Erin Blankenship

Blankenship is the 2013 winner of the Mu Sigma Rho William D. Warde Statistical Education Award,^[2][3] and in 2015 was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association "for innovation and leadership in K-12 teacher development; for excellence in teaching, mentoring, and inspiring future teachers, teaching assistants, and statistics education researchers; and for interdisciplinary collaboration and service to the profession".^[2] In 2017, she was one of two winners of the highest teaching honor of the University of Nebraska system, the Outstanding Teaching and Instructional Creativity Award.^[4]

Blankenship did her graduate studies at North Carolina State University,^[2] and credits an early female NCSU statistics professor, Gertrude Mary Cox, as a source of inspiration. Blankenship states that went into statistics because of its teamwork, and because, she says, "You’re applying science to find real solutions to real problems".^[5] Initially a research statistician, she gained her interest in statistics education after earning tenure at Nebraska.^[2]