LaGuardia Math Professor Receives 2009 CUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Mathematics Instruction
November 6, 2009—Dr. Frank Wang, an associate professor of math at LaGuardia Community College, was among three educators who received the newly created CUNY Chancellor’s Award for Undergraduate Mathematics Instruction.
Dr. Wang received the award for his use of compelling learning contexts for basic skills math students and integrative learning for science and engineering students, in a ceremony at the CUNY Graduate Center on October 30. He has been a professor at LaGuardia since 2004.
“This award is a recognition of the dedicated educators at LaGuardia,” Professor Wang said. “I truly feel that the academic success of students enrolled in math courses has been a group effort.”
The award recognizes faculty who have implemented an outstanding instructional method for teaching undergraduate mathematics at CUNY, and must be shown to positively impact student learning and to have the potential to be used with many students. The methods must be applicable for developmental or credit-bearing mathematics courses up to and including the first year of calculus.
“Dr. Wang is uniquely gifted in explaining difficult concepts in understandable terms to a broad audience,” said Dr. Peter Katopes, LaGuardia’s Vice President for Academic Affairs, who recommended Professor Wang for the award. “He was a natural choice to be part of LaGuardia’s exploratory team charged with infusing the SENCER (Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities) approach into our setting and population—high-risk, urban community college students in basic skills mathematics classes.”
Using the SENCER approach, Dr. Wang, along with three other math faculty leaders at LaGuardia, helped develop numerous examples that put basic skills math in the context of compelling current issues, such as environmental issues, the AIDS epidemic and SUV versus minivan mileage ratings.
Their proposal, Project Quantum Leap (PQL), was awarded a $500,000 FIPSE grant by the U.S. Department of Education to improve mathematics education using the SENCER approach. A PQL outcome assessment compiled in April 2009 shows the dropout rate decreased in the PQL sections MAT 095 Introduction to Algebra, MAT 096 Elementary Algebra, and MAT 115 College Algebra and Trigonometry by an average of 34% across the board compared to non-PQL sections of the same courses. The success of PQL contributed to LaGuardia’s being awarded two Title V grants totaling approximately $4 million, allowing the College to expand PQL pedagogies.
“Dr. Wang has been a wonderful addition to our Department,” said Dr. Kamal Hajallie, chair of LaGuardia’s Math Department. “In terms of student evaluation, Dr. Wang has consistently received ratings above 4, on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being ‘very effective.’ In 2005, our department launched an Engineering Science Program, and Frank was a major attraction for students planning to join the program.”
Eager to share his love of math with his students, Dr. Wang integrates his love of music and language into his teaching whenever possible. Last October he took students to the final dress rehearsal of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic at the Metropolitan Opera House to demonstrate that with math, like music, practice makes perfect. He has also been a champion of the work of pioneering, yet little known, female mathematicians and physicists, such as C. S. Wu, Jocelyn Bell, and Emma Noether, promoting their findings through extracurricular activities like reading circles and professional publication. He has put his students on the frontier of the latest research by incorporating cutting edge developments in the field into his curriculum, such as HP Labs 2008 discovery of the fourth circuit element called memristor, which he was invited to write about for the Journal of Nanophotonics.
“I think if people understand math profoundly, they might have a different level of appreciation,” Dr. Wang explained. “I do want my students to share my passion in this area, and a professor that is passionate about their subject will infuse more into students’ learning.”
His integrative approach has led him to arrange his teaching schedule so that students can take several courses with him in sequential semesters, a technique that is based on the findings of the National Science Foundation: when a teacher establishes a rapport with a class, and maintains a cohort of students who have regular social interactions in supporting each other, these students are more likely to continue to study mathematics and science.
In the classroom, Dr. Wang uses one-on-one help and collaborative work. He said he often finds the groups so engaged in problem solving they are reluctant to return to the lesson agenda. A proponent of interactive online learning software, Dr. Want also uses the EDUCO learning system, which gives instant feedback on homework problems, as well as offering tutorial and quiz features, in his basic skills courses.
An expert on computer algebra, Dr. Wang is the author of the textbook Physics with Maple: The Computer Algebra Resource for Mathematical Methods in Physics (Wiley, 2006), in addition to other books. He has written several articles and papers for scholarly publications, and is a regular correspondent for The College Mathematics Journal, contributing to the Media Highlights column that provides news, publications and instructional resources for the mathematical community.
Dr. Wang earned his Bachelor of Science in physics, with a mathematics minor at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1998, and has taught at Cooper Union and Columbia. He has worked as a research assistant at the Deutsches Elecktronen Synchronen (DESY) in Hamburg and at the Academia Sinica Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences in Taiwan.
“I really want to learn why basic skills students have a hard time understanding math, and LaGuardia has given me the opportunity to explore this through many subjects besides math that I’m interested in.”
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Located in Long Island City, Queens in New York City, LaGuardia Community College, part of the City University of New York, is a nationally recognized leader among community colleges. Founded in 1971, the College is recognized as an innovator in educating students who are under prepared for college work and/or are not primary English speakers. A catalyst for development in western Queens and beyond, LaGuardia serves New Yorkers and immigrants from 160 countries through 50 majors and certificate programs, enabling career advancement and transfer to four-year colleges at twice the national average. Visit www.laguardia.edu to learn more.
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