UA gets $3.5M to boost math education
by La Monica Everett-haynes on Oct. 24, 2006, under Edge, Education, LocalMath education and research just got a multimillion dollar boost, and the University of Arizona will be responsible for helping improve the field.
The National Science Foundation awarded UA a five-year, $3.5 million grant to improve the skills of would-be mathematics educators.
It is UA’s second grant for the Vertical Integration of Research and Education program, one that will benefit students from high school classrooms to postdoctoral programs.
The first five-year NSF grant arrived in 1999 at $2.5 million.
“The first helped create some programs and the second grant will make sure those changes are permanent and propagated throughout the region,” said Douglas Ulmer, who heads the math graduate program at UA.
Stanford University, the University of Utah and the University of Chicago have received similar NSF funding.
“Part of the program is to increase professional skills for Ph.D. students, so they’ll be better teachers, communicators and mentors,” said Ulmer, also a mathematics professor.
The funding means new fellowships for students, undergraduate research opportunities, collaborations and interdisciplinary work with the hope of driving more students into the field.
“The world around us is becoming more mathematical and many fields are using more sophisticated mathematics,” Ulmer said.
Lately, the subject has garnered more attention here.
The UA-affiliated Wildcat School, a new charter school, has a math and science focus.
Pima Community College is piloting an online math homework mentoring program meant to aid performance and retention in 12 courses.
Outside the classroom, such work is important to improving society, Ulmer said.
“Scientific advances drive economic advancement,” he said, “and we’re all going to be wealthier and healthier because of mathematics.”
