Engaging Mathematics

Creating a National Community of Practice

Funded through the National Science Foundation’s TUES-II program (DUE-1322883), the Engaging Mathematics (EM) three-year initiative aims to significantly increase the use of the SENCER model, and other reformative pedagogies, by a national community of mathematics scholars capable of creating, implementing, and sustaining reforms in mathematics education.

Engaging Mathematics is an initiative of the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement (NCSCE).

As the executive director of NCSCE and principal investigator of the EM project David Burns points out, SENCER has grown from its early years to now include “a strong corps of leaders, along with terrific models and other curricular assets, in mathematics.” This growth allows the National Center to apply the already well-established SENCER approach to college-level mathematics courses, with the goal of using civic issues to make math more relevant to students.

Both lead and partner institutions collectively make up the EM project. The project’s two lead institutions are Metropolitan State University and LaGuardia Community College. Augsburg College, Normandale Community College, Oglethorpe University, and Roosevelt University represent the partner institutions. Over the course of the project, lead and partner institutions will enhance existing courses, where applicable, and develop new courses, modules, and themes for future use.

Another goal of the EM project is to offer resulting modules and courses at both their institutions of origin as well as at partner campuses, thereby benefitting partner institutions with several new courses, and providing the project team insight on how to successfully implement courses in multiple settings.

The EM leadership team will work with the Mathematical Association of America to disseminate materials, modules, courses, and results to communities of interest. Additionally, updates and resources developed throughout the initiative will be made available online to all interested educators, administrators, and students. Regional meetings, national symposia presentations, and faculty development programs are planned.

Curricular Information

Learn more about our participating institutions and their curricular development plans:

The curricula developed by our partners are packaged as teaching manuals, so that instructors outside our project may implement lessons, activities, or curricula developed through Engaging Mathematics into their own courses.

Metropolitan State University

Dr. Cynthia Kaus, an Engaging Mathematics Co-Principal Investigator, is developing two statistics courses: introductory level Statistics I and upper division Environmental Statistics. Students in both courses will work with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency‘s Industrial Stormwater Division on semester-long research projects to analyze data obtained from stormwater collection by 29 different industrial sectors and 45 subsectors.

Dr. Rikki Wagstrom is adding four new modules to the Mathematics of Sustainability course she developed in 2010. The modules cover disappearing milkweed populations in the U.S. and the potential impact on Monarch butterfly populations, wind energy modeling and profitability, comparisons of greenhouse gas emissions generated by different automotive fuels, and the interplay between population growth in the U.S. and declining per capita carbon footprints. Each module will be a self-contained, portable unit suitable for use in college algebra, pre-calculus, and liberal arts mathematics courses. In addition, Dr. Wagstrom is creating a module suitable for a mathematical modeling or dynamical systems course with a focus on modeling the growth and sustainability of whelk populations on the East Coast.

LaGuardia Community College

Dr. Mangala Kothari, an Engaging Mathematics Co-Principal Investigator, and Alioune Khoule are jointly developing NYC Statistics: A Tale of Two Cities, an introductory statistics course that will be divided into four modules. The modules will cover issues common to New York City, such as changes in city demographics, income, and housing inequalities; NYPD practices and tactics in the city to reduce crime and increase street security; and analysis of impacts and adaption to climate change, among others. Their work will build upon Project Quantum Leap, LaGuardia Community College’s program dedicated to improving math education at the introductory level.

Augsburg College

Dr. John Zobitz is collaborating with Dr. Mark Lester of Augsburg’s Center for Global Education to develop a projects-based calculus I course structured around hosting ecotourists at the Fair Trade CertifiedTM GARBO Coffee Cooperative in the Peñas Blancas region of Nicaragua. The course was inspired by an educational spring break trip to the Nicaraguan cooperative in 2012. The cooperative’s specific issues will inform project themes, and students will have the opportunity to directly interact with the cooperative through teleconferencing and possible travel abroad to GARBO as part of the course. One of modules Dr. Zobitz is creating will evaluate additional revenue streams to offset any losses due to shortcomings in the annual coffee harvest. The module examines multi-faceted aspects of sustainabiity through analysis of resource allocation, revenue streams, and long-term sustainability for ecotourism development.

Normandale Community College

Dr. Anthony Dunlop is enhancing Mathematics for the Liberal Arts, a general education math course designed for non-STEM majors. In its current form, students analyze real data from the nearby Nine Mile Creek Watershed. Dr. Dunlop will add modules to the course that cover topics such as wildlife management, energy production and use, and water table depletion and replenishment.

Dr. Victor Padron is developing undergraduate research modules about groundwater pollution and climate change. His groundwater pollution module will be transferable into any standard-sequence calculus course as an individual or group research project. The aim of the module is to engage students in the process of using models to investigate real events of groundwater pollution.

Oglethorpe University

Drs. Lynn Gieger and John Nardo are developing two new modules on the mathematics of voting and the mathematics of poverty and income disparity for Oglethorpe University’s Great Ideas of Modern Mathematics, a general education math course in Oglethorpe’s core curriculum. The course delves deeply into math’s more modern topics, including probability, formal logic, number theory, sets and infinity, group theory, and knot theory.

Roosevelt University

Dr. Barbara Gonzalez and Ms. Cathy Evins are designing College Algebra: Modeling the City, a course that uses Chicago’s social justice issues, such as transportation, crime, water, food access, infrastructure, and demographics, to teach STEM and business majors about mathematics. Eventually, educators based in other cities may use the resources created for Chicago as a model to create similar resources at their own institutions.