I am writing to voice my sincere appreciation for the services provided at the Statistical Cross-disciplinary Collaboration and Consulting Lab (SC3L) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). My name is Jennifer McAtee and I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences within the College of Education and Human Sciences. I was having a difficult time applying some of the concepts I had learned in classes to my projects. I reached out to a fellow doctoral student for assistance, and she referred me to the SC3L.
The majority of my time at the SC3L was spent working with Brianna Hitt. Brianna understood that I was a new SAS user; at the beginning she walked me through some basic coding concepts and showed me what the data looked like after running the code. She provided numerous resources so that I could familiarize myself with the concepts outside of our meeting time. I became more confident in writing the code to create variables, and during our meetings she would troubleshoot any issues I was having or correct any errors I had made.
Next, Brianna helped me to write the code to get the appropriate output to fill in my pre-designed tables. She then walked me through how to develop the models, and was meticulous in providing detailed explanations and notes to refer back to. Through experiential learning, I gained the knowledge and experience necessary to become a confident SAS user. Most importantly, I developed a true understanding of the projects I was working on from an analytic point-of-view. Brianna helped me determine the most appropriate values to report for a given analysis, and she provided advice on how to interpret those values for write-up in my manuscript.
The first project that I approached Brianna with was a secondary data analysis using a large data set. She found a wealth of online resources specific and critical to the analysis of this particular data. Without her going above and beyond by doing some extra research into the matter, I would have not understood how to analyze this complex sample design data. The second project I approached Brianna with was a primary data analysis from a pilot study. With her help, I learned how to analyze within- and between- group changes and interaction effects. Not only did she teach me how to develop the models, she made sure that I had a thorough understanding of why everything was placed in the model. Because of Brianna’s valuable assistance, I have been able to complete several other projects on my own and feel confident in my abilities. As I prepare to graduate this summer (August 2019), I know I am adequately prepared to defend my dissertation and I owe a debt of gratitude to Brianna and the SC3L.
In addition to Brianna’s assistance with the aforementioned, I wanted to point out a few traits that I was particularly appreciative of. Brianna has an abundance of patience and her attention-to-detail helped her catch many little errors that were delaying my progress. She is meticulously organized and documents everything, which has proven to be priceless when I needed to go back and look at something we had previously discussed. Additionally, she is very responsive to email and has responded outside of working hours, which I did not expect yet greatly appreciated when I was trying to meet a deadline.
In closing, I truly appreciate the high-caliber students that the SC3L employs and the valuable service that is provided to UNL students. I highly recommend the SC3L to any student needing guidance with their projects. In particular, I wish to thank Brianna and Kelsey for their professionalism and the timely assistance they have provided over the past couple of years. I wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors.
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Thank you,
Jennifer McAtee, M.A., M.S.
Doctoral Candidate, Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
