I have an autoresponder on all year round with answers to FAQs, useful links, and more. You can check the latest version here. Last updated: 2023-04-10.
I get a lot of emails. A lot of similar emails. So, I have an email auto-response on all-year round.
Below is a lightly reformatted version of my current message, just in case you find it easier to access here.
Please note: This is for my U of T email address. Queries to my personal email or other emails do not received this.
Last updated 2023-04-10
Hi there,
This autoresponder has some personal news and some answers to Frequently Asked Questions. You can also read a version of this message online here.
Personal news: My time with U of T is coming to an end this summer, June 2023. I’ll miss the wonderful DoSS community greatly, but my partner and I have decided to move to be closer to family. I will still be available until the end of June, but not taking on new initiatives as I wrap things up. 🇨🇦➡️🇳🇿
Final grades: I will not adjust an individual’s final grade unless I have made a mistake in your calculation. Request to change a grade because you want a higher one, or because you’re close to a certain GPA threshold or program requirement cannot be considered.
Graduate school references: Please read my personal policy here to get a sense of under what circumstances I could write for you, but basically, a good mark in one class is not sufficient and you need to have at least two ‘activities’ with me. If you believe you meet my basic criteria, you can request a reference from me here. I will then accept or decline based on the information provided.
Research/work study/teaching assistant opportunities:
See the Department website. The main round of TA recruitment occurs during the summer but there are occasionally emergency postings.
Looking for a project to build up your portfolio?
Try a previous STA303 final project. Previous students have successfully used these projects in applications and interviews for internships/jobs.
2021: Consulting for fake company Black Saber Software, analyzing their hiring and employee data and creating a report appropriate for the Board of Directors on the topic of gender parity in hiring, wages and promotion. See here for client emails, other info, and how to get the data (see bottom of page).
2022: Consulting for fake company MINGAR, analyzing customer data for their Canadian fitness tracker/watch market and investigating a concern about poorer product performance for users with darker skin. This project also includes some modern data skills, like accessing an API to retrieve a large volume of data, scraping a table from a website into a usable dataset and using a licensed postal code conversion file for data linkage. See the client email and general info (Step 5 might be most helpful), and access the data and template on JupyterHub (U of T only) or GitHub.
I also always recommend TidyTuesday datasets and you may find Chapter 4 of Building a Career in Data Science interesting (the authors have made it available for free on that website).
Masters/PhDs: I am not taking on Masters or PhD students. Please see the graduate section of our Department website for more information: https://www.statistics.utoronto.ca/graduate.
If your email is answered by one of the topics covered above, please consider this automatic reply my response. Please note that this is especially the case for references and graduate study inquiries.
If your question isn’t answered here, I will respond when I can. Please allow at least 48 hours, Monday–Friday, for a response before following up.
Best,
Liza
Doing okay? Reach out for support!
My Student Support Program – My SSP offers mental health support for all U of T students. Free, confidential, immediate support. Available 24/7 in multiple languages. Download the My SSP App or call 1-844-451-9700. uoft.me/myssp
Call Good2Talk, a free, confidential helpline for people in Ontario. Professional counselling, information and referrals for mental health, addictions and well-being, 24/7/365 1-866-925-5454