Career Question: Degree or Certificate in Data Science or Statistics [C] [Q]
I am a counseling professor (so I have an MA and a PhD in Counseling) and have obviously taken a few stats classes along the way but by no means have "mastered" the content. I am wanting to get sharper on these things and, being a professor, it would make most sense if I can add another degree to the mix to " better qualify" to teach our own research stats class (it would just look better for accreditation purposes). I have been looking through options and there seems to be some strong (and justified) opinions about different options.
I am primarily interested in improving skills in research design and quantitative/qualitative analysis of data so that I can better supervise Counseling PhD dissertations and be able to point out poorly interpreted data. We are generally seeing a lot of multiple regression analysis oriented dissertations but I want to be able to push students deeper into the data and even design more complex research projects to explore implications of different variables, interventions, and comorbidities in mental illnesses.
This being the case, what would you great-minds-of-reddit suggest? Should I look more towards MS in Statistics or Data Science? Is a certification a better place to just jump in? There is a strong chance my school pays for the training/degree as well if I ask nicely enough.
I am not really interested in the machine learning or AI modeling stuff and I see that this is advertised in a lot of programs but I understand if it is unavoidable at this point.