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Mathematic and Media Literacy:
Reconnecting the Liberal Arts
(Revised)
Total Funding Requested: $34,463
The Team:
Paul R. McCreary, Faculty
Gilda Sheppard, Faculty
Alexandra Auguste, Student (A00279187)
Tim Hearn, Student (A00269503)
Helen Hernandez, Student (A00276898)
Sol Mendez, Student (A00278271)
A Junior-level Student (TBA)
Contact Information:
Paul R. McCreary, Faculty
The Evergreen State College – Tacoma
(253) 680-3032
mccrearp@evergreen.edu
Signature___Paul R. McCreary_____________
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Contents.
Mathematics and Media Literacy: Reconnecting the Liberal Arts
Pages 3-7
Summary of Proposed Assessment/Evaluation of Project.
Pages 8-10
Budget
Page 11
Benchmarks for Project
Page 12
Bibliography
Page 13
Sheppard CV
Pages 14-15
McCreary CV
Pages 16-17
Letter from Tyrus Smith
Page 18
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Mathematic and Media Literacy:
Reconnecting the Liberal Arts
Paul R. McCreary, Faculty
Gilda Sheppard, Faculty
Alexandra Auguste, Student (A00279187)
Tim Hearn, Student (A00269503)
Helen Hernandez, Student (A00276898)
Sol Mendez, Student (A00278271)
A Junior-level Student (TBA)
This project, Mathematic and Media Literacy, proposes an innovative collaboration between faculty and
students. Students and faculty will integrate math into every course on the TESC Tacoma campus.
Media literacy will provide a context to enhance the visibility and accessibility of complex math ideas
across the curriculum. Both math and media use ideas of representation. Basic math ideas such as ratio,
causal relationships and variables have both numeric and symbolic representations. Media uses these
same basic ideas as representations to construct stories and images of people and ideas. Previously, the
math addressed in non-math courses on the Tacoma campus has been implicit in nature. In this project,
we will be making the connections explicit between foundational math ideas and the rest of the
curriculum. Student investigators will locate where in the courses math ideas can support and extend
course content. They will use media as a tool to create, analyze and evaluate activities for the courses.
Together we will create a library of resources that provides sustainable access to both faculty and
students. In addition, a public space on the Tacoma campus will exhibit the math and media resources
where all students can interact with math ideas embedded in riddles, video clips, interdisciplinary content,
and student presentations.
Project activities will encourage a cultural change on the Tacoma campus that connects math with other
fields, that evokes conversations about math and media beyond courses, and that supports community
building.
In many respects, we are working on processes that are being invented: integrating math into courses with
no math faculty instructor, facilitating students’ involvement in curricular development, and harnessing
media literacy for program development and assessment.
We would not expect to get funding for this project from other college sources, since it is not a faculty
development project and not a student activity project. Indeed, students will be engaging in curricular
development rather than in student research or other student activities.
Needs/opportunities, problems solved, value added, possibilities created.
“I believe that the absence of math literacy in urban and rural communities throughout this country is an
issue as urgent as the lack of registered voters in Mississippi was in 1961." (p. 5). Robert P. Moses,
Radical Equations
“This school reflects social justice by offering a curriculum that is community-based, promotes access,
equity and excellence and seeks to serve populations not historically included in higher education.” Tyrus
Smith, Director, TESC-T
Math has been a particular area where barriers to success have been documented as distinctive among the
economically disadvantaged and people of color. Taken together media representations of oppression and
math as a barrier to success has the potential to promote anxiety among our students as well as to veer
innovation away from the interdisciplinary integration of mathematical ideas across curricula.
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Because of our innovative teaching and learning that centers its work in community based social justice
education, TESC-T has become a successful model in liberal arts education. These outcomes are
reflected in our high retention of students (90%), success in students, particularly students of color,
graduate school entrance and completion as well as in our extension of learning and teaching from the
classroom to marginalized communities.
TESC Tacoma program has been successful in integrating mathematics across curricula. Courses that
integrate math with art, humanities, science and social science have proven so successful that we now
have students pursuing graduate degrees in social studies education with endorsements in mathematics.
“Liberal arts education is to make people into good citizens, not into good workers.” Rob Knapp
Substantial barriers currently exist to adopting math ideas into non math courses. Instructors need
support in identifying and adapting activities that can support their non math course content. They,
rightfully, hesitate to add material unless they are convinced it will add value to and support other course
content. Experience and support must be provided to non math instructors to enable them to tap into the
rich potential for supporting course content with mathematics material. This project will provide a means
for faculty members to eliminate barriers and develop professionally.
Not every student or faculty is confident about his or her skills in mathematics, however media
consumption is an abundant and familiar area for critical inquiry via media literacy. Media literacy is a
repertoire of competences that enable people to analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a wide variety
of media modes, genres, and forms. Media literacy, as an entre to mathematical ideas, offers the
opportunity to alleviate math anxiety and help level the playing field for students who might otherwise
think of themselves as poor math students. Moreover, by tapping into students’ and faculty “natural”
preferences for media consumption, we can channel some of that enthusiasm into the realm of
mathematics (Matt Lane).
In order to effectively integrate math activities in courses and to provide support for the faculty
instructors, collaboration between TESC Tacoma students who have indicated interest in the project and
faculty who are knowledgeable of math (Paul McCreary) and media literacy (Gilda Sheppard) will work
together to:
1. Identify where in course content math ideas and activities can best support course content.
2. Develop skills in curricular design that utilize critical and creative thinking activities that support and
extend student learning and faculty development in connecting math ideas with other course content.
3. Implement classroom activities and learning tools using media technology to instruct and assess
student learning.
4. Create a library of instruction and teaching, documented using media as a tool and as an area of
exploration.
5. Enhance awareness of and document the benefits of teaching and learning in an interdisciplinary
liberal arts education
So-called big math ideas, such as ratios are encountered at every turn in this 21st century. Without a
thorough grounding, one will miss the importance of survey results, comparison of prices and values,
comparative risks of medical procedures. These are all skills that are necessary for effective citizenship,
economic understanding, and physical health. This project will focus on big math ideas, such as ratios, in
order to raise the effective math literacy among all Tacoma campus students. It will provide a greater
number of positive math experiences connected with fields that students already value.
Each of the student-investigators for this project has ended a mathematics class on the Tacoma campus
with an enthusiasm for their own advancement and their increased ability to identify applications for
mathematics in the fields that they value most highly.
The civil rights activist Bob Moses has given us an inspired vision of the possibilities of fusing
mathematics together with social justice in U.S. schools. We have had good success in applying his
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principles. Indeed the demographics of the Tacoma campus insists on this direction. Within the context
of individual classes on the Tacoma campus, mathematics as a discipline has been crafted into forms that
diverse adult learners can accept, value and succeed in. Indeed a community of mathematical
investigators and future teachers is developing that provides a corps of tutors for a much larger portion of
their classmates. There is currently a sufficient number of students who have had positive math
experiences on the Tacoma campus that they can provide the tipping point in group math activities for all
other students even in non-math courses. We see an opportunity to expand the process of acceptance and
success in confronting and becoming skillful with mathematical ideas. We have an opportunity to
reestablish classic liberal arts connections between mathematics and other fields in the academy.
Many students on the Tacoma campus have returned to college with bitter memories of past math classes.
There is distaste, distrust, and often a fear of the subject. The connection that mathematics has with all
liberal arts fields is invisible so that even those few who have liked math fail to see much use for it in
their chosen fields. A small positive experience in math could go a long way in relieving this negative
blockage. Further, there are few sources of robust activities that can be incorporated into non-math
courses. This is especially problematic for faculty members whose fields lie outside of mathematics or
physical sciences. This project presents an opportunity to fill this need for positive experiences in math,
for making clear the connections between math and the fields that students already value, and for
providing faculty with access to a group with the needed skills for integrating math into their courses.
Students who take a mathematics course on the Tacoma campus often reflect that, in spite of very
negative feeling at the beginning, they experience a great sense of relief upon finding that they can “face
the math monster and not wither, not die, but rather feel even competent.” The group work in math
classes also gives them opportunities to offer support to classmates who are experiencing feelings of
insecurity. Students reflected that these interactions were instrumental in boosting their confidence and
allowing them to view their own academic futures in an even more positive light than before. These same
students have tended to take additional math courses. Extending these very experiences beyond the
mathematics classes and into all classes on the Tacoma campus through this project could positively
impact the already high retention rate for the Tacoma campus students (90% for all, 87% for students of
color).
A one-time grant from an individual TESC Foundation Board member allowed us to begin developing the
ideas on which this project is based. We have already identified the necessary interest, motivation and
skills in students on the Evergreen-Tacoma campus. We propose to organize a group of these students
and facilitate their participation in an interdisciplinary integration of math that supports course content
into classes on the Tacoma campus. Using media technology we will develop procedures/protocols for
observing, analyzing, and communicating learning.
Dr. McCreary, has in the past developed mathematics activities for interdisciplinary courses with a wide
range of fields. However, these efforts have been for a single course each quarter. While students have
had definite impact on course content, it was not an explicit intention to facilitate student involvement in
planning course activities and structure. This is a dramatic departure for the project leader and a dramatic
evolution of student involvement in curricular influence for the Tacoma program. The integration of
higher level media literacy into the curriculum, made possible by Dr. Sheppard’s contributions, will also
be a dramatic departure from past practices for Dr. McCreary.
This will be the first time that Dr. Sheppard participates in forging connections between mathematics and
fields that are not her own. While teaching with Dr. McCreary in the past, she has constructed bridging
connections to math from sociology and visual art. However, connecting math with Northwest history,
young adult literature, and digital storytelling will signify a dramatic departure from her ongoing work.
Applying her video and sociology background to assess impact of the project will also be new ventures.
We will be developing protocols for assessing the impact that integrated math activities may have on the
learning of other course content. The tools that we expect to use are brief written surveys, formal and
informal interviews with students and teaching faculty members, video clips for analysis and editing for
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communicating observed results. Throughout the project we hope to identify “indicators”, that is, factors
that can indicate the extent and nature of the impact that math activities actually have on the students’
learning of the other course material.
A summer institute mid-way through the project for students and faculty members will provide a venue to
reflect on the processes implemented in bringing math activities into the courses and the reflection
process following each activity. This dialog among faculty and students will provide essential feedback
and inform the planning for the subsequent academic year. The institute will also address the issue of
programmatic barriers for the integration of math into non-math course
Project description.
Work plan.
The student-investigators will meet each week to discuss what big and/or basic math ideas might be
related to material being taught in their courses. The group of student-investigators will design math
activities, with the help of math instructor McCreary, that integrate math ideas into their courses. When
we believe we have an activity that could add value to the course, we will work with the teaching faculty
members to decide where and when the activity seems appropriate for the class. The student-investigators
will plan the ways and means of recording, analyzing, and communicating the events and their impact on
wider course activities.
Basic/big math ideas that many students find challenging are ratios (applied representations of fractions),
causal versus coincidental relationships (dependent and independent variables and their relationships),
multiple representations of any situation (numeric, symbolic, graphic, and verbal), exponential functions
(including fractional exponents), and sample size (how this can produce surprising changes in
observations). These concepts will be connected with courses in history, research methods, politics, and
sociology, to name a few fields.
Each of the activities integrated into a course will be designed around a “big” math idea as a connecting
theme. The math idea will be chosen to support the course content and will also serve as a platform on
which to review basic math competencies and to establish connections with “everyday” activities.
The student-investigators will learn how to record activities that happen during their class sessions in a
manner that does not disrupt the class. They will learn methods of editing that capture the essence of
observed learning processes in the classroom and that allows viewers to engage in analysis of the
activities. Video taping will also record the preparations that go into designing and testing the math
activities, the actual implementation and facilitation of the activities in classes, and the reflection process
that follows each activity to uncover what impact it had on overall learning in the course.
During a summer institute we will interrogate and critique the quarterly cyclic process of studentinvestigators and course faculty locating places in curriculum, creating and facilitating activities in class,
assessing impacts, and fine-tuning the communication process to accomplish all of this.
Responsibilities of team members.
The student-investigators will gather ideas from their own courses, work together to design, test,
facilitate, and assess impact of math activities, with the guidance of the project faculty. They will
communicate with Tacoma QuASR math tutors about what activities they might expect to receive
questions on. They will also keep written accounts of their learning process, creative designs, and
assessment activities.
McCreary will convene weekly meetings of the student participants, discuss progress and concerns with
all faculty members at the weekly faculty meetings for the Tacoma campus, and guide students through
the process of developing activities for their courses. He will also produce a reference guide of products
created (activities and artifacts) for the project.
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Sheppard will organize media literacy learning, which will include videotaping of project activities,
especially those conducted in classes. These will provide an integral part in reflections on the impact that
math activities have on student learning in the course in which the activities are implemented. She will
also produce a video of project highlights.
Anticipated outcomes.
We will produce a library of math resources and activities, descriptions and assessment of
implementations of math activities designed for specific non-math courses. We will carry out analyses
about the impact that each math activity had on the associated non-math activities and on the learning of
the course content. The complete and implemented activities will present an invaluable resource for use
in future courses and will be included in the library.
Perhaps the greatest resource will be the collective skills developed by the student-investigators
working in conjunction with the faculty members in all course on the Tacoma campus. With the
sustained efforts, in a few short years a culture of anticipation and acceptance of math in every course
could evolve as the accepted norm.
Our institutional experiences could also be of value for other colleges or programs wishing to focus on
integrating math or media literacy, in particular, or on student engagement in course content design and
implementations, in general.
New approaches to teaching, learning and other student experiences – innovative and true to
Evergreen’s core values. Advance the Evergreen’s unique approach to higher education.
Project activities will lead to a more effective partnership between students and faculty in creating and
designing math activities that support and even extend course content. This process could become an
integral part in planning and implementing courses by Tacoma faculty. This would be an immensely
valuable resource for all faculty members. Student involvement in curricular development would match
with faculty needs to identify and create opportunities to bring math into their courses.
The project will allow us to reach the entire students body with activities and experiences that will lessen
barriers to success in math. Further, they will be enlightened to the connections between math and the
fields that they already value.
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Summary of proposed assessment/evaluation of Mathematics and Media Literacy Project.
To help assess the project activities, we will conduct reflection/assessment institute days during
the summers of 2013 and 2014. All Tacoma campus faculty members will be included together
with all student-investigators in the project. Also, for at least one of the first summer institute
days, we will bring in one individual who has substantial experience observing/assessing
academic projects to help assess activities in the first two quarters and to help plan for
assessment in the following academic year. We will produce a final assessment report by
September, 2014 that will include video and text descriptions of project activities and their
impact on student learning. Care will be given in the final report to provide information about
recommended processes and procedures for replicating/extending project results.
Student-investigators who participate in the project will have essential roles in assessment
efforts. Together with their work in bringing math activities into their non-math courses, they
will have the task of observing and recording incidents that indicate an impact in students or
faculty reactions to project activities, e.g., greater recognition in class discussions about
connections between math and other course content.
Each student-investigator will participate in all summer institute sessions, adding breadth to
assessment efforts for the project. Each will also keep a running journal of observations,
activities and problems designed, and reflections on personal and peer development. Further,
each will continue to work for one week after project activities end for classes, in order to
facilitate the recording of final comprehensive reflections in written word, video taped
discussions, and other debriefing artifacts.
Based on experiences in a series of activities related to and leading up to this project, we have
two new and specific goals. We will conduct out-of-class small group sessions with students.
These will help train the student-investigators and help to collect assessment data on project
activities. We will also produce short videos that can be used to help orient new students to the
Tacoma campus class settings and also to sensitize the new students to the possibilities of math
having essential connections with all other areas of study.
Some Clarifying Text.
New insights with regard to assessment and goals that led to two new project goals.
Thanks to a donation from an individual TESC Foundation Board member, we have been
engaging with students in preliminary activities that have added much to our awareness and
understandings of some particular challenges we will face in this project. We have noted that
student-investigators, no matter how skilled and well grounded they may be, have a level of
confidence that must be bolstered before they are ready to directly and effectively facilitate
academic activities with their peers. This is not to say that they are timid or that they shy away
from the challenges, we just recognize that some amount of practice at facilitating groups of their
peers is called for. We also see that such activities conform well to assessment efforts that we
envision for the project.
A number of student group sessions will be planned and conducted, approximately four each
quarter. During some of these sessions, student-investigators will lead a group of student
volunteers through a series of academic activities that make apparent the connections between
math and the content of at least one of the courses in which those students are currently enrolled.
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Attention will be given to assure that connections are made with content most recently addressed
in the courses and also with some content materials soon to be covered in the same courses.
During and subsequent to these content-rich group sessions, care will be taken to witness the
impact on students who participate in the activities and even on students in the courses who may
experience impact from secondary or indirect exposure to the activities. These
training/teaching/tutoring/learning sessions, as well as raising the confidence level of studentinvestigators, will also serve to help assure all Tacoma campus faculty members that the
activities hold great promise for supporting content learning in their classes.
Another type of group meeting will be focus groups conducted with students to assess their
views and impressions on the project activities and to gain data on the extent of the project’s
impact. Each of these types of student gatherings, focus groups and training sessions, will be
conducted outside of class and will carry no credit earning status for the participating students
(volunteers). In order to increase the likelihood of student participation, increase the stamina of
the participants during activities designed to be somewhat challenging, and to increase the
likelihood of repeat participation, we will offer some type of (healthy) snacks to the participating
students. Further, participation in all of these student group sessions will help increase
awareness of project activities throughout the campus, facilitating wider participation and
impact.
In addition to the use of multimedia to facilitate learning in small group sessions, multimedia
will also be used as a digital storage medium to keep records of these sessions. Using
multimedia as a storage device/medium will provide a reflexive tool for participants to examine,
assess, evaluate and build on these sessions.
An observation made by one of the students participating in our “pre” project activities has led to
a new goal for the project. She noted that soon after only a few conversations about observing
math being applied in non-math courses, she began seeing math “everywhere”. In particular, she
noticed math applications lurking in the background of class discussions even when they were
not acknowledged by the speakers and quite likely not noticed by most of her classmates. She
suggested that a video could reveal these “hidden” associations in class settings. We soon
realized that such a video could be a valuable asset to use in orienting new students to the
Tacoma campus. Such videos are shown during new student orientation sessions each fall on the
Tacoma campus. Besides introducing new students to the Tacoma campus settings, a video
might also sensitize their awareness so that they too could “see math everywhere.” Producing a
video as an eye-opener to the connections of math with many other academic areas is now one of
the explicit goals of this project. It also is a use of media as a tool to bring real world examples
into the classroom yielding an intimacy and utility of math in everyday life.
Summer days for planning and assessing.
The summer institute days will serve several extremely vital functions. The faculty and studentinvestigators will discuss and reflect on past activities, identifying best practices and critiquing
the overall project. The student-faculty working relationships, initiated during previous quarters,
will be fortified and future collaboration on activities inside and outside of classes will be greatly
facilitated with increased and shared understandings. Student-investigators will gain an
increased awareness of the challenges routinely faced by faculty, becoming better acquainted
with the points-of-view that guide the planning and execution of course activities. This is
essential, since the activities planned by the student-investigators must mesh with and support
the faculty plans for the courses. The faculty will gain increased appreciation of the tasks carried
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out by the student-investigators and their commitment to supporting the faculty’s teaching
efforts. Both faculty and student-investigators will gain a deeper understanding of the
assessment process for the project, join in critiquing and modifying the assessment plan, and in
so doing, increase their commitment to and greatly strengthening the prospects of meaningful
assessment. All Tacoma campus faculty members will be invited to participate in the summer
institute days. Including part-time faculty in the institute session will bring in the participation of
many non-math instructors whose cooperation and ideas will provide valuable support.
Student-investigators will have essential roles in assessment efforts
To generate greater participation within our program, every three weeks student-investigators
will choose a provocative lesson they have developed or gathered from a class that represents a
foundational math idea and pose it as a succinct problem of inquiry. This lesson will be
represented using multimedia and displayed visually in the public space, i.e. the “Lyceum” room
with an accompanying comment board for students and faculty to post steps for solving this
inquiry or to rephrase the inquiry for greater clarity etc. This, as a “living blog”, will help build
community and support the integration of math and media across the program.
One indicator of math ideas being effectively applied in courses will be math represented in
student work and in their interactions with other students and faculty. We will certainly record
and report on the math that students are exposed to via activities introduced into the classroom
and in group sessions after class. Much more revealing may well be the products that students
produce themselves following exposure to the concepts to which math may be related and have
applications in these other courses and contexts. Recording and reporting on such incidents will
become one of the tasks for the student-investigators, which will be natural, since they will be
fully participating as students in these other (non-math) classes.
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Budget.
Faculty:
McCreary $5436 (six days full salary in first summer, six days in the second summer)
Sheppard $5084 (six days full salary in first summer, six days in the second summer)
8 others $5000 (@ $125/day for 3 institute days in 1st summer and 2 days in 2nd summer)
Total $15,520
Students:
Each of five quarters:
Six students @ $512 ($10/hr x 5 hr/wk x 10 wk + one week 2nd summer) $15,672
Six students (for 3 institute days in 1st summer and 2 days in 2nd summer)
$1536
Total $17,208
Supplies (for the public space to display and interact with project materials):
One 6’ by 4’ dry-erase board
$100
One wall-mount flip chart rack
$35
One hard drive for video storage
$300
Breakfast for five summer institute days (@ $4/individual meal)
$300
Healthy snacks for student group sessions (twenty: focus groups and facilitation training
sessions for student-investigators: @ $2.50/individuls)
$1000
Total $1735
Grand Total $34,463
Project faculty will facilitate the process with students-investigators, organize the project
products in an accessible library curriculum resource, create written and video summaries of
project activities and results, develop and carry out an assessment of project activities, oversee
assessment work of student-investigators, and plan for summer institute days.
A three-day institute during the first summer will bring together all Tacoma faculty and studentinvestigators to interrogate the process of the first two quarters, identify practices that could
improve communication between all participants, and identify course ideas that could be loci for
math activity integration for the upcoming year. A two-day institute the second summer will
allow all parties to participate in a focused assessment of the project, considering best practices
and possible features that could be continued in the following years to sustain the gains achieved
by the project activities.
Six student-investigators in each of five quarters will collaborate with TESC-Tacoma faculty to
integrate math activities into all courses on the Tacoma campus. They will meet weekly to
create activities focused around math ideas associated with content in non math courses, help
facilitate activities in courses, and help assess the impact on all learning in the courses.
Particular attention will be paid to developing assessment methods and procedures for the math
activities introduced for non-math classes.
The supplies will help create and support a public space on the Tacoma campus to display
project products and provide an arena for community building interactions around math and
art/video collaborations. A hard drive dedicated for use by the student-investigators will assure
safe and secure deposit of the video clips taken as teaching devices and as assessment artifacts
for the project.
Snacks during the student small group sessions will help provide the needed motivation for
student volunteers to participate in assessment and training sessions for the student-investigators.
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Benchmarks for Project.
Winter quarter of 2013.
 Completing study of necessary background (basic skills) information for math and for video
skills. Week 3.
 Present an activity in the public space for presentations and community building.
Week 5.
 Completing an integration of a math activity in a non math course (selecting location in
particular course, negotiating with teaching faculty, selecting math idea for focus, crating
activity, practicing facilitation, actually facilitating activity in class). Week 6.
 Assessing impact of activity on other learning in course. Week 9.
 Creating a video report (taping, editing, and presenting). Week 10.
Each quarter presents a new cycle of events and opportunities. We anticipate similar benchmarks in
subsequent quarters. However, in each successive quarter we expect student-investigators to be able
to carry out the cycle of creating/implementing activities more quickly and more effectively. For
example, locating where in a course curriculum and selecting appropriate math ideas on which to
focus will all happen in earlier weeks.
Spring quarter of 2013. Bring one or two additional first year students into the project group to
replace anticipated natural attrition of graduating second year students. This will also help achieve
continuity into the second year of the project.
Summer, 2013.

Intensive conversations among all faculty and student-investigators to determine how to
best communicate needs and interests between faculty and student-investigators during
the second year of the project.
 Produce of a library of ideas and artifacts from the project.
 Produce a video that provides a summary of project activities for the first two quarters of
the project.
Second year.
Fall – introduce basic skills to newly joining student-investigators with full cooperation and
assistance from returning student cohort. Carry out the cycle of integrating math ideas into Tacoma
campus courses.
Winter – document the overall process that has evolved through four quarters of integrating math into
all courses on the Tacoma campus.
Spring – document, primarily in edited video tapes, the assessment process that has evolved through
five quarters of the project.
Summer, 2014. All faculty and student-investigators will
 discuss and reflect on activities, identifying best practices and critiquing the overall
project.
 participate in a focused assessment of the project, considering best practices and possible
features that could be continued in the following years to sustain the gains achieved by
the project activities.
Finalize an abstract reference list for the library of resources created of math activities and video
clips.
Finalize a video that summarizes the activities for the five quarters of the project.
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Bibliography
Boaler, J., (2008). What's math got to do with it? Viking.
Drew, D., (1996). Workshop groups and calculus instruction, in Aptitude Revisited:
Rethinking Math and Science Education for America's Next Century, The Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Hart, L., (2005). Some directions for research on equity and justice in mathematics
Education, in Which Way Social Justice in Mathematics Education, Leone Burton
(Ed), Information Age Publishing Inc.
Hobbs, R., (2010). Math Goes Pop: Making the media and mathematics connections.
Journal of Media Literacy Education, Vol. 2 (2), 169-170.
Hobbs, R. & Jensen, A. (2009). The past, present and future of media literacy education.
Journal of Media Literacy Education 1(1), 1 -11.
Hobbs, R. (1998). The seven great debates in the media literacy movement. Journal of
Communication, 48 (2), 9-29.
Hughes-Hallett, D., Gleason, A. & McCallum, W. (2005). For the calculus consortium,
Calculus. Wiley.
Lane, M., Math Goes Pop! (blog) http://www.math-goespop.com
Moses, R. & Cobb, C., (2001). Radical equations: Math literacy and civil rights. Boston:
Beacon.
Meyer, D., http://blog.mrmeyer.com/
Liberal Education and America’s Promise. College learning for the new global century.
www.aacu.org/advocacy/leap/.../GlobalCentury_final.pdf
Shekhtman, Z., http://www.unizor.com/
Sheppard, G, & Waluconis, C. (2005). Ways of seeing: media literacy and writing.
Filmmakers, Vol. 7, (23) 30-40.
Black
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Curriculum Vita
Gilda L. Sheppard, Ph. D. shepparg@evergreen.edu 253 680-3033
Education:
The Union Graduate School, Cincinnati, OH
Ph. D. in Sociology.
Vancouver Film School, Vancouver B.C.-Certificate in Beginning Film Making
University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
Masters of Social Work (MSW),
University of Detroit Mercy, Detroit, MI.
Bachelor of Arts Degree, Sociology/Psychology
Teaching Experience:
1998-Present
The Evergreen State College, Tacoma Campus
Faculty member, in Sociology, Media Literacy and Cultural Studies.
2009-2012:
Sociology Professor for University Beyond Bars at Monroe Correctional
Facility for Men and Women’s Correctional Facility for Women
2000-2010
Adjunct Faculty Antioch University, Education
Department and Teacher Certification Program
1987-1998
Seattle Central Community College: Full time tenured faculty, Position in
the Sociology Department.
1996
Rockefeller Foundation Research Fellow Grant at University of Georgia “Media and Culture”
1996-97
Participant Scholar for National Faculty Institutes. Residency program at Tulane University,
Southeast Missouri University, Little Rock Ark., Memphis, Tenn. On Media Literacy and Cultural
Studies.
1992-93
Visiting Professor position at University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana.
Sociology, anthropology and demography
Publications:
2012
2012
2008
2006
2005
2000
1999
Culturally Relevant Art Education for Social
Justice: A Way Out of No Way Art Routledge
Precious Precious Co author with bell hooks
Online publication “Interdisciplinary Learning among Adultsa
Community Practice and inquire based approach” Barcelona, Spain
“Talking Trash about Crash” co-authored with bell hooks
BFM London Vol. 8 No29 “Media Literacy and Education”
Washington Center for Innovative Education Vol. 6 No.
33 “Culture, Race and the Construction of Whiteness in Curriculum”
Western Washington University Press
“Learning Community Development and the Importance of Critical
Thinking”
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Video Productions
2009 present
Documentary in Production: “Swinging With No Hands”
www.swingingwithnohands.com
2007-8 CANNES FILM
Festival
Documentary Short “Liberian Women Together As One
Cannes Film Festival Afrique 360 Section
Director, Offline digital editor and Director of Photography “The
Yard People: An Intergenerational Love Story”
2002
“Yard People” Winner Silver Image Film Festival Chicago —
Screening of “Yard People” -Winner 'Best in The Fest'
2001
Berlin International Black Cinema Festival Screening “Yard
People: An Intergenerational Love Story”
Winner Best Video Documentary of Marginalized Black
Population
Presentations & Awards
2012
Social Justice Award University of Puget Sound
2011
Artist in Residence for Reel Grrrls Media Arts
2011
Graduation speaker Washington Correctional Center for Women
2010
Race And Pedagogy Conference University of Puget Sound:
1999-2000
Race, Prisons and Education: Cultures of Transformation
2009
Recipient of Pioneer Fund Award for Documentary Production
Swinging With No Hands
2009
Speaker at Whitman College on Ethnographic Research "Moving "from
“Object to Subjsct”
2009
Presenter at Fifth International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
2008
2008
2008
2008
Seattle Central Community College Film and social Justice
Western Washington University World Issues Forum
Ethnography: Moving from Object to Subject
Learning Communities Triton College, Chicago, Illinois
Screening “Liberian Women Together As One” 2008
Short Film 61st Cannes Film Festival
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Curriculum Vitae
Professional Preparation.
Institution and Location
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Harvard Graduate School of Education
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Paul R. McCreary
Degree
BS
MS
PhD
Field of Study
Political Science 1970
MAT
Education 1971
Computational Math 1984
Mathematics 1998
Appointments.
2006-Present. Faculty Member at The Evergreen State College-Tacoma, Tacoma, WA.
1999-2006 Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Xavier University of Louisiana.
1988-99 Founding Dir. of the Merit Workshop Program in the Dept of Math at UIUC.
1983-88 Coordinated tutoring and counseling for mathematics and science at UIUC's
Office of Minority Student Affairs and Project Upward Bound.
1981-83 Served as Teaching Assistant for the Department of Mathematics, UIUC.
1971-80 Taught high school mathematics and social studies in Urbana, Illinois.
Publications.
1. Subsequent Course and Degree Paths of Students in a Treisman-Style Workshop Calculus Program,
with T. Murphy, K. Stafford. 1998. The Journal of Minorities and Women in Science and Engineering,
4(4), 381-396.
2. Hopf Fibrations and Pinkall Tori, 1999. Abstracts of Papers Presented to the American Mathematical
Society, 20(1), 191.
3. The Modular Group; a finitely generated group with interesting subgroups, with T. Murphy, C. Carter.
2005. The Mathematica Journal 9(3), 564-582.
4. Navigating 3D Models, Biological and Mathematical, 2005. Abstracts of Papers Presented to the
Mathematical Association of America, MathFest 2005, 46.
5. One-Room School House Mathematics Class, 2009. Abstracts of Papers Presented to the Mathematical
Association of America, MathFest 2009, 37.
Modeling Biochemical Interactions of Large Molecules. Professor McCreary was awarded a threeyear grant from the National Institutes for Health to develop software tools for investigating structures of
large molecules. During the first summer of the project, in 2005, a parser was constructed to read protein
data bank files and display protein models in a 3D visualization system. A preliminary version of the
molecule viewing software is available to download from the following web address.
http://academic.evergreen.edu/m/mccrearp/atp.zip.
Interactive Computer Animations for Undergraduates. During the summer of 2009, McCreary
developed two lab modules for teaching undergraduates the use of molecular dynamic software to create
interactive animations. This work was done at the request of members the Northwest Distributed
Computer Science Department, an NSF funded project. The materials are available for distribution at
http://ai.vancouver.wsu.edu/~nwdcsd/wiki/index.php/Modules.
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BioQuest Curriculum Consortium. Professor McCreary was invited to serve as an adjunct faculty
member at two of the BioQuest curriculum consortium national workshops in February and June of 2005.
He made a series of presentations on scientific visualization and helped train biology, chemistry, physics
and mathematics faculty to operate 3D visualization systems to investigate surface structure in
biochemical and mathematical models.
Learning Communities for STEM Academic Achievement. In fall, 2004, Professor McCreary was
invited to participate as a founding member of a project sponsored by the Fund for the Improvement of
Postsecondary Education, Learning Communities for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Mathematics) Academic Achievement. This project includes faculty from the campuses of four
Historically Black Colleges and Universities. In conjunction with this project, Professor McCreary
helped plan an interdisciplinary seminar for undergraduates at Xavier University, which was conducted
jointly by Professor McCreary and Professor Marion Carroll, a colleague in the Department of Chemistry
at Xavier University.
Interdisciplinary Institutes. In the summer of 2002, Professor McCreary organized a two-week
interdisciplinary institute on the dynamical structure of DNA. The institute was supported by the National
Institutes for Health through the Livingston Center for Computational Science at Tulane and Xavier
Universities. Presenting at the institute were faculty members and undergraduates from the Departments
of Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, and the College of Pharmacy at Xavier University and from the
Center for Bioenvironmental Research at Tulane University. In the spring of 2004, Prof. McCreary
organized a four-day mini-conference on scientific visualization and on the mining of human genome data
as two applications of cluster-based computation.
Merit Workshop Program. In 1988 Professor McCreary cooperated with three faculty members in the
Department of Mathematics at UIUC to implement a program for promising first year calculus students
from minority and small high school backgrounds. The performance of the participants on mathematics
department examinations was consistently a full letter grade above class average and almost two letter
grades higher than the average of students with similar ACT scores who came from similar backgrounds.
Activities with Undergraduates, High School Teachers and High School Students. Prof. McCreary
has used his computer applications in research experiences for undergraduates, whose work he has
supervised, in several workshops to introduce high school teachers to the use of computer technology in
teaching geometry, and at a summer program for high school students highlighting art in science and
science in fine arts.
Collaborators and Other Affiliations.
Marion Carroll, Department of Chemistry, Xavier University of Louisiana.
George Francis, Department of Mathematics, University of Illinois, U/C. (Graduate Advisor)
Bradford Kline, National Security Agency.
Teri Murphy, Department of Mathematics, University of Oklahoma
Sindhu Unnithan, Department of Mathematics, Xavier University of Louisiana.
Gilda Sheppard, The Evergreen State College, Tacoma Campus.
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