Director, Charles A. Dana Center
The University of Texas at Austin
Freshman mathematics courses have long been a burial ground for the aspirations of myriad students seeking to improve their lives through education. There is now a narrow window opened by major foundations and policymakers to rethink the traditional academic offerings especially for students who enter college needing remediation. I will describe the Dana Center's New Mathway Project--the STATway, The Quantway, and The STemway--and a new approach to supporting our student's productive persistence and academic tenacity. I will present my analysis of the structural impediments to large scale curricular change. Finally, I will describe the outline of a joyful conspiracy to address the needs of our many students whose livelihoods depend of the quality of the academic programs we offer.
Philip "Uri" Treisman is professor of mathematics and of public affairs at The University of Texas at Austin, where he is the founder and director of the University's Charles A. Dana Center. He is a senior advisor to the Aspen Institute's Urban Superintendents' Network, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and serves on the boards of the New Teacher Project, Education Resource Strategies, and the AFT Innovation Fund. He recently served on the STEM working group of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and on the Carnegie Corporation--Institute for Advanced Study Commission on Mathematics and Science Education. He serves on the new AACC Commission on the Future of Community Colleges. Uri founded the Urban Math Leadership Network, served for four years as chair of the Chancellor's Advisory Panel for Mathematics in New York City and, for nine years, was president of the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications (COMAP). Uri was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1992 for his work on nurturing minority student high achievement in college mathematics and 2006 Scientist of the Year by the Harvard Foundation of Harvard University for his outstanding contributions to mathematics.