CSTAT is recruiting graduate student RAs to start in Summer or Fall 2025

Attention graduate students: The Center for Statistical Training and Consulting (CSTAT, http://cstat.msu.edu) will be interviewing applicants for Research Assistant (RA) positions to start in Summer 2025 (05/16/2025-08/15/2025) or in Fall 2025 (08/16/2025-12/31/2025) with possible continuation into future semesters depending on performance, staffing needs, and available funding. These RA positions are an excellent opportunity for students to get experience with applying statistical methods to interesting research topics, developing consulting skills, learning from experienced mentors, expanding your professional network, and add some collaborative papers to your resume. 

We're looking for applicants who want to join a fun, passionate, and supportive group of people who enjoy working together and helping each other. Through working with experienced mentors and discussions in weekly staff meetings, you can bridge the gap between classroom training in statistical methods knowledge and statistical practice. You can also learn effective communication and collaborative skills.

In this role, you will: 

• collaborate with MSU graduate students and faculty on projects; 
• apply statistical, computational, and scientific expertise to the design, analysis, interpretation, and reporting of research studies across disciplines; 
• help clients with research design issues (e.g., power analysis/sample size planning, missing data) and data management;  
• rapidly learn new methods and software.

We're looking for someone who: 

• is currently enrolled in a doctoral program by the start of the RA appointment (and has applied statistical experience equivalent to a Master’s degree);
• has familiarity with a range of statistical methods and with statistical software packages;
• has experience with cleaning and managing data;
• can match research questions and hypotheses to appropriate statistical methods;
• has strong oral and written communication skills.

How to Apply

Doctoral students with strong quantitative methods, statistics, and research design skills are invited to apply by emailing all of of the following to cstatinf@msu.edu by 5:00 PM on Monday, 2/3/2025:

• Cover letter.
• Resume or curriculum vitae (CV). List your research experiences, publications, presentations. 
• CSTAT RA Application Form: Click here to download. 
• Contact information for at least 2 professional references.

ABOUT CSTAT 

CSTAT is located in Giltner Hall. Get to know more about CSTAT and the team by clicking here: https://cstat.msu.edu 

Students with experience at CSTAT have had an excellent record getting postdoctoral positions, faculty positions, and non-academic jobs. Here are a couple quotes from past RAs:

 “Of all the things I did while at Michigan State, CSTAT, without question, had the biggest influence on my professional and academic trajectories. The mentoring and the community offered at CSTAT helped me to gain confidence in my ability as an applied statistician, and to better understand my trade.”

 “CSTAT has been an integral part of my PhD. training. It was a way of expanding my avenues with respect to the variety of applications I had the opportunity to solve different types of statistical problems in. It was a place where I was exposed to many perspectives of the way this subject is viewed and tweaks in methodology carefully employed to fit the application. I also became much less afraid of data analyses and truly learned the need for rigor in it. My resume stood out of the crowd due to CSTAT and I got a much broader view of statistics and its place in the sciences and social sciences alike.”