Traditional statistics education has been criticized for not adequately preparing statisticians and engineers for careers in industry and for being unresponsive to the needs of industry. One difficulty encountered in trying to address this problem is that there has not been sufficient interaction between industrial and academic statisticians. This faculty enhancement project provides a forum for such interaction. Statisticians from twenty academic departments and twenty statisticians from industry and government are coming together for a five-day workshop to discuss common concerns, opportunities for collaboration, and ways in which the two groups might learn from and support each other. At the workshop each academic statistician is being paired with an industrial statistician for continued collaboration. During the nine months following the workshop, each academic statistician is making a three-day site visit to participate in the work environment of the industrial statistician, and each industrial statistician is making a three-day campus visit. Each industrial/academic pair is also collaborating on the development of a case study based on actual practice in industry. Follow-through activities include a capstone meeting to discuss the site visits, plans for continued collaboration, and the case studies. The case studies and other educational materials are being compiled and disseminated by the project. The case study collection provides statistics educators with interesting, real problems from industry that can be incorporated into statistics instruction. By fostering communication and collaboration between industrial and academic statisticians, academic statisticians are becoming more cognizant of the concerns and needs of industry, and academic departments can begin to address the related curricular issues.
