Dr. Beverly Dretzke, Research Associate at CAREI, was invited to teach a professional development class tapping her expertise in applied research and data analysis. The class, “Analyzing Survey Data Using Microsoft® Excel,” was part of the Technical Data Analysis Skills session track at MESI‘s July Summer Institute. Dretzke’s class focused on applications using Excel’s Analysis Toolpak and PivotTable reports. Participants in the class included University of Minnesota graduate students and staff, evaluators from independent research organizations, local government analysts, and staff from area colleges and universities. Much of the content from the professional development class is also available in Dretzke’s publication Statistics with Microsoft® Excel, which is now in its fifth edition with Pearson. Dretzke will be presenting a similar workshop at the 2012 Mid-Western Educational Research Association Conference. The MWERA conference will be held in Evanston, IL in November.