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Florence Newberger, Advisor When discussing undergraduate research projects in mathematics, the math education majors often get overlooked. Partly this is because they already have the opportunity to get hands-on experience within their major through student teaching and volunteer requirements. Still, it seems that most of these opportunities focus on the process of teaching, and not so much on the content. Faced with 30 math education majors out of my 50 "Discrete Mathematics" students, most of them producing excellent mathematics, I started looking for an opportunity in which they use the abstract mathematics that they are learning now in a way relevant to teachers. I found my solution through the Allegheny Mountain Section N.Ex.T., of which I am a member. Project N.Ex.T. (New Experiences in Teaching) is an M.A.A. professional development program that provides support to persons beginning an academic career. For me, the best part of the organization is the communication; we have an email list on which people can post questions or announcements, as well as teaching ideas and innovations. One of our members announced on the list that she is organizing a session of 15 minute student talks at the Pennsylvania Council of Teachers of Mathematics conference March 15-17, 2001. My undergraduate research project for math education majors involves preparing a lesson for high school students that uses mathematics not typically included the high school curriculum, and presenting it at the conference. The skills of reading and writing mathematics that they have studied in their advanced mathematics courses are invaluable research tools, providing an answer to the forbidden question: "When am I ever going to use this stuff?" Thirteen students participated in this project. Below you will find the titles, descriptions and "action shots" taken during the presentations. The titles of the presentations are linked to the students' written descriptions of their projects, and a booklet containing all of the write-ups can be downloaded below. Jaeson Han and Patrick Kehan's articles were published in the PCTM Magazine in the Spring 2001 issue. We all enjoyed the workshops and sessions we attended at the conference, as well as the opportunity to meet the members of the mathematics education community, who were both welcoming and encouraging. The project was overall a great success. |
Group Picture
Back row: Florence Newberger (faculty advisor), Kathi Wisinski, Andrea Chiarelli, Rebecca Long, Kim Denlinger, Marisa Ialongo, Francine Webster; Front row: David Cooper, Patrick Kehan, Bill Sechrist, Jaeson Han; Not pictured: Nick Fox, Denise Heffner and Jon Hess |
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