Volunteering to the Greater Community

In this section I describe a few ways in which I have engaged with the larger community. I will also briefly describe the service work I did with middle school students before coming to Florida Southern as well as my ideas for future engagement within the larger community. 

Volunteering as a Facilitator for the Hidden Figures "Interdisciplinary Discussion"

In fall 2021, I volunteered to be a facilitator for the Hidden Figures Interdisciplinary discussion. This discussion was part of a "learning community passport event" for freshman at Florida Southern. The event began with a showing of the movie Hidden Figures. Then, one week later, a discussion was held about the movie and how it relates to STEM fields today. Each department had written several discussion questions beforehand, and the volunteer faculty each sat at a round table. As the students showed up, they filled in the seats. My table ended up with five students. As the facilitator, I went through the questions with the students who sat at my table. I also volunteered to be part of a panel of faculty to discuss these issues as a summary of the event after the round table discussions. Below are pictures of the event set up on campus and the table where I was assigned. 

Volunteer Work at Spring Hill College

Previous to Florida Southern College, I was teaching mathematics at Spring Hill College in Mobile, AL. The following are two ways I have volunteered to the greater community that is related to my discipline:

• Spring Hill had a program where they would bring middle and high school students around campus to visit various departments. When I found out about this program, I volunteered to meet with the students to put the mathematics department on their tour. Whenever I met with the students, I used cryptology as a topic to show how math can be fun. I described some of the history, then showed how to encode a message using a shift cipher. I had the students encode their own message and then send it to a partner to decode (with the key). For the high school students, I also provided frequency charts for the English alphabet and explained how to use them in cracking a shift cipher (i.e. when not given the key). Each time, the students left with excitement and wanting to do more.

• Spring Hill would host the regional Science Olympiad for the high schools around Mobile. I volunteered each year I was at Spring Hill to be one of the judges. As a judge, I would prepare for the event, monitor student teams for one or more of the events, and grade responses. I also served on a committee charged with finding volunteers from local schools to volunteer to be judges and oversaw the preparations for the event.