Mine Dogucu

A: Please know that I care deeply about your questions, but like everyone else, my time is exceptionally limited. Because my primary capacity must go toward my students and core job duties, I am usually unable to provide individual advice or troubleshooting over email to folks outside of my work.

Often, when a community member asks a great question, I save it for a deep dive later. For instance, when a colleague from Argentina asked me how to write recommendation letters for US institutions, I couldn’t reply immediately—but a few months later, I turned my thoughts into a dedicated blog post to share widely.

Before reaching out, please check my public resources, as I may have already answered your question in detail:

• Hello Data Science (For introductory data science workflows)
• Bayes Rules! (For applied Bayesian modeling and pedagogy)
• Data Pedagogy (For blog posts on data, teaching, and academic tips, including my guide on writing recommendation letters)

Hopefully, you will find exactly what you are looking for there. If you don't, I may not be able to send an individual reply right now, but please know that I read every message and your question may very well inspire a future blog post and help others as well!

A: For every solo-authored manuscript I submit in a year, I try to review three manuscripts to ensure the free labor of peer review is paid forward (similar ratio based on multi-authored manuscripts with number of authors considered).

However, I only review for journals that are either open-access or that I have personally submitted to. I cannot justify reviewing manuscripts for free if the final work will be locked behind a paywall. Furthermore, I will not create a username and a password in a review portal just to state that I am unavailable. If your invitation doesn't meet these guidelines, thank you for understanding why I must decline.

A: I am deeply committed to service within the profession, but I am currently at absolute capacity. I currently hold multiple active service roles within the American Statistical Association (ASA), including serving as the chair-elect of the Section on Statistics and Data Science Education (SSDSE) and as the lead organizer of the ASA International Data Quest.

Because these existing commitments demand significant focus and energy, I cannot take on any additional service roles at this time. Thank you for thinking of me, and I appreciate your understanding.

A: I am occasionally available for media inquiries, podcast guest spots, or commentary on statistics education, data science workflows, and pedagogical accessibility, depending entirely on my current schedule and capacity.

To help me determine if I can participate, please make sure your initial inquiry includes the following details:

• The specific topic, theme, or angle of the piece or episode.
• The format of the engagement (e.g., live podcast, recorded audio, written commentary via email, or a phone/Zoom interview).
• The intended audience and the platform or publication where the content will be hosted.
• Your hard deadline or preferred recording/interview timeframe.
• The expected time commitment required from me.

Please send these details directly to my academic email address. If the request fits my availability and expertise, I will get back to you to coordinate next steps. If you don't hear back from me within a week, please accept my apologies, as it simply means I do not have the bandwidth to participate at this time.

A: I understand that marketing these textbooks is an essential part of your role, and I respect the work you do. However, I receive a high volume of persistent inquiries from publisher representatives and am unable to meet in person or consider new adoptions.

In my courses, I strictly select curriculum materials that align with specific pedagogical goals, heavily prioritizing open-access resources. Because my syllabi and reading lists are intentionally structured around these open frameworks, I do not utilize standard commercial textbooks. Please respect my time and curriculum choices and kindly remove my email address from your marketing and adoption inquiry lists.

A: I receive a high volume of requests from educational technology companies, but due to my current teaching and academic commitments, I am unable to schedule meetings with product representatives.

Please note my policy regarding educational technology:

• Adoptions: Course adoption is a separate matter. I do not adopt tools based on sales pitches or scheduled demos. If an ed-tech tool is a good fit for my curriculum, I will generally already know about it through conferences, social media, professional networks, and community use. I do not adopt new products early on due to lack of stability and lack of resources online.
• Product Evaluation & Feedback: If you would like me to evaluate your tool or provide feedback, this is treated strictly as an external professional engagement. You can submit a consulting request outlining your specific needs to mdogucu@gmail.com, and I can provide you with a consulting quote. To ensure a consulting route is not used to basically give a sales pitch, I avoid to consult on any products that could potentially be sold to my own students or to my institution to be used in my courses to avoid any conflict of interest.

A: Yes, I welcome opportunities to collaborate with corporate companies, school districts, and public agencies on a specialized consulting basis, provided the scope aligns with my expertise, current capacity, and institutional commitments.

Up to a certain degree, I am available for professional consulting engagements, strategic advisory roles, and targeted instructional design contracts in the following areas:

• Train-the-Trainer Consulting Frameworks: Designing and delivering custom pedagogical consulting for organizations to scale their data education. This includes specialized training for high school teachers launching data initiatives, professional development for university teaching assistants and instructors, and instructional mastery frameworks for workplace corporate trainers.
• Curriculum Development Consulting: Advising institutions on data literacy curriculum design, mathematical and computational readiness, optimizing high-school-to-college pipeline transitions, and structuring onboarding consulting programs for junior data scientists in the workplace.
• Technical Workshops: Delivering corporate or institutional workshops on specialized topics such as exploratory data analysis, computational workflows, data visualization, and reproducible data science practices.
• Questions on Data Science, Education, and Higher Education: Advising ed tech companies, publishers, recruiters, and other organizations at the intersection of these topics.

If you would like to explore a consulting partnership, please reach out to my personal email at mdogucu@gmail.com with a detailed overview of your organization's specific needs, expected timeline, estimated scope, and budget. I will review the details and follow up if the project matches my expertise and current availability.

Please note that if your organization operates with limited resources but is driven by a strong public mission—especially one that aligns with the world I aim to build through my work—budget should not be a barrier to reaching out. While I am eager to support meaningful initiatives whenever possible, please understand that this is not a guarantee of acceptance; my time remains strictly limited, even if the inspiring opportunities in our community are unlimited.

Regardless of how big or small the budget is, If you don't hear back from me within a week, please accept my apologies, as it simply means I do not have the bandwidth to support your project at this time.