Chelsea Uggenti is an Assistant Professor (Teaching Stream) in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science (SAS) at the University of Waterloo, and is currently the Director of the SAS Teaching Assistant (TA) Program. She graduated from Wilfrid Laurier University with a BA in Mathematics (2016), The University of Western Ontario (UWO) with a MSc (2017) and PhD in Statistics (2022) with a collaborative specialization in environment and sustainability, and received her A.Stat. designation from the Statistical Society of Canada in 2023.
Chelsea's research interests include multi-state modeling, joint frailty modeling, wildland fire science, and statistical education. She is most passionate about teaching. Her teaching philosophy is grounded in supporting students' journey as they claim their education. She provides opportunities for active learning in the classroom, incorporates universal design for learning (UDL) best practices in course design and assessments, and prioritizes the development of her student's written/oral communication skills. In particular, Chelsea fosters students' communcation of statistical information to individuals in other fields via knowledge translation or knowledge exchange; a crucial skill for interdisciplinary collaboration.
Chelsea served as an instructional assistant and teaching assistant for eight years as both an undergraduate and graduate student. She also spent two years as a TA Training Program Instructor at UWO's Centre for Teaching and Learning. During this time she developed an appreciation for the important role that TAs play in supporting students' learning and assisting instructors' teaching. As part of her doctoral research, Chelsea investigated graduate TA training and development in the mathematical and statistical sciences. Chelsea is driven to assist in the training of teaching assistants – focusing on discipline-specific training – and aims to provide pathways for graduate students to develop their teaching identity.
