infused the work of our Student Services team overall and directly impacted multiple departments beyond Statistics, to Computer Science, Math, Political Science, MS&E, Psychology, Sociology, and Economics. Her thirst for learning, desire to improve every aspect of the program, passion for her students, and collegiality with staff and faculty is apparent in everything she does.

I'm very honored by the award and feel lucky that I get to work in such a great department.

The DS and MCS students have quickly discovered that their program websites, which Amanda oversees, are a one-stop shop for everything they need. Seniors have also benefited from her initiative, as she met with over 50 of them individually to confirm they were on track to graduate, hear about their experiences as our majors, and help them find ways to make the most of their final year. She is professional, efficient, kind, and good-natured in all her interactions.

Service to the program co-directors is also a high priority for Amanda. Faculty comments in support of her nomination were especially heartfelt:

• "I continue to be impressed by Amanda, I think she is outstanding, and we are glad to have her."
• "Amanda is a pleasure to work with: a fount of knowledge about the Data Science major and university policies [and] a great liaison between students and faculty. She really makes the faculty directors' jobs much easier!"
• "Her contributions are very impactful; she takes initiative and can be relied upon; she has leadership qualities. She is a wonderful member of the team."

Among the key resources Amanda has created for 2024-25 are an improved graduation tracker for over 100 prospective graduating students, a comprehensive Google sheet covering Student Services monthly tasks, and an impressively comprehensive collection of shareable templates for handling everything from peer advisor management to DS team meetings to student exception requests. Her extraordinary investment of time, effort, detail, and thoughtfulness have been repeatedly observed and remarked upon by the Data Science and MCS groups over the past year.

With her team spirit, good sense, creativity, dedication, efficacy, and all-around joie de vivre, Amanda continues to impress at every turn. She is simply outstanding. She has lifted us up.