For (much) detail beyond the executive summary on
Dr. Lawrence(Larry) Lesser
Updated November 2017
EDUCATION
precollegiate education after 1st grade was in Houston ISD public schools, including Bellaire HS
B.A.
in Mathematics / Mathematical Sciences from Rice University
M.S.
in Statistics from the University of Texas at Austin
Also did all UT coursework for a statistics PhD
and have credit for Society of Actuaries' Exams 100,110,120 (i.e., Course
1, plus 35 prof. dev. units)
Ph.D. in Mathematics Education
from the University of Texas at Austin
Click HERE
for a list of selected papers (many with direct links), HERE for a
2-page overall vita, or HERE for
citation information.
My research program is
situated in mathematics education
and includes a specialized focus on statistics
education, an area still rapidly growing in size and importance with the
ever-increasing need for all citizens to gain statistical literacy, reasoning
and thinking in our information age.
Because mathematics and statistics have been shown to be frequently
associated with anxiety, difficulty, and disinterest among secondary and
postsecondary students, and because of the extra responsibility of making sure
that the pre-service and in-service teachers we teach will not reinforce
negative attitudes, the driving interest behind my research has been to develop
and assess ways to make mathematics/statistics more intuitive, engaging, and
meaningful to students. Over my career,
my
statistics/mathematics education scholarship has clustered into foci of engagement, teacher knowledge, intuition, and curriculum, and
equity.
Since 2006, one
of my biggest research projects has been an exploration of issues English
language learners encounter in learning statistics. My
initial case
study of pre-service teachers conducted with Illinois State’s Matthew
Winsor is reported in the November 2009 Statistics Education Research
Journal (a top-tier journal with a 10% acceptance rate) and quantitative followup work
with statistician Amy Wagler, a colleague in linguistics, and one of my
master’s thesis advisees appeared in the November 2013 issue. A study (of a corpus of language in statistics textbooks)
co-authored with Wagler, an undergraduate student and a graduate student is http://jtw.sagepub.com/content/45/1/31.full.pdf+html
and our further papers on this topic include https://www.editlib.org/p/150682/,
http://icots.info/9/proceedings/pdfs/ICOTS9_C273_WAGLER.pdf,
http://iase-web.org/documents/SERJ/SERJ15(2)_Lesser.pdf,
and a paper to appear in the May 2018 SERJ.
Our overall ELL and language research
(see http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/lesser/ELL.html)
is related to a larger scholarly focus I have on
equity issues.
My scholarship on engagement in mathematics/statistics
classrooms includes not only conceptual papers on specific modalities (e.g.,
mathematics/statistics and song, statistics and
magic, (scientific)
skateboarding and (mathematical) music), but also big picture overviews,
empirical
survey research on instructor motivations and hesitations, NSF-funded randomized
experiments, and a qualitative
case study on classroom usage. See http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/lesser/Fun.html
I’ve long been intrigued by what students find intuitive and
counterintuitive. My dissertation
articulated a framework for the selection and role of counterintuitive
introductory statistics scenarios that motivate and engage the intuition and
serve as rich vehicles for multiple representations/perspectives. In subsequent empirical survey research
(published in Teaching Statistics and
in Induzioni),
I found that college students starting an introductory statistics course showed
highly significant positive correlation between interest in and surprise with
respect to true statistical statements in lay language. This result suggests that counterintuitive
scenarios such as Simpson’s Paradox may motivate more than they demoralize, and
these ideas also relate to my involvement in an NSF CCLI grant
in engineering education, which led to a major JSE paper (that won the Scholarship
of Teaching and Learning Award given at the 2012 International Sun Conference
on Teaching and Learning). I have also explored the intuitiveness or counterintuitiveness of several particular scenarios/topics
such as one-way ANOVA, disjunctive event probability (e.g., how many people it
takes to have at least a 50% chance of at least 2 people in the room being born
on the same day of the year), weighted averages (e.g., the ambiguity of finding
‘average class size’), and Simpson’s Paradox (i.e., a comparison can be
reversed upon aggregation; understanding this phenomenon is listed by the
National Council on Education and the Disciplines (2001) as an essential for
citizenship, and plays a big role in understanding observed association between
variables). My 2001 NCTM Yearbook
chapter on multiple representations
(of Simpson’s Paradox) has recently received a fresh wave of attention, as
evidenced by its being listed in several years as one of the very most
downloaded articles out of the hundreds on the world’s premier statistics
literacy website. I have also published
refereed research papers (e.g., in Psychology of
Mathematics Education – North America Proceedings and in Texas
Mathematics Teacher) on issues related to choosing a sequence of
representations.
Another major research project (we published in Journal of
Mathematics Education Leadership) used mixed methods and item analysis
to explore connections between student
knowledge and teacher knowledge with a group of middle school teachers in a
sustained professional development project funded by a Texas Education Agency
grant I was awarded (with Mourat Tchoshanov) and extensions of this work were
published in Educational Studies in
Mathematics. Other papers have
explored other aspects of middle school teacher background, including TPACK, and
conceptual understanding of properties of the median (https://ww2.amstat.org/publications/jse/v22n3/lesser.pdf). I’m also on a team that developed the first
instrument to measure statistics teaching efficacy (see http://www.memphis.edu/sets/)
and our publications to date include: (http://jpa.sagepub.com/content/32/1/40.full.pdf+html
, https://ww2.amstat.org/publications/jse/v23n1/harrell-williams.pdf,
and http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0734282917735151)
My ability to write curriculum informed by the latest
education research recommendations has led to textbook writing. I co-authored the 1998 McGraw-Hill text ACT in Algebra: Applications, Concepts and
Technology in Learning Algebra, which lets applications (not definitions)
launch the mathematics, incorporates modeling and technology appropriately,
emphasizes conceptual understanding as well as computational skill, and has
realistic acknowledgement of the role of factoring-dependent methods. In
2007, I was invited to succeed former ASA president (and Founder’s Award
winner) David S. Moore on
the distinguished Freeman/COMAP author team to prepare the 8th
(2009) and 9th (2013) editions of the applied math-for-liberal-arts
textbook For All Practical Purposes and I had
sole responsibility for its four statistics chapters. While I stepped down from the project in
order to have the time to direct my university’s teaching center, the current
(10th) edition obviously still contains a great deal of my
contributions.
Much of my research
and scholarship connects to grants.
I am PI of NSF TUES
(formerly, CCLI) Type 1 grant proposals, including the funded Project UPLIFT (August 2012-July 2016) that
designed and tested research-based classroom-tested items aiming to engage and
support student learning of introductory statistics (e.g., see 2015
TD and 2016
JSE papers). In September 2015, I landed an NSF EAGER grant Project
SMILES as PI that using an interdisciplinary collaborative to create a set
of interactive educational songs that will be assessed with a randomized
experiment to assess how well the songs reduce student anxiety and increase
learning of introductory statistics, and dissemination throughout STEM is being
supported through VOICES. My past research in the
area of standards and alignment led to my being PI of a 2008 award from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board
to co-chair a Statewide Discipline-Based Vertical Team conducting gap analysis
between the Texas
Essential Knowledge and Skills and the Texas College
Readiness Standards and I was invited to present the findings as an invited
featured solo presentation at the 2008 Charles A. Dana Center statewide Annual Mathematics and
Science Higher Education Conference. Also, I shared equally the
writing and PI roles with M. Tchoshanov on a six-figure “Improving
Student Achievement in Mathematics through Professional Development
Partnerships Grant” funded by the Texas
Education Agency for 2005-2007: “Evidence-based Middle-school
Mathematics Achievement Program,” and our work yielded my invited
half-plenary presentation at the 2006 Charles A. Dana Center’s Annual Mathematics and
Science Higher Education Conference and a juried paper in Journal
of Mathematics Education Leadership. Since 2006, I have served as
co-director/co-PI of over a quarter-million dollars’ worth of Teacher Quality
grants (2 with M. Tchoshanov and 1 with O. Kosheleva). I have also done key subaward
work as part of other people’s grants, including an NSF CCLI Phase 2
grant, a Carnegie Foundation Teachers
for a New Era grant, Department of Education (Project ACE and Project LEAP-UP) grants, the
Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board grants SABE MAS and Master Teacher Academy) and the National Science
Foundation-funded El Paso (with the El Paso
Collaborative for Academic Excellence) Mathematics
Science Partnership, including a multi-year research/outreach/professional
development partnership with UTEP colleagues at an EPISD school which has
achieved recognitions such as Gold Performance Acknowledgement (in Dec. 2005)
for being in the top quartile in improvement in passing rate on the math TAKS
(Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) test. Throughout 2013, I served as a co-PI (with
education researchers Song An and Daniel Tillman, and ethnomusicologist Andrea
Shaheen) on a $20,000 Interdisciplinary Research (IDR) grant to research the
impacts of preservice/inservice K-8 mathematics
teachers’ use of music composition and musical instrument design as an authentic
context for teaching mathematics.
Having spent most of my
career in departments of mathematical sciences, I am in many ways a
“mathematical scientist’s math educator.”
Part of this refers to my strong mathematics/statistics content
background/experience, which includes all coursework for a statistics PhD and
work experience beyond academia as a statistician (which informs my article in
the October 2012 Mathematics Teacher,
for example) before I entered the mathematics education PhD program. Also, my strong content roots have clearly
flavored my scholarship in terms of my instinct and passion for rigor,
aesthetics, optimizing, parsimony, discovery, merging or creating areas, etc.
Mathematics or statistics content has frequently informed the development of my
research questions in mathematics/statistics education. Along the way, I have made contributions to
“mathematical knowledge for teaching” (Hill, Schilling, & Ball, 2004), a
specific aspect of mathematics content that would be useful in a classroom
situation – such as my NCTM Yearbook chapter on multiple representations of
Simpson’s paradox (and the smallest dataset exhibiting the paradox, which led
to a followup problem in School Science and Mathematics), my Mathematics Teacher paper that models the Birthday Problem, my Teaching Statistics paper offering (with
proof) the smallest simple dataset that yields distinct basic summary
statistics, my 2010 Mathematics Teacher
paper on average class size which includes proofs of special cases and more general
mathematical conjectures, and my co-authored PRIMUS paper on a number theory result sparked by exploring
fraction arithmetic. I have written with distinguished mathematical scientists
(e.g., textbook with COMAP authors; several papers with statisticians (e.g.,
Dennis Pearl, Amy Wagler, Mark Glickman, etc.), a paper with mathematician Joe
A. Guthrie, and I now have a couple of pathways with 4 as my Erdös number. And
counting the FAPP college textbook
that Alan D. Taylor and I were among its authors brings my Erdös number down to 2!
The above paragraph notwithstanding, I can also be
described as having a liberal arts sensibility, beyond co-authoring a major
liberal arts math textbook (For All
Practical Purposes) and publishing in Journal
of Mathematics and the Arts, Journal
of Humanistic Mathematics, and Journal
for the Liberal Arts and Sciences.
In addition to conducting various empirical quantitative/qualitative
studies, I research ways to make mathematics/statistics more meaningful to
students (and connected to the educational environment), using the depth and
breadth of my background to find or make bridges between the literatures of
mathematics, statistics, mathematics education, statistics education, and a
variety of other realms (e.g., lotteries, music, ethics, social justice,
culture/ethnomathematics, diversity, and
contemplative pedagogy). These papers,
especially in subareas where there is little prior work, are often integrative
syntheses or critical reviews of a theoretical, foundational, developmental,
philosophical or historical/cultural nature.
My scholarship has spilled over into creative published forms such as
songs, poems, humor, and appearances on radio/TV. This interdisciplinary
sensibility often leads to my publishing the first and/or most
definitive/comprehensive articles (see list of papers) on
several particular intersections of topics, including: statistics
education and English language learners, multiple representations
and Simpson’s Paradox, statistics
education and philosophical ethics, statistics
education and social justice, Jewish
culture and (ethno)mathematics, mathematics
and song, statistics
and song, statistics
and magic, statistics
education and fun, and statistics
and mnemonics, and statistics
and contemplative pedagogy.
Co-authors of my papers span many disciplines besides
mathematics/statistics education, including:
mathematics, statistics, linguistics, bilingual education, philosophy,
psychology, sociology, neuroscience, educational technology, business
administration, and music.
I’ve had
refereed/peer-reviewed papers accepted in a variety of highly-selective (with
acceptance rates as low as 10%) and selective juried research publications
(e.g., Statistics Education Research
Journal, Journal of Statistics
Education, Proceedings of the
International Conference on Teaching Statistics, Journal of Mathematics
Education Leadership, Adults Learning Mathematics International Journal, Journal
of Mathematics Education, Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment,
Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching, Mathematics Teacher
Education and Development, Proceedings
of the North-American Psychology of Mathematics Education conference, Proceedings of the International Association
of Statistical Education satellite conference, Journal of Mathematics
and Culture, Model Assisted Statistics and Applications, Journal of Mathematics
and the Arts, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Journal for
Critical Education Policy Studies, European Journal of Science and Mathematics
Education, Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning Journal, Mathematics
Teacher Education and Development, and the NCTM Yearbook) as well as
in a variety of periodicals designed to reach a larger audience that includes
non-researcher educators (e.g., Teaching Statistics, Primus, Mathematics Teacher, ON-Math:
Online Journal of School Mathematics, Statistics Education Web: Online Journal of K-12 Statistics
Lesson Plans, Journal of Computers in
Mathematics and Science Teaching, Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, Statistics Teacher Network, Stats, Spreadsheet User, Technological
Horizons in Education Journal, Notices of the North American Study Group in Ethnomathematics, and items in cross-disciplinary journals (e.g., Journal for the
Liberal Arts and Sciences, Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and
Learning Journal) and periodicals in pedagogy or educational development (To
Improve the Academy, The Teaching Professor, Faculty Focus, Teaching Tolerance,
and International Journal for
the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning).
I’ve also had a half dozen academic book chapters in books published by
Springer, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Rowman
& Littlefield, and Skye’s the Limit Publishing.
Click HERE for a
near-complete list of papers (many with direct links), click HERE for some
abstracts of papers,
click HERE for a
2-page overall vita, or click HERE for
information about citations of my
work
My 135+ presentations at national/international conferences include the International Conference on Teaching Statistics, the United States Conference on Teaching Statistics, International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Mathematical Association of America (winter & summer meetings), North American chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education, Association for Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education, Joint Statistical Meetings (American Statistical Association), International Conference on Education, Labor & Emancipation, Conference on Math Education and Social Justice, Lineae Terrarum: International Borders Conference, Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators, National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics, Working Class/Poverty Class Academics Conference, the Sun Conference on Teaching and Learning, the Advanced Placement Conference, Research Council on Mathematics Learning, and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Research Presession, the Electronic Conference on Teaching Statistics, and the Bridges Conference on Mathematics, Music, Art, Architecture, and Culture. The most exotic place I’ve presented was probably Marrakesh, Morocco, where my ICOTS talk was translated in real time over headphones into French (and I gave an invited paper at 2010 ICOTS in Ljubljana, Slovenia!). I have given invited featured plenary presentations at national, regional, and local meetings, including the opening plenary speaker for the 2009 NCTM regional conference in Nashville and the featured banquet presenter at the 2013 United States Conference on Teaching Statistics and the Mathematical Association of America’s 2008 MathFest. I’ve given 50+ presentations (including 9 plenary/keynote talks) at regional/statewide conferences (including Western Statistics Teachers' Conference, Georgia Mathematics Conference, California Mathematics Council Community Colleges South, Regional National Council of Teachers of Mathematics conferences, Conference for the Advancement of Mathematics Teaching, Bilingual Educators Emphasizing and Mastering Standards conference, Mathematical Association of America, and Teachers Teaching with Technology, and the Charles A. Dana Center’s Annual Mathematics and Science Higher Education Conference). I have also given invited colloquium talks at schools and universities (e.g., University of Arizona) in over a dozen states and even overseas (the Technion in Haifa, Israel). During my time at AASU, I also gave several university-wide presentations (e.g., President's Symposium on Teaching and Learning, Robert Ingram Strozier Faculty Lecture Series, Scholarship of Teaching RoundTable, Women's Studies Conference). Overall, my presentations have spanned many areas/topics, including: mentoring new teachers, education outreach, mathematics and music/song, mathematics/statistics and philosophy (including ethics), mathematics history, multiculturalism/diversity/gender equity, using the Internet, using mass media, standards-based mathematics and technology, assessment, goals of statistics education, algebraic reasoning in statistics, line of fit, student-collected data, capture/recapture methods, mathematics and science connections, careers in statistics, constructivism, misconceptions, counterintuitive examples, collaborative learning, qualitative research, algebra reform, conceptual understanding of functions, and multiple representations.
My
scholarship and research background has naturally guided my service to the
profession, including: service as a founding Editor (and now, an
Associate Editor) of Teaching for
Excellence and Equity in Mathematics (national journal of
the NCTM affiliate TODOS: Mathematics for
ALL), an Associate Editor of Journal of Statistics Education
(an international journal of the American
Statistical Association), an Associate Editor of Journal of Mathematics
and Culture (international journal of the North American Study Group on Ethnomathematics), an Associate Editor of Model Assisted
Statistics and Applications, an Editor of Noticias de TODOS: News from TODOS Mathematics
for All, and an Editorial Board
member of Texas Mathematics Teacher
(Texas-wide refereed journal of Texas
Council of Teachers of Mathematics). From spring
2013-summer 2016, I did the Assistant Editor work
for the top-tier journal in statistics education: Statistics Education
Research Journal, and upon the conclusion of my term, my successor was a
team of people! Also, I
have done invited refereeing of papers for many journals (e.g., Journal for
Research in Mathematics Education, Statistics Education Research
Journal, Journal of Statistics
Education, Technology Innovations in
Statistics Education, Mathematics Teacher, and Teaching Statistics,
Journal of Mathematics and Culture, Journal of Mathematics Education
Leadership, Model Assisted Statistics and Applications, The American
Statistician) and conferences (e.g., Psychology of Mathematics Education North American
conferences, the International
Conference on Teaching Statistics, and the United States Conference on
Teaching Statistics). I have also
served on program and other committees for various national or regional
mathematics/statistics/education conferences (e.g., USCOTS, MAA, NCTM, Western
Statistics Teachers' Conference, "Transitions in Qualitative Inquiry"
seminar series) and (through a national election) served a 3-year term
(2011-2013) as Publications Chair for the Statistical Education Section
of the American Statistical Association. I
was also chosen to serve a term on the Professional
Development Services Committee of the National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics. I was deeply honored to be recognized as a finalist for the 2001
Gladys M. Thomason Distinguished Service Award by the Georgia Council of
Teachers of Mathematics based on “distinguished service in the field of
mathematics education at the local, regional, and state levels,” to receive a certificate of appreciation from
TODOS founding President Miriam Leiva for “Exemplary contributions as a leader
in TODOS: Mathematics for All
2006-07,” and to receive plaques in 2006 and 2010 from GEPCTM (Greater El Paso
Council of Teachers of Mathematics) recognizing my “support and promotion of
high-quality mathematics teaching and ongoing professional development
throughout the preparation and careers of teachers of mathematics.” I served
(2005-2009) on the RAB (Research
Advisory Board) of CAUSE (Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate
Statistics Education), have been mentoring local and non-local
early-career researchers, served on the Program Committee of USCOTS 2007 (United States Conference on Teaching
Statistics), and have been co-curating a “Fun” Resources Page and
associated bi-annual national contest for CAUSEWeb. On the
state level, I did invited service in 2008 as faculty chair of a Statewide
Discipline-Based Vertical Team on college readiness
for the THECB and the TEA. At
UTEP, my service activities have included chairing the UTEP Museum Committee (for 3 years), editing
the math department’s annual
newsletter (MAXIMA, 2005–present), chairing the mathematics
education PhD proposal program committee, and chairing the Mathematics
Education Search Committee (which yielded the successful hire of the
now-tenured Kien Lim).
TEACHING & RELATED EXPERIENCE
Through my education, my interest in
mathematics was developed by involvement in extracurricular mathematics
activities, including UIL
Number Sense, Mu Alpha Theta, Atlantic Region Mathematics League (I competed
at this national meet as a member of the Texas delegation), and Putnam exams (scoring as high as the
70th percentile nationwide). I learned there's much mathematics beyond
our textbooks and that "recreational mathematics" is not an oxymoron!
I was fortunate to have many excellent professors in college (e.g., Dr. Richard Tapia) who helped
prepare me and inspire me to pursue graduate work. In my own teaching
today, I strive similarly to give students high levels of challenge and
support, broaden their view of how mathematics/statistics connects to other
areas, and give them a view of how mathematics/statistics is done by real
people in real life!
In graduate school, I took the usual “pure
math” courses in analysis, topology and abstract algebra before taking my first
statistics class, which fed my passion to use my mathematical background in a
more applied way. I proceeded to earn a masters' degree in statistics,
work as a statistical consultant on a test-equating psychometrics project with Carl
Morris, teach (and coordinate) statistics for UT business majors, pass
some actuary exams, and work for a couple of years as the sole staff
statistician for the Texas Legislative
Council (I helped research and implement methodology to estimate racial
bloc voting for the redistricting
project, a real-world experience of using mathematics outside academia that
has given my classroom teaching additional authenticity). The
professional tutoring I had done for a private company and various university
departments and the non-tenure-track university teaching I was doing [by the
time I earned my PhD, I had taught 16 classes -- mathematics and statistics,
upper & lower-division -- at St.
Edward's University (a Carnegie Master’s comprehensive Univ. II in Austin
of 3000 students), Southwestern
University (a baccalaureate liberal arts college in Georgetown, TX of
1200), and The University of Texas at Austin
(a Carnegie Doct./Research Univ. Extensive of
50,000)] helped me realize that, while I greatly enjoyed acquiring my solid
background in mathematics and statistics content, I had still greater talents,
interests and calling in the areas of curriculum and instruction, finding ways
to make important content more accessible and interesting. (an aside:
be open not only to the possibility that your direction may evolve, but also to
the idea that what you learn now may be useful later in unexpected ways!)
I then pursued a PhD in Mathematics Education under Ralph Cain with the
distinguished committee of Ray Carry, Charles Lamb, Maggie Myers, and Mary Parker, and with valuable
encouragement from statistics educator (whose distinctions now include ASA
Fellow, ASA Founders Award, and USCOTS Lifetime Achievement Award) Joan Garfield
as well. I was the first student in the program to declare a
specific focus (in terms of both dissertation and supporting coursework) in
statistics education. It was (and still
is) an exciting time for involvement in the areas of statistics education and
mathematics education, which are growing rapidly, along with their overlap, and
I’ve been able to be part of a “bridge” by remaining engaged with both fields
and their literatures (e.g., I’ve published in ASA journals, NCTM journals, and
joint ASA-NCTM journals!).
In 1993, a UT adult education course I
created and taught on the psychology and probability underlying the
then-months-old Texas Lottery attracted
extensive media
coverage - from a story
spanning 37 column inches in the August 28 Austin American-Statesman
all the way to the lead "Dollars and Sense" segment throughout that
weekend's Cable News Network (CNN) Headline News! (Subsequent media
stories have often accompanied the times lotteries begin new games or amass
particularly big jackpots – see http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/lesser/TV.html
-- including interviews by Houston's KTRH-AM, Atlanta's WGST-AM, Houston’s KFNC-FM,
Austin's ABC-affiliate KVUE-TV, and national magazines Real Simple
and Bottom Line Retirement. I subsequently taught that class for the
Upon receiving my PhD, I began teaching and
developing/reforming numerous courses (in statistics & statistics
education, math & math education, math history, and research methodology)
as an Assistant Professor for the mathematical
sciences department of the University of
Northern Colorado (a Carnegie Doctoral/Research extensive University of
10,000 students an hour north of Denver). While at UNC, I worked with middle/secondary
in-service teachers, helped coordinate seminars & conferences, and
supervised tutors, student teachers, undergraduate research and doctoral
dissertations. As a key member of the Educational
Mathematics PhD program, one of my accomplishments was developing doctoral
courses such as one in qualitative research methods in math education. I
was a faculty content person in the "NEXT STEP: K-12 and Higher Education
Working Differently and Together" grant (funded by the CCHE) to explore
creating a seamless K-16 standards-based alignment between high school exit standards
and college entrance standards. I also taught and redesigned courses for
pre-service and in-service teachers as part of the Rocky
Mountain Secondary Teacher Enhancement Initiative in Mathematics and Rocky
Mountain Teacher Education Collaborative NSF grants. As a member of the
first year’s team for the competitively-selected CCHE-funded Educational Technology Improvement Project
(1995-2000) at UNC, I gained experience in developing and implementing
standards, performance-based assessments and rubrics (just as most states’ K-12
schools are required to implement) and was the first at UNC to integrate
sustained, standards-based technology and reformed curriculum into the
multi-section introductory statistics course. I was also active in the Colorado
Council of Teachers of Mathematics (e.g., presentations and committee work for
state/regional conferences), and was Vice-Chair of UNC's Professional Education
Council. At UNC, I also did some
administrative-type work such as coordinating multi-section introductory
statistics courses, a university-wide tutoring lab, and programmatic assessment
reports, and I have done some of this at other institutions as well.
In 1999, I began an Associate Professor
position in the Department of
Mathematics at Armstrong Atlantic
State University (a comprehensive Carnegie Master's University I of
5500 students in the University System of Georgia)
to renew and broaden further my mathematics education background, especially
into the elementary school curriculum -- not only by teaching courses
for pre-service elementary school teachers, but also by spending significant
time in some local schools (from suburban to urban, such as Savannah's East
Broad Street ES, where I spent 50+ hours), observing and working with several
in-service teachers and teaching some lessons myself. I also worked with
in-service teachers as part of an Eisenhower grant and delivered in-service
teacher training workshops -- for individual schools as well as for larger
educational organizations such as the AASU/Chatham County Public Schools
Partnership Board, the Lowcountry Math and Science
Hub, and even the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
& Museum! Also, I spent two of my five Armstrong years
on special leave to strengthen my secondary mathematics education experiential
base by working as a full-time high school math teacher (and department
chair) at Emery HS. Emery’s
advisory activities, outdoor learning, field trips, and strong community
service component/mission gave me deeper insight into how to support and
motivate “the whole person.” My
experience there teaching a range of students (e.g., from the 35th
to the 99th percentiles) and courses (Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra
II, Precalculus, Calculus) greatly enhanced my
subsequent work with pre-service and in-service teachers and yielded a paper in
Journal of Mathematics and Culture.
In 2004, I accepted an
Associate Professor position in the Department
of Mathematical Sciences at The
University of Texas at El Paso (an emerging national research
university of 25,000+ students and 1000+ faculty) to have more opportunity for
research and collaboration – with a critical mass of
talented mathematics educators and science educators, statisticians and
mathematicians in rich cultural and natural environments. During my
tenure here as an Associate Professor – and now, Full Professor -- I’ve also
enjoyed record opportunities to team teach in classroom and in field-based
settings (e.g., an integrated block with COE faculty for UTEP pre-service
teachers at Canutillo ES) as well
as to co-write papers and grants. UTEP
is a research-intensive doctoral university (the country’s only one with a
Mexican-American majority student population) that is part of the University of Texas System (the nation’s
second largest university system), where I began my teaching career in the
‘80s! Another attraction is that I have
familial roots here, including relatives who taught for El Paso Community College and El Paso ISD (while at Zach White Elementary, my great aunt Matilda
was a teacher of the year, and later organized the first education scholarship
at UTEP for future teachers: the Matilda Amstater Shanblum Future Teacher Scholarship Fund).
My interactive, integrated style aims to give students
of diverse backgrounds high levels of support and worthwhile challenge, to
broaden their view of how real people do (and teach) mathematics that often
connects to other areas, and to enhance their quantitative literacy. While
my students do not always declare mathematics to be their favorite subject,
they universally acknowledge that my enthusiasm and approachability makes the
class a “safe environment” and allows them to experience greater enjoyment,
interaction, meaning, and learning than they often had in prior mathematics
classes. I appropriately draw from a
broad pedagogical repertoire that includes manipulatives, technology
(ranging from the Internet to EXCEL to data-collection devices), mass media,
multiple representations, writing, traditional and alternative assessment,
standards-based education, math history, equity/diversity awareness,
cooperative learning activities, real-world applications and connections,
literature, problem solving, student-collected data and the occasional
mathematical magic trick or award-winning math song! I have done outreach events such as Pi Day
educational events (at elementary, middle, and high schools), adult education
classes in lottery
literacy, and lessons for radio and TV! The following representative recent sample
of narrative comments [taken from end-of-course evaluations from pre-service
elementary teachers] show that I offer experiences that were both challenging
and engaging: “I really liked that Dr. Lesser used various manipulatives,
integrated other subjects with mathematics such as social studies, sang songs
to us about mathematical concepts, related math to current events such as the
presidential election, he also challenged us and had high expectations of his
students.” “Very positive attitude and motivated us every class meeting.” “Made us think – that’s a good thing J” “The
instructor’s style is very unique. He is
always looking for things that make class fun, interesting AND educational.”
“The assignments have been challenging and fun.
He makes us look forward to seeing if our answers or assumptions were
right or wrong.” My scholarship on
engagement and my ability to write curriculum informed by the latest education
research recommendations has led to major textbook writing projects, as
noted in the scholarship section of this webpage.
My teaching innovations have resulted in recognitions from my
institution and beyond. I was selected
to serve as AASU's 2001 university-wide Arthur M. Gignilliat, Jr.
Professor (AASU’s premier competitive faculty development award for
innovative teaching). And I was selected as an IMPACT Fellow for
the 2005-06 school year under the NSF ADVANCE Institutional
Transformation for Faculty Diversity grant at UTEP to play a leadership
role in developing new ways of integrating teaching, research and service. I was appointed in 2008 (representing the
College of Science) to serve a 3-year term on the university-wide CETaL Council
of Fellows. I was featured by my university to launch a podcast series (mine was on classroom voting) and was
featured in the first issue of CETAL’s
The Teaching Spotlight (fall
2012). Also, I had a piece
published in the November 2010 issue of North America’s most widely-read
pedagogical periodical for professors, The
Teaching Professor. In recent education contest, I received first-place
recognitions in the national “Quantitative Literacy in the Media” contest sponsored by QL-SIGMAA,
the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award at the 2012 International Sun
Conference on Teaching and Learning, and the third-place award in a national
lesson plan contest. Finally, I
received the 2010 Distinguished College
or University Teaching of Mathematics award of the Southwestern Section of the
Mathematical Association of America, a 2011 Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching from the UTEP
College of Science, a 2011 UT System Regents’ Outstanding
Teaching Award, and in May 2016 was announced as winner of a 2016 Minnie Stevens
Piper Professor Award (there were 10 winners out of all 150+ 2- and
4-year colleges in Texas).
In June 2013, I was named the 2013-14 Provost’s
Faculty Fellow-in-Residence with the Center for Excellence in Teaching and
Learning(CETaL), which gave me
the chance to engage with teaching matters on a campus-wide level and I
directed CETaL (and its International Sun Conference
on Teaching and Learning) from January 1, 2014 to fall/Sept. 2016, initiating resources for faculty
formative feedback, peer observation, UTEP’s internal ROTA process, a pedagogical expertise
database, and the scholarship of teaching and learning (including how it is
tracked in Digital Measures).
PERSONAL BACKGROUND
I grew up in Houston and have also lived in
Austin, Greeley (CO), Savannah (GA), and now El Paso. My family tree is full of
people who supported education in Texas, such as my father’s mother Julia
Lesser (who taught mathematics with distinction for over 25 years in the Fort
Worth public schools; a former student of hers recently wrote my dad: “Your mother taught the girls we could be savvy in math
right alongside the boys…your mother opened up the ordered universe for us. I
can still see the chalk flying when she hit the board in a frenzy of
excitement…..”) and her sister Sadie Streusand (a teacher and counselor in the Houston public schools),
who turned me on to the enrichment of extracurricular mathematics organizations
and contests. Also, my great aunt Matilda Amstater Shanblum was
Teacher of the Year (and later an assistant principal) at El Paso’s Zach White Elementary (where her
daughter Frances Kahn taught upper elementary grades for 13 years), director of
the El Paso Teachers Association, and the person for whom the first education
scholarship fund at UTEP for future teachers is named. The University
of Houston’s highest faculty honor is named after another aunt: the Esther
Farfel Award. My mother’s father Bernard
Farfel was the visionary behind the founding (in 1963) of the Jewish Institute
for Medical Research, which launched the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
in the Baylor College of Medicine. My maternal uncle Barry
Goodfriend MD was one of two alumni recipients of a 2017
Distinguished Service Award from the Baylor College of Medicine. I aim to continue honoring the memory of all
of them with my service in the field.
Though I love my job (longest one
and best one I’ve had!), I am more than my job. That is, I am also a
guitarist, a songwriter, a spiritual seeker, a compassionate friend, a man who
cherishes his soulmate, son, and dogs. With my son now in college, I
now see higher education as a parent, as well as a professor and alumnus. I
love to read, hike, and spend time with my family and friends. I’ve been published as a journalist,
songwriter (I’ve had songs recorded on indie artists’ albums and won awards,
including 2nd-place in the
fall 2012 El Paso Songwriting Contest, at least one top-three song
contest award in each of the three most recent A-mu-sing
national contests held by the Consortium for the Advancement of
Undergraduate Statistics Education, 1st place
in the National Museum of Mathematics’ “Pi Day of the Century” song contest in
spring 2015 (and award-winning songs in the museum's fall 2015 and spring
2017 song contests), poet, and humorist. Of course, my
“outside-the-job passions” like music or poetry sometimes find their way into my
professional world anyway, which yields a more interesting and integrated
life!
Go back to my homepage by clicking HERE
