by Dr. Jodie Guest 92PH
After 25 years of dedicated service to students, David G. Kleinbaum retired from Emory University in September 2017. When trying to define what his career at Emory looked like, I calculated he had 24 person-years of follow-up, had contributed to 24 qualifying exams in Epidemiology, taught 2 primary classes a total of 49 times which is approximately 1,450 lectures, and had given us 365 days of colorful shirts each year.
Before arriving at Emory, Dr. K had spent 21 years at University of North Carolina. And was a statistical consultant at the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention for 27 years, most while he was at Emory. He has authored several textbooks and published journal articles on statistical and epidemiologic methods that are continually used and referenced worldwide.
His passion has always been to creatively communicate concepts and methods to students and health/medical professionals without specialized undergraduate or graduate training in mathematics or statistics. To quote Dr K., “The thing that makes it exciting is that it is not easy to do. As a teacher who has been teaching for 45 years, and of the things I’m really good at is adapting myself to my audience when I’m teaching and being able to tailor my presentation or style to the circumstances. I am an improviser. I get in there and feel the audience out.”
