Earlham faculty addresses lack of basic math skills
By John Jacobson and Marisa Keller
The Earlham faculty is trying to decide how to fix the problem of students failing courses because of a lack of basic math skills.
Faculty members in the science, math and economics departments are taking the initiative to promote math literacy at Earlham. They are seeking to create a way for students to become more mathematically literate, either through curriculum or a math center that will parallel the writing center as a place where students can go to get help with math homework and even take classes to help improve fluency in different mathematical fields.
In faculty meeting on Wednesday, March 3, the faculty discussed a proposal that the ad hoc math committee has submitted to Earlham College President Doug Bennett. The proposal suggests using the President’s Discretionary Fund to pay for the position of an additional math professor for three years.
In an e-mail to the faculty on Tuesday, March 2, Bennett wrote, “Three years of a new full-time mathematics faculty member would cost around $200,000. That would be an unusually large grant from the discretionary fund.”
Bennett has, however, set aside funds to cover one year of a visiting professor in the math department. He wrote that he would be willing to extend the funds for a second and third year only if the Curricular Policy Committee (CPC) “saw it as an important and valued undertaking.”
During Wednesday’s meeting, faculty members raised concerns about a long-term solution to the problem after the three years suggested by the proposal are up. Others, however, pointed to the urgency of the problem, which leads to many students failing or avoiding classes they would otherwise like to take.
Associate Professor of Economics Rajaram Krishnan sees many of his students do poorly because of their lack of math skills.
“For some programs at Earlham, certain math is needed at the introductory level and some of us don’t have that and could do with a refresher because we’ve done math some time ago,” Krishnan said. “Another aspect of this is that in the context of a liberal arts education, being mathematically literate … is part of what is good to understand the world and we’re going to see if we can help.”
According to Krishnan, this initiative will be collaboration on the part of faculty from the math, geosciences, and chemistry departments.
“We feel that quantitative literacy is a useful thing to be shared by many people on campus,” he said.
Another supporter of the idea of promoting mathematical literacy is Earlham Associate Professor of Geosciences Meg Streepy-Smith. She expanded on the general idea of how this project will help students in both math and non-math courses alike.
“I feel like we need more support for math across the curriculum,” Streepy-Smith said.
“And if you felt like you wanted to be an econ major, but yet you don’t feel like you’re prepared for Raja’s [Intro to Microeconomics] class, you could take an intro math class that would basically prepare you for his micro econ class.”
There are also other people outside of the immediate mathheavy departments who show some support for the promotion of mathematical literacy. One of them is Assistant Professor of Politics Thor Hogan.
“I’m supportive of the overall idea that we need to increase mathematical literacy, certainly for politics students,” Hogan said. “I think that increasing your understanding on things as important as the budget process and being able to access that with the proper math skills is fundamental to really understanding how the government works.”
Last semester, Earlham announced that professors from Indiana University East would teach basic math courses at Earlham starting in the fall of 2010, but the arrangement fell through because of a misunderstanding about whether IU East would receive financial compensation.
The math ad hoc committee was organized to work with IU East, but has since moved on to address the broader issue of numeracy at Earlham. The committee is not directly afiliated with the math department, although Assistant Professor of Mathematics Anand Pardhanani is a member of the committee.
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