In 1950, Statistics as a discipline was represented formally only by a program in the Graduate School, under the direction of a committee of faculty members from various departments where teaching and research in Statistics had been going on, including Economics, Agriculture, Educational Psychology, Public Health (Division of Biostatistics), Mathematics, and Industrial Engineering.

The PhD program had been established in 1943, and a Master's program in 1947. The first PhD degree was granted in 1945 - the only one prior to 1950, although nine more were granted prior to 1958, when a Department of Statistics was established in the College of Liberal Arts. The first department chair was Palmer Johnson, followed in quick succession (after Prof. Johnson's untimely death) by Ingram Olkin, Richard Savage, Leonid Hurwicz (on loan from Economics) and, in 1963, by Bernard Lindgren.

With so many preexisting elementary statistics courses being taught in the various areas of application represented on the graduate committee, the small department offered initially only some courses at the graduate level. In 1963, with a faculty of six, the Department of Statistics took over the three first courses in statistical theory, which had been offered by Economics, IT Math, and CLA Math, as well as the IT Math course in statistics for engineers. The department soon established a number of other courses at the undergraduate level. A bachelor's degree program was established about 1965, offered through CLA, the first BA being awarded in 1968. A BS program, offering a degree through the Institute of Technology, was approved in 1972. In the period from 1950 to 1998, 154 PhD degrees in Statistics were awarded.

In 1969, the School of Agriculture and the Agricultural Extension Service made a move to establish a department of statistics in St. Paul, to serve their needs in consultation and teaching. They and the various other faculties involved in statistics, at Vice-president Shepherd's behest, resolved the issue by proposing a School of Statistics, with presence on both Campuses: St. Paul ( Department of Applied Statistics ) and Minneapolis (Department of Theoretical Statistics). This was established in 1970. Several positions in St. Paul were set up as A-appointments with partial support from the Agricultural Experiment Station. Those holding these positions are responsible for statistical consultation as part of their duties. A third wing of the School of Statistics was the Statistical Consulting Center, a focal point for campus-wide statistical consulting needs, including a Statistical Clinic, available for assisting both graduate students and faculty throughout the University. In 1971, Seymour Geisser joined the University as Director of the School of Statistics, continuing in that position until 2001 and guiding the School as it grew to a faculty of 19. In 2001, the separate departments were disestablished and a unified School was located in Ford Hall on the Minneapolis campus. In recent years the School has been recognized as among the leaders in the field.

In 1993 the National Research Council ranked the School of Statistics 13 among all US Department of Statistics and in the top 10 among public Universities.

The development of teaching and research in statistics at Minnesota occurred during the period when similar developments were underway in many other universities in the United States. Early Statistical Laboratories were established at Iowa State (1933) and California at Berkeley (1938). Some of the earlier departments of statistics are those established at George Washington University (1935), Iowa State (1947), Stanford (1948), North Carolina State (1941), North Carolina (1944), Virginia Polytechnic Institute (1949). The next two decades saw the establishment of departments of statistics at most of the larger universities, recognizing the rapidly increasing role of statistics in government, industry, and research generally, as well as the rapidly growing body of work on the foundations and theory of statistics that established statistics as a discipline not subsumed as a branch of applied mathematics or a particular field of application.

In the 50's and 60's, statistical computations were still often carried out on mechanical calculators, although slow and bulky electronic computers were becoming ever more available. The subsequent developments in electronic computing - in speed, miniturization, and storage, have had an enormous impact on the teaching of statistics, giving free rein to simulation, Bayesian, and likelihood method that had been available in principle, but restrained by computational difficulties. Research in the School of Statistics at Minnesota has kept apace with these developments and its research is in the forefront.

Faculty through the years: