Join us at 3 PM on Friday, September 13, in room 103A Walker Hall to hear Dr. Slate Young present....
Using Interdisciplinary Collaborations to Enhance Mathematics Teaching
In this colloquium, I will discuss two projects I have been working on, one on mathematics curriculum development, and the other on mathematics assessment design, and how those projects have inspired the development of a third. The first project is the National Consortium for Synergistic Undergraduate Mathematics via Multi-institutional Interdisciplinary Teaching Partnerships (SUMMIT-P). SUMMIT-P is a five-year, nine-institution, NSF-funded collaborative research project. The purpose of the project is to implement to recommendations of the Curriculum Foundations Project, which emphasize the need for interdisciplinary collaborations between mathematics and partner disciplines such as Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Health Sciences, etc. The second project, Assessments that Drive Learning (ADL), is one on which I am collaborating with some mathematics faculty members at the United States Military Academy at West Point (USMA). The purpose of this project to re-think and re-design the assessments given in introductory college mathematics courses in order to develop assessments that not only measure students’ higher order thinking skills, but actually promote the development of these skills. I will elaborate on how I am using what I am learning through both of these endeavors to inspire a new project to be implemented at Appalachian State University; a project aimed at the creation of an interdisciplinary partnership with Biology, in order to develop ADLs for Precalculus.