Erin Glover

Impact Narrative

Erin’s proposal for sharing OVER:

“I am a mathematics education doctoral student in the college of education at Oregon State University. I was given an opportunity to teach mathematics for OSU’s Educational Opportunities Program (EOP) which gives students who generally do not have access to higher education opportunities to develop personal and academic achievement in college. In line with the goals of the EOP and the College of Education’s mission to develop multicultural competent researchers, scholars, learning leaders and practitioners who make a difference by promoting innovation, social justice, and lifelong learning with a focus on STEM and cultural and linguistic diversity, I desire to promote real-world mathematics to relevant to all students.

As a part of the course curriculum for my math classes, I have students do group projects around real-world problems that relate to mathematics. I would like to use these books for students to generate their project topics, specific to the problems presented in the book. As an educator, I believe it is my job to give students opportunities to think about the connection between mathematics and real-world phenomena. I plan to document the student discussions around their topic selection in the form of an Instagram page and create a group Facebook page where students can have discussions about these real world problems and create hashtags that promote awareness to their problems, as well as how mathematics a part of the solution. My role would be to facilitate discussions that tie the mathematics back to the real world problems they are interested in perusing. I have 30 students per term (sometimes 50) and it would be useful to have at least 4 books available in the classroom for students to discuss problems that are most meaningful to them. It is my goal that my students will have a better appreciation for the utility of mathematics, but also allow them to begin a dialogue about the important environmental issues that are at the heart of the Speak Out Campaign.”