Northern Illinois University
Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

The NIU Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science is one of 19 academic units in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. It was created under the Department of Mathematical Sciences in 1986 and became an autonomous unit in 1990. In 2019, it became a standalone department.

For many years, it has been our primary responsibility to teach statistics to help students meet General Education / Math Core Competency requirements and to teach statistics at the bachelor's, master's and doctoral degree levels. Since Fall 2007, our core teaching mission has also included actuarial science at the undergraduate level.

Our faculty members' scholarly work spans many cutting-edge areas of statistics and actuarial science, including planning statistical experiments, statistical modeling, inference and statistical consulting. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has classified NIU as a Research University (high research activity). Our directory lists additional information about the research activities of our faculty.

Qualified consulting statisticians at the M.S. and Ph.D. levels are in short supply in the region and, more broadly, in the U.S. An important part of preparing our M.S. and Ph.D. students to meet this critical demand is teaching them how to statistically solve research questions of professionals at NIU and beyond. Currently, this consulting mission is met primarily by our faculty consultant, Professor Lei Hua, who is the director of the department's Statistical Consulting Services (SCS), and a number of graduate assistants.