The Southern Ontario Regional Association (SORA)/Southern Ontario Chapter of the ASA held its annual meeting on 2 June 1998, in conjunction with the SSC Annual Meeting in Sherbrooke, Québec.
The first re-instatement of the Graduate Student Seminars was organised by Gena Watteel and Steve Drekic of The University of Western Ontario on 8 May 1998. The event was a great success with 55 registrants from 4 universities. The talks offered by the graduate students were anticipated to be of such a good calibre that faculty members asked to (and did) attend. William Cleveland of Lucent Technologies gave a lively interactive talk which involved the group, and James Stafford of The University of Western Ontario presented his latest work to the students. Next year's event will be held at McMaster, and the seminars in 2000 will be hosted by Toronto.
SORA will support a new initiative being organised by incoming SSC President, David Bellhouse: an undergraduate data analysis competition. A prize will be offered to the best entry from a Southern Ontario University. The winner will be invited to present the work at the following Graduate Student Seminar Day.
Existing regional seminars are advertised through the SORA communications network, and it is hoped that a new regional session with a speaker and concurrent Statistical specialty working groups will be inaugurated during the next year.