Sub-Chair of the Academic Standards, Assessment, and Improvement Committee
For several years, I have served as a committee member of one of Florida Southern's standing committees called Academic Standards, Assessment, and Improvement (ASAI). After a few semesters of being on the committee, I began serving as sub-chair to oversee a smaller sub-committee of faculty who split up reviews a given set of artifacts (including myself). Our task as a committee is to check that faculty assignments and corresponding student submissions align with one of the school's learning outcomes and suggest improvement if they do not.
My task as sub-chair is to divvy up the artifacts we need reviewed among myself and the member of my sub-committee. After we all have made our reviews and submitted them through SurveyMonkey, I reviewed the data, organized it, and described whether it indicated any areas of improvement. My report then went to the chair who then summarized all sub-chair feedback into one final report. Since faculty tend to rotate on standing committees, some semesters I work with faculty that are new to the process of reviewing student artifacts. As a sub-char, I also check in with the faculty I oversaw and offer to meet with any new members. For example, one faculty I oversaw was heavily involved with accreditation within her department and I offered to take her part of the student artifacts in addition to my own. Serving on this committee has helped me to reflect on my own course materials because I got to see many project ideas from different areas while I was rating the student artifact submissions.
Leadership in the Department by Reviving a Dormant Math Club
When I arrived at Florida Southern in 2017, the Math Club was hosting no events and was not even recognized as an official student organization. I was essentially dormant. In 2021, my department chair asked me to take over as the faculty mentor. I was delighted to become involved in the rebirth of the club because I saw how other departments have an active student organization associated to their majors. I was able to find 4 students interested in becoming the new officers. Over the next three semesters, I worked with the students to set up ongoing events at the beginning and at the end of each semester.
The first event is a Donuts and Coffee event where anyone can come grab a cup of coffee and small donut and talk with us about the Math Club. The event at the end of the semester is a final exam review for the math majors (the Math Club provides pizza and drinks, too). It is through events like this that they can hopefully grow their member list and become better known to students outside of the math major. Under my mentorship, the Math Club has been recognized as an official student organization in fall 2022.
In fall 2022, I also planned and hosted an event for the Math Club, where several students could talk about their experience conducting NSF funded summer research experience (called an REU, or research experience for undergraduates). This was the first time the Math Club had hosted an academic event. One student attended virtually from Washington, and the other student attended in person. At this event, the students explained what their projects were about, what their roles were, and what benefits they achieved from the experience. They also talked about how to apply for an REU. Hopefully the math Club will host similar events in the future.
Leadership in the Department by Developing Special Topics Course
Since pure math courses such as abstract mathematics, number theory, proof writing, history of math, and real analysis are not offered in the Florida Southern math curriculum, I have worked very hard to develop several courses that do provide the missing material of abstract math, history of math, and proof writing but that can also be advertised as interesting math applications. As described in the "Contributions to the Academic Environment" section of this portfolio, I have been creating and teaching courses that will hopefully invite more students to engage in the pure side of mathematics such as cryptology and its history, geometry and its history, and the math behind finance. In each of these courses, I also include a fair amount history that I hope helps my students gain appreciation for the story of where the math comes from and why it is important to know.
The course in cryptology introduces students to notions of modular arithmetic, which is a central topic in number theory. This course is intended to be an elective that introduces number theoretic concepts. The course in geometry has students learning some history of math, as well as about the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians. Students also practice different techniques to prove mathematical statements. This course is intended for students planning to teach at the high school level. The course in finance is meant to introduce students to some of the basic notions studied in finance, including compound interest, the concept of stocks, the effects and importance of dividends, and the structure of bonds and bond yields. This course is intended for any applied math majors who are interested in accounting, finance, or business.
Website Coordinator for the Math Department
Another way that I have taken leadership within my department was in fall 2020 when I was asked to be the website coordinator in the school's efforts to update each department's website. I was asked to gather information on what activities our student math majors were involved in, to obtain several alumni testimonials, and to gather any relevant pictures of our departmental events. Previously, we had very little online presence or information about the events and future goals of the department. I also gathered information from each faculty and met with several students who either conducted research or presented at a conference.