Plenary sessions

This year, we will have two plenary sessions at the conference. The first session will be the first joint interdisciplinary plenary session with Dr. Jennifer Czocher from Texas State University, and Dr. Felix Ho, a chemistry educator from Uppsala University in Sweden. The second session is to honor the 2024 winner of the MAA Annie and John Selden prize for contributions to RUME, Dr. Daniel Reinholz from San Diego State University. We are very excited to honor these scholars’ contributions and for them to share their wisdom and insights with the community. Read below for the session descriptions and the speaker biographies.

Session I. Is the rest "just math"? What do we really know about students applying mathematics across disciplines

Mathematics is often regarded as a central pillar of science and engineering programs, providing critical and indispensable knowledge and skills to the future professionals and academics we educate. Recently, RUME and DBER scholars have highlighted where mathematics content can be found in other disciplines such as physics, chemistry, biology and engineering. Unfortunately, an all too frequent lament of instructors in these disciplines is that students "just can't do math", even said of those who excel in prerequisite mathematics courses. Why is that? What does it entail to "do math" when contextualized and applied in other disciplines? Where does the problem lie, really, and how do we transform this issue into researchable questions?

In this joint plenary between two educators-education researchers in mathematics and chemistry, respectively, we will highlight and discuss ways in which to capture and understand what happens when students attempt to apply their mathematical knowledge in other disciplines. We will offer insights into a range of issues and perspectives, from mapping conceptual understanding across mathematics and non-mathematics domains, to cognitive, metacognitive and epistemological factors influencing interpretation, sense-making and decision-making, to contextual and institutional factors that shape curriculum. Each of these lines of inquiry contributes to elucidating the complexities involved as students develop ways of thinking and reasoning across the interdisciplinary interface. We advance the position that there is more to it than just learning the “right” math "well". Our goal is to provoke reflection and dialogue that can generate further questions and research initiatives that lead to better understanding of the intricacies involved in applying mathematics, as well as ways to integrate such findings into instructional spaces.

Dr. Jennifer Czocher

Jennifer A. Czocher is a Professor of Mathematics at Texas State University, where she studies how STEM undergraduates learn to use mathematics as a representational system—how they make sense of the world mathematically and sometimes make mathematics make sense of the world. Her research connects cognitive, curricular, and epistemological perspectives to examine how reasoning with quantities and modeling activity support learning across disciplinary boundaries. She is Principal Investigator on two NSF-funded projects: the CAREER project Scaffolding Strategies for Undergraduate Mathematical Modeling Skills (SUMMS), which investigates how task design and instructor scaffolding cultivate modeling competencies, and the IUSE project Tracking Adaptation and Investigating Learning Outcomes for Reforming Mathematics for Life Sciences (TAILOR), which examines how mathematics departments adapt and sustain modeling-based curricula for life science majors.

She has been part of the RUME community since 2011, presenting her work at nearly every annual conference. Her talks and papers often focus on improving the methodological coherence of research in undergraduate mathematics education and on broadening how the field conceptualizes rigor. She currently serves on the SIGMAA on RUME program committee where she has been a steady source of that Big Reviewer 2 Energy. She is an Associate Editrix for the Journal of Mathematical Behavior, and sits on the editorial boards of Mathematical Thinking and Learning and the International Journal of Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education. She is also Secretary of the International Community of Teachers of Mathematical Modelling and Applications (ICTMA). She is especially delighted to be presenting with her brilliantcolleague, Dr. Felix Ho, in this new joint plenary format -- an opportunity to bring together distinct research traditions in teaching and learning of mathematical modeling and applied mathematics to ask what it really means to “do math” across disciplines.

Dr. Felix Ho

Felix Ho is an Associate Professor and Distinguished University Teacher at the Department of Chemistry – Ångström Laboratory at Uppsala University, Sweden. He holds Bachelor’s degrees in both chemistry and law from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and a doctoral degree from Cambridge University, UK. After over 10 years of research into biophysical chemistry research into the water oxidation mechanism of the photosynthetic enzyme Photosystem II, his love of teaching was taken to the next level when he served as Director of Studies, during which time he expanded his interests to both educational development and chemistry education research at the tertiary level. Having now transitioned his research fully to chemistry education research, his main focus is on the interdisciplinary interface between mathematics and chemistry, using multiple perspectives to capture and investigate what challenges students encounter while trying to apply mathematics, including the cognitive and conceptual aspects involved, and exploring possible synergies across the disciplines to support students in developing their conceptual understanding of both mathematics and chemistry in an integrated and meaningful manner. He is also involved in international collaborative projects on systems thinking in chemistry, as well as approaches to enhance organic chemistry education through insights from physical chemistry.

In addition to his research and teaching at Uppsala University, Felix is the Secretary of the Committee for Chemistry Education of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), a member of the National Committee for Chemistry under the auspices of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, a member of the Education Committee of the Swedish Chemical Society, the Vice-Chair of the Center for DBER in STEM his home faculty, a member of the Faculty Council for Educational Development, as well as the Subject Coordinator for Chemistry. He has an international background, having been educated in Hong Kong, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, and has taught in Sweden, Singapore and Australia.

Session 2. Seeing, Shifting, Sustaining: Building Equitable Systems in Mathematics

The RUME community has become more skilled at seeing equity and inequity in our classrooms. We now pay closer attention to who participates in class, how their ideas are taken up, and how learning experiences shape students’ identities. Yet seeing is only the start. Lasting change requires shifting the systems that hold inequities in place, including departmental cultures, institutional routines, and research practices. In this talk, I share lessons from work that traces equity across scales, from classroom analytics to collaborative departmental change, and reflect on how data can both reveal and reshape our systems. I also invite us to think about sustaining this work by building structures and cultures to transform mathematics teaching and learning more broadly.

Dr. Daniel Reinholz

Daniel L. Reinholz, Ph.D., is a Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at San Diego State University. Dr. Reinholz’s research focuses on transforming postsecondary mathematics classrooms for equity. This work centers on the development of the EQUIP tool, which provides actionable data to illuminate participatory inequities related to identities such as race, gender, and disability. These data support robust professional learning through equity learning communities that help instructors transform their teaching.

Beyond the classroom, Dr. Reinholz serves as a Working Group Leader in the Accelerating Systemic Change Network, and a co-founder of Sines of Disability. Dr. Reinholz is the author of two recent books: Equitable and Engaging Mathematics Teaching: A Guide to Disrupting Hierarchies in the Classroom (MAA Press) and Equity Learning Communities: Leveraging Data to Transform Instruction in Higher Education (Harvard Education Press).

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