Barbara Sirotnik

Dr. Barbara Sirotnik has been a Professor of Statistics, Business Analytics, and Supply Chain Management at California State University, San Bernardino since 1980. She holds a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of California, Riverside, and her additional areas of expertise include operations research, information management, data driven decision making, computer programming, and research methods. She has won her college’s “Faculty of the Year” award or “Excellence in Teaching” award five times, and has been nominated for the university’s Outstanding Professor award four times. She has taught mega-sections of undergraduate introductory statistics; upper division classes in supply chain management, quality management, and computer programming; and graduate classes in data driven decision making and quality management.

Most of Dr. Sirotnik’s professional work has been in the area of applied research (as opposed to “basic” research). She co-founded the campus’s Institute of Applied Research in 1985, and as Director she has conducted hundreds of applied research and consulting projects for public agencies, business organizations, and individuals within the university’s service area and beyond. Those services include: economic forecasting, polling, strategic planning, health needs assessments, marketing research, and a lot more. To cite just a few examples of studies in the Inland Empire: she has conducted quality of life surveys for the counties of Riverside and San Bernardino, for the City of Riverside, and the City of Hemet. The Institute has been involved in the mandatory three-year community health needs assessment for Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center. At the state level, she has worked on a project through the California Governor’s Office (GO-Biz) to map the defense supply chain in California. She has conducted a nationwide study in information sharing in the military for the Department of Defense.

Based on projects such as those listed above, she has co-authored applied research articles on a variety of diverse topics including: the aging workforce, the toxic triangle in academia, challenges and rewards of being a family caregiver, attributes related to attitudes toward people with disabilities, effect of question format on survey findings, ethnic differences in students’ approaches to learning, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and training modalities for bioterrorism preparedness. In addition, she has authored and co-authored theoretical articles in the areas of paired comparisons and contingency table analysis.

Finally, Dr. Sirotnik has served on a variety of committees at the department, college, and university levels including Curriculum, Assurance of Learning, Strategic Planning, Faculty Evaluation, Recruitment, and more.