RUMEY 2022
Dear colleagues,
It’s a great pleasure to announce that our first Rutgers Math End-of-Year (RUMEY) Workshop on best practices in teaching and learning of college mathematics will take place in-person on May 12-13, 2022.
The workshop has been made possible by the Rutgers New Brunswick Chancellor’s Office through their funding of the Math Department’s P2C2 (Pre-Calculus to Calculus II) Initiative, a multi-year effort commenced in 2019, to enact reforms in the precalculus and calculus sequence courses at Rutgers that would bring down the D/F/W rate in these courses while maintaining their overall quality and purpose, enhance student learning experience, and widen the path to STEM majors for all students regardless of race, gender, or socioeconomic background. Additional funding is provided by the SAS Dean’s Office.
At the conclusion of its third year of existence, and despite all the interruptions caused by the pandemic, the P2C2 Initiative has achieved many of its intended goals of revising the curriculum, updating and clarifying the learning objectives for each course, changing the number and nature of assessments given in P2C2 courses, and, most importantly, the introduction of new teaching tools and methods that are designed to engage students and enhance their learning experience in Pre-Calculus and Calculus courses.
Going forward, we need to make sure that all the innovations and improvements that have been designed and implemented in the Pre-Calculus to Calculus II curriculum (and beyond) continue to be deployed in our P2C2 lectures, recitations, and workshops; and that requires some training, both for instructors who are either new to teaching, or new to Rutgers, as well as those who have a lot of experience in traditional ways of teaching math, but who may not necessarily be aware of the advantages of modern approaches and therefore hesitant to implement them. So far most of our training efforts have been concentrated on or around orientation days just before the start of the semester, but some of our Big Ten peers hold “Teaching Excellence Academy” events, consisting of workshops and seminars that run once or twice a year at the end of the semester. These typically target newly-hired faculty and full-time or part-time teaching instructors, but are open to all faculty.
The goal of the RUMEY workshop is to introduce the Rutgers Math faculty to some of the evidence-based best practices in college mathematics education that are supported by research in the teaching and learning of mathematics. In addition, we want to showcase some of the amazing work that our faculty are already doing on this front by providing time and space for them to share what they have done in their own classes, in the hopes that other faculty can adapt the same strategies to improve their own teaching. Of particular interest with this workshop is the adaptation of strategies to the online/hybrid/remote environment, as well as adjusting to the preparedness of students entering college through the COVID-19 pandemic to continue to educate them, maintain academic standards, and reduce D/F/W rates in relevant classes.
This workshop will run over two days, with five hours of programming each day. The sessions will range from two-part talks with integrated audience activities and shorter presentations on various teaching techniques, to round-table discussions of current issues in undergraduate education. The workshop will be in-person and will take place at the Hill Center, on the Busch Campus of Rutgers University—New Brunswick. Free parking in nearby lots has been arranged. Breakfast, lunch, and coffee break refreshments will be provided each day.