The moon’s the limit!
Currently (fall 2019), the Opening Gateways team and fellows are authoring Calculus I activities related to space flight in honor of the 50th anniversary of the the Apollo 11 moon landing. I, personally, am currently designing an activity related to the Saturn V rocket. This project was was influenced by Dr. Frank Wattenberg, and other collaborators at USMA West Point’s math department. West Point faculty have authored a paper, From the Earth to the Moon and Mars and Back with Calculus and Physics, which has served as our inspiration.
Our two institutions have submitted a proposal to present our activities at a joint all-day session at the International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics (ICTCM) Conference in Orlando Florida in March, 2020. While in Florida, we plan to visit the Kennedy Space Center as guests of NASA. It will be a dream fulfilled for me!
It is our goal, at City Tech, to pool our activities together into a cohesive Honors Calculus I course to be offered in fall 2020.
Another goal of mine is to teach MAT 2440 (Discrete Structures and Algorithms I) again next spring and transform the entire course into a multiplayer game as per Lee Sheldon. I already have my “quests” ready for the student “guilds.” I’m working on translating my syllabus into the correct form and creating a scale for “XP” (experience points). It should be a fun semester!
I also plan to teach MAT 1372 (Statistics with Probability) again utilizing the polished semester-long project I developed which appears in my recent paper, with Dr. Yosefa Modiano, to appear in the Psychology Teaching Review.
I also hope to then move on to teach MAT 1575 (Calculus II), MAT 2572 (Probability and Mathematical Statistics I), and MAT 2540 (Discrete Structures and Algorithms II) and develop writing assignments and real world activities for those classes.
Lastly, I also plan to teach some math education (MEDU) courses since my background in pedagogy and teaching have the potential to serve our math education students well. Specifically, MEDU 2010 (Technology in Mathematics Education) would be a great match.
