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Dr. Earl P. Lazerson Mathematical Symposium Lecture Series 2020: 2020 Speakers and Talk Registration

Earl P. Lazerson Mathematical Symposium Lecture Series 2020

It is an honor to bring you our 2020 Dr. Earl P. Lazerson Mathematical Symposium Lecture Series Speakers for our online 2020 event! We would like to thank our speakers in advance and are excited to hear your lectures on "Conversations in Mathematical Pedagogy" related to teaching math online effectively, either previous to the pandemic or as a result of the pandemic.

Óscar Chávez

 
Bio: Óscar Chávez is an Associate Professor of Mathematics Education at Illinois State University. After teaching high school in Mexico City for 12 years, Chávez moved to Columbia, MO where he received a Master's in Mathematics and a Ph. D. in Mathematics Education from the University of Missouri. His main research interests are secondary curriculum, teacher preparation, and inquiry-based learning. He has written about secondary and middle school teachers' use of textbooks and comparison studies of curriculum effectiveness. For a long time, Chávez has been interested in the use of technology in mathematics education, and now he has an exceptional opportunity to work on improving his teaching under the demands of remote learning.
 
 
 
Title: Assessment in Difficult Times
 
Abstract: Remote learning offers unique opportunities for both learners and instructors. It also poses unique problems. Among these, assessing what students know and can do is particularly consequential. In this presentation I will discuss what I think are the most important challenges of remote assessment in mathematics and will offer some ideas to address them.
 
Talk Scheduled: Thursday, November 19; 9-9:50am

Use the registration link, above, in red, to register for this talk and receive the event ID.

Cheryl Eames

Bio: Cheryl Eames is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at SIUE. She received her Master’s degree in mathematics and a PhD in Mathematics Education, both from Illinois State University. She spent her early career years researching hypothetical learning trajectories for length, area, and volume measurement at the elementary and middle school levels. In recent years, Cheryl has been collaborating with Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the Algebra Project to build and test a learning progression for the concept of function that cuts across content areas at the secondary level. She currently teaches undergraduate mathematics courses for future teachers, as well as graduate and undergraduate courses in mathematics education that focus on classroom discourse and the role that technology can play in the teaching and learning of mathematics at the secondary level.

Title: Taking the 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions Online

Abstract: University mathematics courses are all too often a venue for one-way communication. Fostering student-student communication and orchestrating productive mathematics discussions are difficult tasks even under the best of circumstances, let alone when pandemic-related challenges present themselves. In this session, I will discuss 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions (Smith, Steel, & Sherin, 2020) and share some technology platforms that have helped me overcome barriers to translate these practices to my online teaching.

 

Talk Scheduled: Thursday, November 19; 10:30 - 11:20am

Use the registration link, above, in red, to register for this talk and receive the event ID.

Jireh Loreaux

 
Bio: Jireh Loreaux is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at SIUE whose research focuses on operator theory and operator algebras with an emphasis on matrix analysis. He received his PhD from the University of Cincinnati in 2016 under the supervision of Gary Weiss. While Jireh's primary area of research is often inaccessible in its purest form to most undergraduate students because of the requisite background knowledge, he tries to distill some of the key ideas to allow opportunities for undergraduate research.
 
Jireh's interests in pedagogy include inquiry-based learning, mastery-based grading and using both modern and well-worn techniques in the classroom. Whenever possible, he tries to incorporate computing literacy into his teaching across the mathematical curriculum.
 
Title: Leveraging existing technology to encourage peer evaluation in proof-laden courses
 
Abstract:
I recently implemented a course design for an asynchronous online course which emphasized peer evaluation of proofs. Moreover, this design had several other benefits as consequences and can be implemented equally well in both synchronous online and face-to-face courses. My particular design used a few core pieces of technology which are pre-existing and freely available, but there are probably similar tools which can still be bundled to achieve the same net effect. The configuration of these tools is not overly burdensome and can be implemented by even those without high technological expertise. The tools used include:
 
  • Git: a distributed version control system
  • Gitea: a self-hosted Git server similar in form and function to Github
  • Markdown: a human-readable markup language
  • Pandoc: the swiss army knife of document conversion
  • KaTeX: a fast client-side mathematical typesetting engine for the web with LaTeX syntax
Talk Scheduled: Thursday, November 19; 1:00 - 1:50pm

Use the registration link, above, in red, to register for this talk and receive the event ID.

Nick Wintz

Bio: Dr. Nick Wintz is an Associate Professor in Mathematics at Lindenwood University. He has a BS and MA in Mathematics from Marshall University and a PhD in Mathematics from Missouri University of Science and Technology. His research interests include control theory, game theory, differential equations, difference equations, dynamic equations on time scales, special functions, among others. While at Lindenwood, he has overseen over a dozen undergraduate research projects. He is originally from Morgantown, WV and is a pop culture aficionado.

 

Title: From Cellphones to Owls: How Technology Changes How We Talk About Math

Abstract: While Covid has forced many of us to abandon our chalkboards for tablets and online homework, the trend of incorporating more technology into our mathematics courses has been going on for quite some time. Some of this has been for the better, allowing us to find new ways to motivate concepts for a generation of students who only know a world with the internet. On the other hand, it’s also exposed challenges in how students learn when everything is at their fingertips.

 

Talk Scheduled: Thursday, November 19; 2:15 - 3:05pm

Use the registration link, above, in red, to register for this talk and receive the event ID.