Transition Math Project

Summer Math Institute - 2007:
State, National & International Experts

Stuart Boersma is Professor of Mathematics, Chair, Central Washington University and author of "A Mathematician's Look at Foucault's Pendulum", a calculus-based analysis of the apparent rotation of a pendulum as the earth rotates under it

Jo Boaler is now the Marie Curie Professor at the University of Sussex, England. At London University, she was the deputy director of the national consortium for mathematics assessment and testing in the UK. She managed a team of people who researched and designed mathematics assessments for all 14 year-olds in England and Wales. Between 1998 and 2006, Jo was the professor of mathematics education at Stanford University, California.

Jo conducted her masters and PhD at King's College, London University - the latter won the national award for the 'best PhD in education'. At King's College, Jo was a researcher and lecturer, and designed and implemented a research based teacher education course.
Jo is the author of several books. Her first 'Experiencing School Mathematics' won a national book award in the UK and has been reprinted in the US. She has conducted 2 award-winning studies of mathematics teaching and learning, one in the UK and one in the US. Both studies were longitudinal and she followed groups of students, over several years of schooling, who were learning through different teaching approaches. The aim of both studies was to understand the relationships between teaching and learning, including a focus upon equity. Both studies have resulted in several publications.

Linda Fisher is Director of the Mathematics Assessment Collaborative (MAC), at the Robert Noyce Foundation. MAC is a group of 40 school districts in the San Francisco Bay Area that work together to do performance assessment, professional development, and in-class coaching for mathematics. Linda oversees the administration, scoring, and analysis of approximately 70,000 student papers a year in grades 3 through 10.

She authors an annual Tools for Teachers, which provides an interactive analysis of the data for each task, to help teachers reflect on student learning and improve instruction. She also organizes and helps plan the professional development program for the school districts and is currently working on an in-class action research project. She has recently authored a couple of articles for Assessing Mathematical Proficiency, edited by Alan Schoenfeld and published by Cambridge Press.

Susan Hudson Hull is the Director of Mathematics for the Charles A. Dana Center. Dr. Hull has led Dana Center mathematics initiatives for ten years, working with state and national leaders as well as with districts and teachers, and has led the development of many resources and publications for implementation of the state mathematics standards.

Currently she is project director for Ensuring Teacher Quality: Algebra I and Algebra II, an initiative from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and the Texas Education Agency, and co-project director for Supporting and Strengthening Standards-based Mathematics Teacher Preparation.

She also provides technical assistance to mathematics teachers in Texas and nationally and works with Dana Center mathematics leader networks, including the Urban Mathematics Leadership Network.

Previously Susan served as the mathematics director for the Texas Statewide Systemic Initiative (SSI) and the Mathematics Center for Educator Development. In these roles, Dr. Hull worked with the mathematics team and other statewide educators to coordinate the development of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) in mathematics and resources for the implementation of the TEKS. She also coordinated development of TEXTEAMS mathematics professional development institutes, served as director for a statewide project to implement the Connected Mathematics Project materials for middle school mathematics, and served on many statewide committees for mathematics education, including serving as program chair for the Conference for the Advancement of Mathematics Teaching (2002). Dr. Hull managed the Dana Center mathematics preservice project and co-authored the Guidelines for the Mathematical Preparation of Prospective Elementary Teachers.

Kurt Kreith has had a special interest in the teaching of mathematics for all of his professional career. He has authored two books with his emeritus colleague, Gulbank Chakerian. One of these, titled Iterative Algebra and Dynamic Modeling, takes the teaching of algebra into the computer age. A student version which can be used as a class textbook, is “Teaching Mathematics Using Technology.”

More recently, Kreith has helped develop a Davis campus summer program for motivated, academically talented high school students. Called COSMOS, this program is one of three sites of the California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science. It is generally patterned after the European/International schools for special studies and, more specifically, after the state-funded California State Summer School for the Arts. Students completing grades 8 through 12 are eligible to apply to this program. Those selected are among the brightest and most motivated students across the state who wish to learn advanced mathematics and science and prepare for careers in these areas.

In addition, he serves as statewide co-director of the California Mathematics Project, an in-service program for teachers which is part of the California Subject Matter Projects funded through the Office of the President. For Kurt Kreith, retirement does not mean slowing down, but rather having more time to do what he really wants to do in updating the teaching of mathematics and science.

David Lippman has been teaching mathematics at Pierce College for seven years. He created WAMAP.org in 2006 to fill the need for an easy to use, freely available assessment and course management system that addressed the specialized needs of mathematics instruction.

Katherine K. Merseth is the Senior Lecturer on Education and Director of the Teacher Education Program at Harvard University. Professor Merseth's research and writing concentrate on leadership, teacher education, mathematics education, case-method instruction, and charter schools. She has been a member of the Education faculty since 1985. She was the founding executive director of the Harvard Children's Initiative, a university-wide program focusing on the needs of children. At HGSE, Merseth was the founding director of the School Leadership Program and the Teacher Education Program.

She was the principal investigator of the Mathematics Case Development Project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and co-principal investigator of the Teacher Education Addressing Mathematics and Science in Boston and Cambridge Project, also funded by the NSF. Kay recently concluded a three year grant leading a Massachusetts Math and Science Partnership working with middle school mathematics teachers using an innovative approach of classroom based cases. Currently she serves as PI on the NSF funded Noyce Scholars in math and science program and just recently launched a two year study to examine best practices in high performing charter schools that focus on students at risk.

Laura Moore-Mueller received a BS in Mathematics and Philosophy from University of Puget Sound and an MS in mathematics from Oregon State University. Laura has taught at GRCC for 20 years, actively pursuing reform calculus and pre-calculus for the past 17 years. Increasing communication with local school districts has been a passion for her for over 10 years. Laura’s motto: think student, and then decide.

Currently the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Olympic College, Joanne Munroe is nationally recognized for her work in creating and sustaining equitable, classrooms and developing innovative, engaging, student-centered curricula (particularly around mathematical reasoning and math education). Her emphasis is translating mathematical concepts for non-mathematicians and she views academic disciplines as “cultures”. Her research and practice look historically and developmentally at the factors that drive our understandings about the nature of mathematical reasoning and the ways in which culture shapes and defines mathematics and mathematics education. She looks to think“outside the box” and. her interdisciplinary mathematical reasoning courses have been very successful at introducing students and teachers to new ways of looking at mathematics.

A Fulbright scholar, a cultural anthropologist, and a committed interdisciplinarian, Joanne has been involved in all phases of the Transition Math Project. and she also co-facilitated (with Dr. Mike Gilbert) a summer workshop for the GEAR UP program. Passionately committed to teaching and learning, Joanne frames classroom interactions in Meyers-Briggs types, builds curricula around multiple intelligences, and is a practitioner of bell hooks’ pedagogy of hope.

Dave Pavelchek, M.P.A., M.A. Senior Research Manager, Washington State University, Social & Economic Sciences Research Center (SESRC). Since founding the Olympia office of WSU’s Social & Economic Sciences Research Center in 1999, Dave Pavelchek has been providing research, evaluation and information management services to state and local government agencies, primarily in the education and training field.

Nina Potter received her Ph.D. from the College of Education at UW in Measurement, Statistics and Research Design. She currently works for the Shoreline School District as the Director of Assessment and Student nformation. Nina has three children, a six year old son, Aaron, and four year old identical twin girls, Lacey and Talia.

During thirty or so years teaching at Seattle Central, Jan Ray has taken part in a number of coordinated studies programs linking mathematics with such disciplines as biology, English, geology, literature, physics and sociology. These experiences taught her the value of interdisciplinary studies programs for students and faculty alike. For students, they provide a natural context in which mathematics comes alive and has meaning. For Jan as a faculty member, they were an opportunity to learn discipline specific pedagogies that she feels increased her effectiveness in the classroom.

Jan Has co-authored a math anxiety text and co-led a variety of reform efforts in mathematical education including the Pacific Northwest Calculus Consortium and the NSF-funded Cooperative Learning in Undergraduate Mathematics Education and served on the Steering Committee for the National Numeracy Network.

Her current work centers on issues of quantitative literacy in civil life and throughout the college curriculum. She also serves as a co-director of Project ACCCESS, a national mentoring and professional development program for new two-year college mathematics faculty sponsored by The Mathematical Association of America and the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges.

Eric Schultz is a Mathematics Instructor and Department Chair at Walla Walla Community College. Twenty years of mathematics teaching has Eric always searching for solutions that narrow the gap between the promise of technology in education and the reality of technology in education. Eric is a dedicated guide through Mathematica’s palettes, packages, and commands to help streamline your regular everyday tasks.

Uri Treisman is professor of mathematics at The University of Texas at Austin and executive director of the Charles A. Dana Center. Professor Treisman has received numerous honors and awards for his efforts to strengthen American education. For his research at the University of California at Berkeley of the factors that support high achievement among minority students in calculus, he received the 1987 Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievement in American Higher Education. In 1992, he was named a MacArthur Fellow. In December 1999, he was named as one of the outstanding leaders in higher education in the 20th century by the magazine Black Issues in Higher Education.

Professor Treisman is actively engaged in designing programs that strengthen the teaching and learning of mathematics and science from kindergarten to graduate school. He currently serves on the advisory boards of the Merck Institute for Science Education and the Noyce Center for Professional Development. He is a founder of the Urban Mathematics Leadership Network, a national organization dedicated to strengthening mathematics instruction in America's largest cities. He serves on the National Research Council's committee to create a Strategic Education Research Plan for the United States.

He is a founding board member of Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID), an award-winning public school program now active in more than 1,000 middle and high schools in the United States and in most of the U.S. military schools outside the United States.

Robin Washam has spent more than 25 years teaching math and taking advantage of professional development opportunities such as the Woodrow Wilson Summer Session at Princeton, where participants studied mathematical modeling and applications (many examples of which were incorporated into the development of the Project TIME senior course).

Robin spent five years traveling with a team to several universities training teachers in the pedagogy and the mathematics involved in her summer work at Princeton.With the help of Green River Community College, she has taught a similar "College in the High School" course at Kentlake High School.

For the past six years, Robin has been a math specialist at the Puget Sound Educational Service District, now working as a School Improvement Facilitator and math coach trainer for OSPI's School Improvement Assistance Program

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Transition Math Project