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RECOGNITION:
Prior to becoming a full-time faculty member, I was honored to receive the Outstanding Part-time Faculty Member Award. It was my honor to be the first to receive this recognition, and since then, I've done my best to become a better educator in order to represent my colleagues the best that I can.
I've taken advantage of several opportunities during the last few years to add to my knowledge and have listed a few below.
DEVELOPMENT:
Faculty Summer Institute 2012
The first formal professional development opportunity, aside from sessions offered at Inservice and Development Day, that I took advantage of as a full-time instructor was the Faculty Summer Institute offered by CETLA. The theme for FSI that year was Teacher's Tackle Box--Keeping them on the hook...
In the course of that week we discussed designing for mobile instruction, educational apps, video productions, detecting and preventing plagiarism among other topics. The capstone project at the end of the week was to make a change in a course or courses that reflect something learned during the week. I chose to make videos for our Intermediate Algebra students that demonstrate how to factor the sum and difference of two cubes. The videos were created using my iPhone and uploaded to YouTube. I was then able to embed the videos into MyMathLab for student use.
ROE/IVCC Development Day
In the fall semester of 2012, I served as a co-presenter at our Development Day hosted by Mendota High School. Dawn Lockwood and I led a session on using QR codes in the classroom. QR codes are unique codes that are generated using a free website and can be set up to link to instructor's contact info (phone, text, email, website, etc.), instructional videos on YouTube, or to other websites. Users must have a smart phone with a scanner app installed on it. Pictured below is a sample of the handout we used in that session. (Some of the QR codes are still good.)
IMACC, April 5, 2013
It's always beneficial to attend a workshop with your colleagues from around the state--to see what they're doing, to hear of their successes, and to brainstorm together how to help our students attain success in their coursework. One of the sessions I attended that day was presented by instructors at Moraine Valley CC who began running a mastery-based math lab in the fall of 2011. It was interesting to see the vast similarities between their lab and what we've been doing here for many, many years.
Another session, presented by Parkland CC faculty, gave an overview of their attempt to create and implement a two-track approach to their developmental math program--a college algebra-bound track and a gen-ed track. The shared their challenges and successes and what the future held for them. At the time of the presentation, they had run only two pilot sections. I've not heard any updates.
The last session I attended that day was by far the most thought-provoking for me. The presenter, from Elgin CC, had done research into the connection between placement test scores, ACT math sub-scores, high school GPAs, and performance in Intermediate Algebra. In a nutshell, his data appeared to support the idea that students with a higher GPA in high school who place into Intermediate Algebra may perform just fine in a transfer level course due to having the soft skills necessary for college success. Very interesting...
ILSADE, October 18, 2013
ILSADE is the Illinois chapter of NADE, the National Association of Developmental Education. I had the privilege to co-present a breakout session on our pilot of the Fast Track to College Math with Cheryl Hobneck and Trisha Blood at the fall conference hosted by Moraine Valley Community College. In this session we shared how the course was created as well as the timeline of the Fall 2013 pilot. We also shared what the the 2-week intense course entails, results, student feedback and experiences.
The session was well-attended and those in attendance seemed impressed and interested in what we had done. Now that we have several semesters under our belt, I'd very much like the opportunity to share the program and the success it's had at IVCC.
CONDUCT:
I've always done my best to be the kind of representative of IVCC that the institution would be proud to have. Letters of support from colleagues attest to this. My MLC colleague, Jim Greening, writes "As one of the Learning Center coordinators, Mary has worked well with the other instructors and student workers that she supervises...She is always looking for input students and instructors of any changes that would help make the math lab courses more beneficial to the IVCC students...".
"There is no doubt in my mind that Mary is competent, compassionate and caring, treasured values at this institution. She works extremely well with the students and positively with her peers. I found this to be true of her when we were coworkers and now as my immediate supervisor," stated Deb Cooper, another of my MLC coworkers.
I had the opportunity to work with Jill Urban-Bollis in regards to preparing our students for the Basic Skills Test (now the TAP test) for teacher certification in IL. She shared in her letter, "It is evident that Mary's passion is Math. She is effective in teaching Math...I really like working with Mary. She always has a positive demeanor and appears dedicated to our IVCC mission. She truly is an effective teacher."
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