Golbeck is a professor in the Department of Biostatistics and the associate dean for academic affairs in the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
[3][4] She is chair of the AMS-ASA-MAA-SIAM Data Committee that oversees the Annual Survey of the Mathematical Sciences, as well as a member of the editorial board of Significance Magazine.
[9] She then earned her PhD in biostatistics from the University of California - Berkeley in 1983 with Elizabeth L. Scott as her advisor.
Her dissertation, Statistical Theory of a Life Table for Human Fertility, was supervised by Chin Long Chiang.
[13] In 2011, she was elected to be a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, “For highly influential leadership, especially for her significant organizational and system changes in several academic institutions; for her exemplary mentorship of junior faculty and students; for her pioneering work in health numeracy; and for important contributions to research in public health and medicine.”[14] In 2011, Golbeck was elected to membership of the International Statistical Institute.