MSSP Student Profile: Bruce Mallory
More than ever, the line between where people work and where they live has been blurred.
With a majority of learning taking place in the home, how are the students of the MSSP Program taking on this new challenge?
We caught up with some of our graduate students to see how and where they work as well as how they’re managing their time with the changing landscape of the COVID-19 heath crisis.
Bruce Mallory, 59, started his first semester in the MSSP Program this past semester. He was initially intrigued by the practical aspect of the program and further interested by the consulting that it offers. Mallory decided that Boston University was the perfect fit for his interest in statistics and that the MSSP Program would best serve his interest in statistics and give him the hands-on experience that he wanted. Mallory has lived in Boston since he graduated from Swarthmore College and went on to achieve his Masters in Education from Harvard University. During his time in college he was fascinated by the process of learning and decided that he wanted to be a teacher. Directly after finishing his time in college, he went on to be a high school math teacher for the next 37 years.
All data has a story and Mallory knew that he wanted to help tell it. However, he didn’t always know this. During his time as an undergraduate, he did not feel a particular attraction to statistics. During an interview, he noted that his clearest memory of his statistics lessons were of “watching the science building being constructed out of the window.” Roughly 25 years into his teaching career, Mallory jumped at the opportunity to teach AP Statistics. He saw this as a chance to learn something new.
He found it difficult to answer his student’s most common question in high school: “When am I going to use this?”. While traditional math was very black and white to Mallory, he found statistics to be “all about grey” because it covers all the in between and works to “create a truthful story from data.” Mallory, now retired, taught at Brookline high school up until last March. Teaching is hard, but teaching online is harder. Mallory adjusted to teaching through Zoom for the remainder of the semester but knew that it would be his last year.
As the pandemic has continued, Mallory has found that going on runs and spending time with his wife and close friends has been the best way to balance schoolwork and a modified social life. He remains active in his local Temple as well. When it comes getting his work done for the 
MSSP Program, his workspace consists of a desk in the corner of his room with two monitors. For when he gets tired of sitting, he has a standing desk in another corner of the room for his laptop.
For Bruce Mallory, “statistics is the way to make sense of the world.”
This profile was written by Isaac Schorr.