Dr. Marilyn Strutchens and Dr. W. Gary Martin of Auburn University visited UNL on May 14 and 15 to share their experiences with their Noyce and MSP grants. If you missed this visit, be sure to catch these national leaders in mathematics education when they return to Nebraska on Monday, Sept. 24, as keynote speakers at the NATM Fall Conference in Lincoln at The Cornhusker Hotel.
Strutchens and Martin are co-director and principal investigator, respectively, of TEAM-Math (Transforming East Alabama Mathematics), a National Science Foundation-funded Math and Science Partnership, and also the NSF-funded Noyce Master Teacher Fellows grant from the National
Science Project. Strutchens directs TEAM-Math’s Secondary and Elementary Teacher Leader Academies funded by NSF’s Noyce program.
Strutchens and Martin presented "Fostering Mathematics Teacher Leadership through Multiple Venues: A Perspective Across Grades K-12" in Avery Hall to the UNL Noyce Master Teaching Fellows and UNL math faculty members. The talk offered perspectives on fostering teacher leadership in multiple venues within a school-university partnership, including graduate coursework in mathematics and mathematics education, leadership workshops, and interactions in other forums.
The pair also presented "Reasoning and Sense Making: The Key to Effective Mathematics Teacher Education" in Mabel Lee Hall for the Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education. This talk centered on helping teachers to focus on reasoning and sense making as the basis of mathematics instruction, which provides them with an important tool in building the mathematical success of all students and helps them to better understand mathematics and see its value.
Dr. Strutchens is president of the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE) and a Member-at-Large of the executive committee of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences. She is a Mildred C. Fraley Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Education in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Auburn University in Auburn, Ala., where she serves as coordinator for the secondary mathematics education program.
Dr. Martin is the Emily R. and Gerald S. Leischuck Professor in mathematics education at Auburn University. He is also principal investigator for the state-funded Alabama Mathematics, Science and Technology Initiative. He is co-director of the Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership (MTE-Partnership), a national initiative of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities to align secondary mathematics teacher preparation with CCSS-M. He was also the lead writer for NCTM’s Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making.