[PSTUM-list] introduction: Gary Harris

Dear Colleagues, My name is Gary Harris and I am the Director of Undergraduate Programs in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Texas Tech University. In the spring of 2000 I was asked by our chair and the director of graduate programs to create a 3 credit hour course devoted to issues involving teaching math at the undergraduate level. I would like to say that this was motivated for all the obvious great reasons; however, I suspect the main motivation was the fact that our state regulatory agency requires that all instructors of record (aka actual teachers of the classes) for college level math classes have at least 18 hours of graduate level mathematics credit, and our university decided to get serious about adhering to this rule. Hence this would be one way for our new TA's to get an extra 3 hours graduate math credit their first semester, while at the same time maybe picking up something useful. In any event I began to look for appropriate materials and activities and was ready to offer the course to 20 new teaching assistants in the fall of 2000. The course has been offered each fall semester thereafter. Early on I helped to field test some of Friedberg's case studies and have used them regularly. I also use material from Rishel's Handbook for Mathematics Teaching Assistants, as well as other materials. Also a significant part of the course involves video taping and class evaluations of student mini-lectures. I currently have a graduate student working on a Masters Thesis in which he is trying to assess the effects of our course on our graduate students attitudes and practice with regard to teaching mathematics at the college level. He and I would be very interested to hear about experiences any of you may have with such a course, as well as pertinent references. I look forward participating in an interesting discussion on this timely and, I think, very important topic, Gary Harris