Mathematics Career Simulations

1
Mathematics Career Simulations

• Robb Sinn
• North Georgia College State University
• 2006 Joint Mathematics Meetings

2
The Problems

• What is mathematics? What do mathematicians do
  all day?
• Studentseven math majorsdont know
• How do we get undergraduates to write and present
  about mathematics?
• Need an incentive structure

3
My Solution Career Simulation

• Students are required to
• Research
• Write articles for peer-reviewed journals
• Teach
• Make conference presentations
• Perform Service
• Edit journals and referee papers
• Organize conferences compile precedings
• Submit their vita for Promotion Tenure Review

4
Some Successes

• Students were enthusiastic
• Presentations were beautiful
• Usually used PowerPoint
• Used software like Maple and Excel
• Students wrote exceptionally good mathematics
  papers
• Grading after peer-review was easy

5
Difficulties Workarounds

• Its a lot of work
• Course web blog helps
• Service points for a blog site coordinator
• Precedings/Journals published by students
• Not all presentations and papers are equally
  ambitious
• Level multipliers increased value of better work

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What I Learned

• The structure is important
• Faculty Handbook
• Provide incentives for important tasks
• Rubrics for evaluation
• University faculty
• Divide class into 3 universities
• Team is responsible for helping with
• Conference hosting
• Journal refereeing

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Quality Class Presentations

• Conference Structure
• One per week (45 min. of 75 min. class)
• Conference Organizer
• Recruits a slate of speakers
• Allots time based on level of presentation
• Fills out evaluation sheet I use, and provides it
  at the beginning of class
• Posts conference precedings to course blog site

8
Quality Mathematics Papers

• Need several journals
• Each journal has a theme
• I post questions to give ideas for papers
• Journal editors
• Publish 3 volumes
• Volumes include 2 articles
• Have papers refereed
• Work with authors to publish on blog site

9
Rubrics for Evaluation

• Tasks and rewards are outlined in faculty
  handbook
• Rubrics are developed for presentations, papers
  and service tasks
• Key Point
• Multipliers for better mathematics
• Not all presentations papers are of equal value
• Problems ranked as Level 1, 2, or 3
• Use same two rubrics for all papers and
  presentations

10
Rewards

• Students learn mathematics by doing what
  mathematicians do
• Student enthusiasm/creativity improve course
• Top students come to office hours to discuss
  high-level mathematics
• Students ask me to help with their senior
  research projects
• Easily adjusted for non-math majors grad
  students (MAT)

11
Resources

• All resources posted on my web page
• radar.ngcsu.edu/rsinn
• Open-access course blog (coming soon)
• www.ctle.ngcsu.edu/rsinn
• PowerPoint slides posted on my web page

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Mathematics Career Simulations

• Robb Sinn
• North Georgia College State University
• 2006 Joint Mathematics Meetings