David Clark
Associate Professor of Mathematics at Grand Valley State University | My Curriculum Vita
Email: clarkdav@gvsu.edu | Office: Mackinac A-2-104 | T-shirt size: Medium
Teaching
My teaching focuses on extremely active learning.
I study and share ideas on alternative grading systems:
My book Grading for Growth (coauthored with Robert Talbert) is available now!
Read about my ideas on my Grading for Growth blog
Resources for anyone interested in improving assessments
Find many of my syllabi and standards in Rachel Weir's materials repository
I helped found The Grading Conference, a low-cost online conference offered each summer
Recent and notable presentations on teaching and learning:
Why I don't grade presentations (and what I do instead). Mathfest 2024.
Raising the bar with alternative grading. What works, what doesn’t, and what to do next withalternative grading. East Tennessee State University, January 2024.
What do I do after the keynote? Setting yourself up for success with grading for growth. Oakland University, May 2023 (Video)
Grading for Growth workshop, Michigan MAA meeting, Spring 2022
Way to fail! Alder Award presentation, Mathfest 2018
n Ways I've Failed at Standards-Based Grading (where n >> 0) for a Red 15 Project:NExT panel at Mathfest 2016
Speaking
I am available to give keynotes, Q&A sessions, and many other types of presentations.
See my Speaking page for full details.
Scholarship and Undergraduate Research
I study combinatorics: The art and science of counting interesting things.
Recent projects with undergraduates:
N. Layman, "Continuous guessing games with two secret numbers" (2020 McNair Project, paper in Involve)
S. Mancini and J. Van Hook, "Anti-Games on Steiner Triple Systems" (2017 GVSU REU Project, paper in American Mathematical Monthly)
L. Czap, "Guessing games with cost functions" (2015-2016 GVSU Student Summer Scholars project, paper in AJUR)
A. Dean, "An Information Theoretic Study of Rhythmic Variations of Poetic Accents in Rap" (2014 UMN senior project)
G. Fisk and N. Goren, "A variation on the game SET" (2013, paper in Involve)
W. Thomas, "Entanglement-Assisted Quantum Error-Correcting Codes from Generalized Quadrangles" (2012, paper in RHUMJ)
S. Shaker, "Noninteractive Guessing Games in Coding Theory" (2012, paper in PME)
Enrichment and Outreach
I love to create hands-on activities that demonstrate deep ideas in simple ways.
I am on the senior staff of MathPath, a summer program for mathematically interested middle school students.
I enjoy organizing and taking part in Family Math Nights at local schools.
From 2012 -- 2014, I was a MathCEP Teaching Postdoc at the University of Minnesota. I taught Calculus to talented middle- and high-school students as a part of UMTYMP as well as running school-year and summer programs for students.
... and more
Beyond math and teaching, I also enjoy...