Congratulations to the thousands of students across CUNY who earn degrees this month, many of them in math.  This interview features one graduate, Mayte Rojas.

AT: Mayte, first of all, congratulations on your graduation!  You earned a Master’s of Science degree in Mathematics from City College.  How does it feel to accomplish this?

MR: I feel empowered having been able obtain an MS in Mathematics from City College.  At the beginning of my graduate career, I felt both intimidated and excited to be able to start this new journey at City College, but having been able to overcome any fear that I had at the beginning of this journey and fully enjoying my learning experience here at CCNY until the end is amazing.

AT: You were an undergraduate math major at College of Staten Island.  What drew you to math in the first place?

MR: I was first drawn to math in middle school when I learned algebra. I felt as if I had just gained a magic power being able to solve for an unknown variable. Compared to other classes, I appreciated the clear structure of math.

AT: What was the best part, academically, of your experience at City College?

MR:  The best part has been able to study under very diverse professors. As a minority, one can’t help but to find inspiration in those who have already accomplished so much.

AT: There are a lot of initiatives these days about diversity recruiting into STEM fields.  What is your perspective on this as a Latina in the math world?

MR: I think that this recruitment will be very successful because I believe that being Latina helped shape my interest in math. I believe that there is already a lot if interest in STEM fields among diverse populations, and with the right support at the right time this interest will flourish.

AT: Mayte, you mentioned before how your professors inspired you. You also teach undergraduate courses at CUNY, and I’m sure you’re an inspiration to your students.  Thanks for sharing your thoughts for this conversation.

Congratulations to the Class of 2016!

In his September 2015 Equity and Excellence address, Mayor de Blasio presented plans for reform at the New York City Department of Education.  Two of them are explicitly math related: Algebra for All and Computer Science for All.

Algebra for All: By fall 2021, all students will have access to algebra in 8th grade, and there will be academic supports in place earlier in middle school to build greater algebra readiness by 8th grade. Every student will complete algebra no later than 9th grade. Research shows that students who successfully pass algebra no later than 9th grade are more likely to graduate from high school and attend and graduate from college.

Computer Science for All: By 2025, every student will receive computer science education in elementary, middle, and high school. In addition to teaching coding, robotics, web design, and more, computer science courses will help foster teamwork, problem solving, critical thinking, and creativity.

CUNY is engaged in partnership with the NYC DOE on both of these initiatives.  In addition to other strategies, faculty in Teacher Education, Math and Computer Science will contribute to professional development plans for DOE teachers. Roll out for these innovative initiatives is still being imagined, and CUNY is committed to supporting the teaching and learning of students in these areas from P-12 and on through college.

Congratulations to Professor Jonathan Cornick, whose April 24th blog post was reprinted in The Washington Post this week under the headline “Should all students be proficient in algebra to graduate?”  The CUNY Math Blog was hyperlinked in the article, which is great exposure for the good teaching, research and thinking featured here.

On Friday, May 15, the Office of Academic Affairs hosted a reception celebrating math education at CUNY and honoring the student winners of the 2015 CUNY Math Challenge as well as the faculty of the inaugural Calculus Boot Camp.

In her opening remarks, Interim Executive Vice Chancellor and University Provost Julia Wrigley welcomed the audience and noted the importance of math at CUNY. She spoke about Math Matters, a university-wide initiative supporting all levels of math education, from remediation to pre-calculus to the highest levels of scholarship. The Math Challenge and Calculus Boot Camp, she said, are two examples of how Math Matters is promoting excellence and achievement in the teaching and learning of math at CUNY.

CUNY’s 2015 Math Challenge Grand Prize Winner Gabor Horowitz, Brooklyn College, with Ted Brown, Executive Director, CUNY Institute for Software Design and Development

CUNY Math Challenge Committee Chair and Queens College Professor Ted Brown, who is also the executive director of CUNY Institute of Software Design and Development, spoke about the sixth annual Math Challenge, which engaged hundreds of undergraduate students from CUNY campuses across the city. He explained how this year’s competition took place in four rounds, featuring questions of increasing degrees of difficulty. The first and third rounds were conducted online, and the second and fourth consisted of in-person exams. Twenty-one winners, hailing from ten different community and senior colleges, received cash prizes and were presented with certificates of achievement during the reception. Grand Prize winner Gabor Horowitz, a senior at Brooklyn College, spoke about his love for math problems and his appreciation for the Math Challenge as an opportunity to be inspired by fellow CUNY students. See the full list of winners and their bios.

Mari Watanabe-Rose, a senior research associate in CUNY’s Central Office, spoke about the inaugural Calculus Boot Camp, which took place in July and August 2014 and provided hundreds of CUNY students with the opportunity to enhance their math skills before enrolling in calculus courses in the fall semester. Watanabe-Rose presented certificates of appreciation to faculty members from Baruch College, Brooklyn College, City College, LaGuardia Community College, Lehman College and New York City College of Technology, whose hard work and dedication to their students were essential to making this program’s first year successful. Professor Mahdi Majidi-Zolbanin from LaGuardia Community College spoke about his experience with Calculus Boot Camp, particularly how it encouraged him to think differently about his approach to teaching calculus and ways of helping students grasp the concepts in a short time frame.

The Math Reception highlighted just two of the many ways that CUNY’s students and faculty are engaging with mathematics. Learn more about these and other math initiatives at CUNY.

For any community college or senior college students graduating this June as math majors, here’s an opportunity for a full-time job working with kindergartners in math clubs:
http://us9.campaign-archive2.com/?u=2af05d7563703c70578fd3958&id=c16942e230

Work experience with young children is a plus, and training will be provided by Bank Street College of Education. This is part of a research study with MDRC, so those hired will have an opportunity to contribute to a research project, too.

Please share news of this opportunity with faculty and students!

More than 60% of students entering CUNY community colleges place into a remedial mathematics course. For the vast majority, that means they must pass an elementary algebra course and the CUNY Elementary Algebra Final Exam (CEAFE) to exit remediation and to have any chance of every obtaining a degree. Each semester, more than 50% of students in elementary algebra do not pass the course.

But why is algebra so important that we decree every college student must demonstrate current proficiency in a fairly rigid list of topics and skills before being able to graduate regardless of major? One very common answer is the tautology “Because algebra is part of a well-rounded education.” But where are the data and evidence to support this claim? Indeed, most conversations I have about algebra outside of academia tend to include the phrase “What was the point? I’ve never used it in ‘real life’”.

The truth usually lies somewhere in between, and to me, it seems that the answer really depends on what you consider to be algebra. If algebra is the monolithic list of topics that make up most college algebra courses, then I would agree with those asking “what is the point?” But most, if not all, of us use numeracy and mathematical skills in every day life, and so I wanted to know which are the important concepts from typical algebra courses that we use in “real life”?

As someone who teaches developmental and college algebra, researches abstract algebra and most recently helps his daughter with her algebra homework, I am fairly certain I use more algebra on a daily basis than the average person. So I decided to ask friends, family, colleagues in other academic disciplines, and even strangers on Twitter, how they use math and which concepts and skills are important to them in their work and daily life.

Here are some of the things they told me:

“in my day to day work/home, mostly % and unit rates/ratios, descriptive stats.”

“…as an insurance underwriter I spend my day working with percentages”

“Steamfitters use math for calculating piping offsets, structural supports, pipe fabrication, etc…… trig……. Some Calculus when dealing with refrigerants, chemicals, gasses,etc.”

“Interest rates for loans and credit cards. Budgeting for household expenditure.. Being able to understand how badly journalists and politicians use statistics.”

“Supermarket stuff every day : is X a better deal than Y based on volume and cost?”

“Working out how much paint to buy according to size of walls….. square metres!”

“In music, tempo, time signature, note values, etc.”

“Figuring out the damn tip on a restaurant bill. (Or who owes what in large parties). Life budgets. How much IS 20% off of that dress?”

“Algebra for Cooking: Scaling up/down and going from rectilinear to circular pans in recipes. “

“Adapting a knitting pattern to a new size that wasn’t included in the directions”

“We found ourselves delving into trig and Pythagoras recently working out an order for shutters for an eight part bay window.”

“trying to understand the long-term consequences of taking the student loan v. helping [our children] out….”

Summarizing, almost everything fell into these categories:

1. Percentages – Almost everyone said this
2. Proportions – this encompasses unit conversion skills related to supplies, materials, costs, nutrition, health, etc
3. Descriptive Statistics – finding averages, describing distributions as well as being able to understand and interpret data and charts from business, politics, media, etc
4. Geometry and Trigonometry
5. Inferential statistics.

And in general, the common theme was in using arithmetic and logical reasoning skills in context rather than abstractly. Certainly, some skills from a standard algebra curriculum are needed for the above. I would say:

1. Arithmetic, including order of operations – with a calculator!
2. Simplifying linear expressions.
3. Solving linear equations.
4. Solving proportions, including percentage problems.
5. Geometry including area and volume.
6. Radicals including Pythagorean theorem.

However, I don’t believe operations on nonlinear polynomials, factoring and solving quadratic equations, simplifying complicated exponent expressions, and solving radical and rational equations are vital in order to master the aforementioned skills people use.

So the question is this: Why should all students be proficient in algebra to graduate, when an overwhelming percentage of successful adults in professional and even academic careers never use much of it? Before I offer my answer, a couple of caveats.

1. Students on STEM degree paths need algebra.
2. We should not create a two-tier system, which bars students from algebra. Every student should have the opportunity to take algebra if they wish to, and to be informed of the implications of not taking it and of the alternatives.

But what about the third type of student who is generally capable of the academic work required to obtain a degree in a non-STEM field and be a productive member of society, but is prevented or delayed from doing so because they failed elementary algebra?

In November 2014, The American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges issued a position statement on “The Appropriate Use of Intermediate Algebra as a Prerequisite Course”  that concluded

“NOW, THEREFORE, It is the position of AMATYC that: Prerequisite courses other than intermediate algebra can adequately prepare students for courses of study that do not lead to calculus.”

Some progress has been made, notably through the California Acceleration Project and their pre-Statistics Courses. At CUNY, there are some Community Colleges experimenting with Carnegie’s Statway and Quantway, as well as the very promising experiment mainstreaming remedial students into a Statistics course conducted by former EVC Lexa Logue and Mari Watanabe-Rose (pdf link).

But significant resistance remains, largely in the form of the aforementioned proclamation that “algebra is part of a well-rounded education.” I believe that we must continue to design and implement alternative pathways in mathematics to better serve the students who traditionally get stuck in remediation; Either through alternative remediation, or preferably in mainstreaming those students into an existing credit-bearing Quantitative Reasoning or Statistics course with extra support for their basic skills. These courses should be supported by proven pedagogy and contextualization of the topics.

Furthermore, I believe such decisions and designs must not rest solely with Mathematics departments, which are service departments in Community Colleges, but in communication with faculty in other academic departments who know what mathematical skills are required to be successful in their courses. We should partner with other disciplines, by collaboratively developing learning outcomes and sharing pedagogical techniques, to help them to support our students’ mathematical learning throughout their education. They deserve nothing less.

The 2015 CUNY Math Challenge is open to any matriculated undergraduate student; registration is open through February 18, 2015.  Sponsored by the Office of Academic Affairs and the CUNY Institute for Software Design and Development (CISDD) and supported by the Office of the Chancellor, the CUNY Math Challenge seeks to identify and reward CUNY’s best math talent.  Please encourage students to register!  Cash prizes range from $100 to $2,500.

The contest begins online at 9 am on Monday, February 9, 2015 and ends after an in-person exam at 10 am on Sunday, April 26, 2015.   Winners will be recognized at a reception in May.

Register at http://math.cisdd.org

CUNY’s Office of Academic Affairs has released the 2015 Application for the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Mathematics Instruction.

Full-time and part-time faculty at CUNY community colleges, comprehensive colleges, and senior colleges are eligible to apply.  Awards in the amount of $5,000 are based on evidence demonstrating that the faculty member’s students improved their skills in math as a result of a particular successful technique or action. Materials submitted by candidates include evidence of excellent instructional methods, as measured by improvements in student learning, within at least the past year. Eligible courses for the award are developmental or credit-bearing mathematics courses up to and including the first year of calculus.

Applications, which are due February 12, 2015, contain detailed information and criteria.  CUNY math faculty are encouraged to apply!  Questions can be emailed to: mathinstructionaward@mail.cuny.edu