A 35-year-old mother of seven children and popular YouTuber, Alena Maze, has set a world record as the first Black person to obtain a PhD in Survey Methodology.
Because of her love of math and health, Maze decided to become a survey statistician, and she wants to increase diversity in surveys.
Maze pursued her PhD in Survey Methods and Statistics at the University of Maryland, College Park, after receiving a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Georgetown University.
She most recently announced on Facebook that she had completed her dissertation defence and had been awarded her PhD, making her the first African American to do so.
“What’s a Survey Methodologist? Well, I’m a survey statistician, so specifically, I research the math behind surveys,” Maze wrote. “Suppose we want more information on how diabetes affects women ages 30–40 to develop better treatment courses. In a perfect world, we would like to send out a survey (i.e., a series of questions) to all women ages 30–40 with diabetes. However, this is not practical for many reasons. So instead, we chose a smaller group (called a sample), say 2,000 women from that same population, to represent the whole population of 30 to 40-year-old women with diabetes.”
Maze has been balancing her doctoral studies with her married life, raising her seven children, and vlogging for almost six years. Along with her children, she and her Korean-American husband, Joseph Lee, create videos for their vlogs in which they discuss their experiences as a multicultural mixed family.
Maze, who is currently 35 years old, attributes her achievement to both her hard work and the help of God.
“At this time, I had a divine contact with God’s Holy Spirit in a way that I can’t wait to share, and I experienced His love. I can do, be, or become anything I want to because of His love, she claimed.
