[RUME] 2008 Electronic Elections

[Chris Rasmussen]

We are pleased to announce the slate of candidates for the RUME  elections
of Organizational Director and Coordinator Elect. Statements from the
candidates are below. These statements will also be available online when
voting. 
 
Elections will be done by electronic voting from October 15 - 30 though the
MAA. More details will follow.
 
For the position of Organizational Director:
    Stacy Brown, Pitzer College
 
For the position of Coordinator Elect:
    Natasha Speer, University of Maine
    Draga Vidakovic, Georgia State University
    Keith Weber, Rutgers University
 
 
Sincerely,
RUME Nominating Committee
 
Sean Larson
Kyeong Hah Roh
Margret Hjalmarson
Chris Rasmussen (Chair)
 
 
Organizational Director Position Description:
 
The Organizational Director will oversee the organization of the activities
of SIGMAA on RUME such as conferences, workshops, etc., in accord with the
decisions of the Executive Committee and the SIGMAA on RUME membership.
 
For Organizational Director:  Stacy Brown, Pitzer College
 
My initial interest in undergraduate mathematics education began at the
University of Texas, at Austin while working with Uri Treisman on various
projects related to the emerging scholars program. This work led me to
pursue a Ph.D. in mathematics education from the joint doctoral program in
San Diego (SDSU/UCSD). There I worked with Larry Sowder and Guershon Harel
on their Proof Understanding, Production, and Appreciation (PUPA) NSF-grant.
This experience was instrumental in my dissertation work, which focused on
the evolution of students¹ understandings of proof by mathematical
induction. Following the completion of my Ph.D. in 2003, I went to the
Institute for Mathematics and Science Education (IMSE) at the University of
Illinois at Chicago (UIC) to work on an NSF-grant focused on whole number
teaching and learning in the context of K-5 standards-based curricula. This
work allowed me to explore the roots of forms of reasoning observed among
undergraduates and to pursue my current work, which examines epistemological
obstacles to mathematical induction and advanced mathematical thinking as
described by Harel and Sowder (2005). Following my post-doctoral position at
UIC, in 2007 I joined the mathematics field group at Pitzer College (a
member of the Claremont Colleges) as a Visiting Assistant Professor of
Mathematics & Mathematics Education.
 
I have been attending the RUME conferences for many years. These conferences
have played a critical role in my work, for they have provided a forum
within which I could learn about alternative perspectives and receive
feedback from more experienced peers. I believe it still servers this role
for many of us. With that said, I feel that the SIGMAA on RUME is at a
critical stage.  Mathematicians are beginning to show increased interest in
our work, as well as interest in learning about our theories and research
practices. This presents both challenges and opportunities for
collaborations. Simultaneously, we appear to be reaching a size where the
conferences can serve as a venue for research collectives. Furthermore, our
work is reaching the point where results are being translated into curricula
and used by others in the mathematics community. This leaves us, as a field,
needing to address questions related to issues of scale ­ questions that may
lead us to consider in a new light the work of our peers in K-12 education
and other undergraduate education disciplines, such as physics, chemistry or
engineering.  As organizational director, my goal for SIGMAA on RUME would
be to support the SIGMAA on RUME conferences continued role as a forum for
collaborations and mentoring, while seeking to expand these roles so as to
include room for the development of organized research collectives and
thematic programs that address the expanding scope of our work.
 
 
Coordinator Elect Position Description:
 
The Coordinator or a member designated by the Coordinator will preside at
SIGMAA on RUME business meetings. The Coordinator will organize and direct
the activities of the group, and will serve as its chief spokesperson. The
Coordinator will serve as liaison with the MAA Associate Secretary. The
Coordinator-Elect and Past-Coordinator will serve as vice-coordinators,
assisting the Coordinator. The Coordinator-Elect will become the Coordinator
upon completion of the latter's term of office.
 
For Coordinator Elect: Natasha Speer, University of Maine
 
Vision for the SIGMAA on RUME
I attended my first RUME conference in 1998. In the decade since, I have
watched as the organization and the community it represents have grown
tremendously. The founders of the SIGMAA on RUME worked valiantly to
establish the organization, to increase the visibility of RUME in the
broader mathematics community, and to create ways for us to share the
products of our scholarly endeavors. If elected, as coordinator I would work
to sustain and expand upon these efforts in ways that serve the current
needs of the members of the organization.  As a community, we have had great
success in establishing mathematics education faculty positions in
mathematics departments, developing graduate programs in RUME, and producing
new researchers. I believe we are now in a new phase of activity for the
organization, with new challenges and new opportunities that stem from the
successes we have had in establishing RUME in the broader mathematics and
mathematics education communities.
 
We need to work to ensure that the field and community we represent continue
to thrive. I believe there are two aspects to this work. First, we need to
find ways to help ensure that we all (and especially those new to the field)
have the opportunities and mentoring necessary to develop a productive
program of scholarly activity in the face of the many demands of an academic
career. This includes continuing the efforts that currently exist while
seeking ways to expand the mentoring/professional development opportunities
we provide for one another. It also includes continuing to seek ways to
enhance the options we have for disseminating our work (as was done with the
recently established RUME conference proceedings). These efforts can also
help maintain and expand the relationships the organization has with other
communities‹ the second of the opportunities I see for the SIGMAA on RUME.
This could include efforts that complement our current endeavors to support
collaborations between mathematicians and mathematics education researchers
as well as efforts to establish additional collaborations with researchers
of undergraduate teaching and learning from other fields (i.e., science
education, engineering education, etc.).
 
My background:
I recently became a member of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics
at the University of Maine, following several years at Michigan State
University where I was in the Teacher Education Dept. and the Dept. of
Mathematics. In my research, I examine the factors that shape the teaching
practices of college mathematics instructors. This includes studies of
connections among teachers¹ beliefs, knowledge, and their instructional
decisions as well as examinations of professional development efforts for
mathematics graduate students and faculty. I have had leadership roles of
various sorts (PI, co-PI, etc.) on several NSF- and DOE-funded grants as
well as for a variety of professional organizations (i.e., PME-NA working
group, MAA committees).
 
 
For Coordinator Elect: Draga Vidakovic, Georgia State University
 
I believe that the most important goals of SIGMAA on RUME in the upcoming
two years are (i) continuation of its leadership role in fostering
excellence in research on learning and teaching  collegiate mathematics and
(ii) offering a forum for experts and novices in this area of research
(through RUME-listserv, conferences, journals, etc.). Providing the
opportunity for communication about the results of research and its
application in instruction is important, but maintaining high standards in
quality of work is a must for the group in order to continue to be respected
and influential in the field.
 
 As a member of RUMEC since 1995, I served on the RUMEC Executive Committee
from November 1999 through September 2002. I was a member of the program
committee for the 3rd annual Conference on RUME in 1998. As a RUMEC member,
I actively participated in the creation of SIGMAA on RUME. Within the SIGMAA
on RUME, I was a chair of the Literature Committee that developed the
initial literature database with over 500 entries (thanks to Eric Hsu for
developing the search engine!). I also served as Organizational Director in
2003-2004. I have been a regular participant (presenter or session
organizer) at the annual MAA joint and regional meetings and currently am
serving in my second term as an associate editor of the Journal of Online
Mathematics and its Applications (JOMA), a publication of the MAA.
 
I have a Ph.D. in Mathematics Education from Purdue University and am a
faculty member in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics at Georgia
State University where for several years I served as an associate and/or
acting chair. Our department has 32 tenure track faculty, 10 lecturers, and
a variable number of visiting faculty and graduate teaching assistants. I
teach various undergraduate mathematics courses, including courses for
secondary math teachers. My research focus is on teaching and learning of
collegiate mathematics in cooperative and/or technology enhanced learning
environments. 

 
I want to emphasize what I consider to be the most important lesson that I
learned through both of these leadership experiences (in professional
organizations and at the workplace). The leadership is about guiding/leading
a collaborative effort of a group of people working together towards a
common goal. Of course, this is not a surprising conclusion for me since one
of my research interests is in cooperative and collaborative aspects of
teaching and learning collegiate mathematics. This is exactly what I plan to
do as SIGMAA on RUME coordinator. I plan to guide/lead our organization
towards achieving our stated common goals, and adapting and developing our
plans to ensure continuing progress for the organization.
 
I hope that my experience will be beneficial in fulfilling expectations of
the Coordinator of the SIGMAA on RUME set by our organization as well as my
predecessors. I will strive to do my best during my term in helping the
leadership of the group accomplish its goals.
 
 
For Coordinator Elect: Keith Weber, Rutgers University
 
For the last nine years, my research has focused on issues concerning
undergraduate mathematics education. I regularly disseminate my work to the
RUME community, publishing two papers in the RCME series and giving
presentations at six RUME conferences and four RUME sessions at MathFest and
the joint meetings. Currently I am PI on an NSF Career grant investigating
undergraduates' comprehension of mathematical
arguments and I am supervising three doctoral students' research on RUME
related topics.

Within the last several years, I have taken more leadership roles for the
SIGMAA on RUME. In 2006, I was the local organizer for the annual RUME
conference at Rutgers University and I was on the conference planning
committee for the San Diego RUME conference in 2008. In the last year, I
have served as program chair, organizing the RUME sessions for the 2008
MathFest Conference and the 2009 Joint Meetings.

My vision for RUME
I aim to continue the growth of RUME in three ways. (1) I would like to
continue and extend the mentoring program for young researchers. Currently,
our senior members of the RUME community mentor young researchers by
providing detailed feedback to their RUME conference proceedings submissions
and, sometimes, to their presentations. This feedback is valuable and such
programs should continue, but the most critical time for expert feedback on
a research project is when the project is still being conceptualized. After
data is collected, the value of expert feedback becomes limited. I would
like to create programs at RUME conferences where novice researchers can
discuss their forthcoming projects with experts in their disciplines. (2)
Building on the success of the recent MAA research-to-practice volume, I
would encourage research that emphasizes the practical consequences of our
theoretical work (see the Rasmussen & Marongelle, 2006, JRME paper for an
example of this), as well as scale up instruction that has proven to be
effective in our own classrooms (for instance, see Wagner, Speer, and Rossa,
2007, JMB) (3) Although the primary mission of RUME is to produce and
disseminate high quality research, it is important to remember that many of
our members are practitioners who are more interested in improving their
teaching than publishing in JRME. More of an effort, I think, should be made
to welcome these members. In particular, I would relax the policy requiring
presenters to submit papers after the RUME conference. This policy is
ostensibly in place to encourage researchers to transform their
presentations into journal articles, but can be an obstacle for those who
want to share their experiences with our community but have no intention of
publishing.