Scholarly Presentations and Invited Lectures

On this page, I highlight the recent scholarly presentations I have given. I describe the panels in which I have been invited as well as the abstract to some of my talks. 

Invited Panels

The Grading Conference (formerly the “Mastery Grading Conference”) is a place where faculty join together to learn about grading practices that best support student learning. These practices are aimed at promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in the classroom, as well as enhancing student and faculty classroom experiences. The purpose of the conference is to support instructors as they strive to challenge traditional grading practices that have been shown to be damaging to students and their learning.

I have participated in being part of two panels for this conference, one on handling reassessments in 2020 and another concerning student buy-in in 2021. Both panels were conducted virtually. Video recordings of these events are below. More recently, I was invited to a panel at the MAA MathFest in 2023 to give advice to faculty looking to try alternative assessment.

• Giving Advice to those wanting to use Specifications Grading (August 2, 2023)

MAA MathFest (Tampa, FL)  

• Getting buy-in from your students (June 30, 2021)                                                                                               

Virtual--This Q&A panel has been recorded and put up on YouTube. 

• Handling Reassessments in Mastery Grading (June 6, 2020)

Virtual--My portion of the panel has been recorded and put up on YouTube.

Selected Scholarly Presentations 

MAA MathFest (Tampa, FL)

1. Implementing Specifications Grading into College Math Courses using a Points-Bases System                       August 3, 2023  

     Link to my talk within the conference program 

Conference on Teaching and Learning (Virtual)

2. Implementing specs grading in mathematics courses across the curriculum               May 12, 2022

          Link to my talk within the conference program (and the full program).       

FL Section MAA/FTYCMA Conference (Virtual)

3. Implementing specs grading in mathematics courses across the curriculum                                                     February 18, 2022

4. Representations of Lattice Vertex Algebras, Trace Functions, and their Modular Transformations                    February 19, 2022 

Link to conference program. Unfortunately, the schedule for February 18 is no longer posted.

Algebra and Combinatorics Seminar at NCSU (Raleigh, NC)

5. On the irreducible characters of orbifold lattice vertex operator algebras                                   March 4, 2019

During my visit to NC State during the spring of 2019, I was invited to give a talk at their Algebra and Combinatorics Seminar. My talk was titled “On the irreducible characters and representations of orbifold lattice vertex algebras.” 

This was my abstract for my talk:

"Given a positive-definite even lattice Q, one can construct a lattice vertex algebra V. An important problem in vertex algebra theory and conformal field theory is to classify the representations of the subalgebra of fixed points, known as an orbifold, corresponding to an isometry of the underlying lattice. Once the representations are known, one can calculate their characters to further study the properties of these representations. Under certain assumptions, the orbifold representations are obtained by restriction from twisted or untwisted representations over the entire algebra V. Previously, we have described explicitly the orbifold representations in the case when the isometry of Q has order two. Currently, we are extending this work to prime order, while working out several examples with an isometry of order 3, which appear to be new examples. 

In this talk, I will describe the notions of a lattice vertex algebra and orbifold and describe the details of our procedure to calculate the irreducible characters for an orbifold of a lattice vertex algebra. I will also demonstrate our procedure using as examples a root lattice together with a Dynkin diagram automorphism." 

       Joint Mathematics Meetings (Baltimore, MD)

6. Using Mastery Based Assessment in Lower Level Mathematics Courses                                                           January 17, 2019

7. Representations of Lattice Vertex Algebras and their Modular Transformations: Examples in Order Three        January 17, 2019

Link to conference program. Link to conference presentation. Link to abstract 1. Link to abstract 2.

I gave two talks at the National Joint Mathematics Meetings in Baltimore in January 2019. This conference is the largest conference for mathematicians, and people travel from all over the world to attend and give talks. I also brought three students with me, and they gave a talk which I will highlight is the section "Collaborative Work with Students" of this website. One talk I gave was on the research I have been working on extending the results from my dissertation. The other talk was on implementing specifications grading into my classes. Below is a picture of me with the title slide of my talk.

MAA MathFest (Denver, CO)

8. Implementing Standards-Based Grading Across Lower Level Mathematics Courses                                              August 3, 2018

Link to conference program. Link to conference presentation. Link to abstract.

During the summer of 2018, I gave a talk at the MathFest session on alternative assessment based on my experience implementing standards-based grading for the first time. During my talk, I also showcased some of the student data I had been collecting. 

Conference on Teaching and Learning (Mobile, AL)

9. Using Standards Based Grading in Mathematics Courses                                                                                       May 7, 2018

Link to conference program. Link to conference presentation.

In May 2018, I gave a talk on using standards-based grading at the Conference in Teaching and Learning (CoTL) at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, AL. I also met with Drew Lewis to work on our joint research describing out implemention of standards based grading in mathematics courses (our work was published in 2019; see the "Publications" section of this website). Below is the abstract of my talk.