Moving Beyond Myths Revitalizing Undergraduate Mathematics (1991) / Chapter Skim
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BEHIND THE MYTHS
BEHIND THE MYTHS
Pages 13-22
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From page 13... ...
-A Challenge of Numbers, 1990 BEHIND THE MYTHS Undergraduate mathematics plays a pivotal role in our system of mathematics education. It is in college where our nation's engineers and technicians are educated, where future scientists are recruited, and where many of society's leaders acquire basic quantitative skills.
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From page 14... ...
Important clues to the widespread public misunderstanding of mathematics can be found in the traditions and habits of mathematics departments in colleges and universities across the nation. Departments Under Stress In the last twenty years the demand for undergraduate mathematics courses has risen more than twice as fast as have faculty resources in departments of mathematical sciences.
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From page 15... ...
Intensified competition for research funding created a climate in mathematics departments in which research accomplishments received increasing prestige, while contributions to improving education received lower priority. As a consequence, innovations in undergraduate teaching lag far behind advances in research.
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Mathematics departments find themselves trapped in institutional structures that assume that the instructional practices that have evolved over the past thirty years in mathematics are appropriate and acceptable. The result is a dysfunctional system of undergraduate mathematics beset on all sides by inadequacies and deficiencies: .
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From page 17... ...
Yet only in isolated experimental courses has the impact of computing on the practice of mathematics penetrated the undergraduate curriculum. · In resources that support undergraduate mathematics: The typical college or university mathematics department has been viewed historically as a source of large enrollments with low costs of instruction a "cash cow" for institutional budgets.
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From page 19... ...
· In the number of minorities and women who study mathematics: College mathematics attracts far too few Black and Hispanic students, and their attrition rates between high school and the sophomore year of college are much too high. Although the number of women enrolled in un "Ifpresent patterns persist, most socioeconomic and demographic trends indicate thatiewer students will study mathematics and choose mathematicsbased careers." - A Challenge of Numbers, 1990 19
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From page 20... ...
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From page 21... ...
students who pursue graduate studies in mathematics is now much smaller than it was twenty years ago. Today only one in every ten thousand students enrolled in ninth grade mathematics will pursue and eventually earn a doctorate in the mathematical sciences, far too few to replace retiring faculty in coming decades.
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