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MAA and AMATYC Welcome 2005-06 Project ACCCESS Fellows

MAA and AMATYC Welcome 2005-06 Project ACCCESS Fellows

Project ACCCESS (Advancing Community College Careers: Education, Scholarship, and Service) has recently chosen 32 two-year college faculty as Fellows for the 2005-06 academic year. Project ACCCESS is a joint project of MAA and AMATYC (American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges) for the mentoring and professional development of new two-year college mathematics faculty. Funding for the project comes from the ExxonMobil Foundation. With the majority of lower-division mathematics students enrolled at two-year colleges, it is only natural that the two professional organizations find ways to work together.

The first group of 28 ACCCESS Fellows will complete their official year as Fellows at the AMATYC Conference in San Diego in November. Here, they will be joined by the new Fellows. Both groups will participate in workshops and discussions relating to their teaching and other professional commitments. Topics to be addressed this year include creating active classrooms, assessment, demographics of two-year colleges, and classroom research. Also, at the San Diego meeting, the 2004-05 Fellows will report on individual projects they carried out this past academic year at their home institutions. Fellows have created new course materials, evaluated innovative pedagogy, and conducted research on placement and assessment methods.

An important feature of Project ACCCESS is Fellows' attendance at an MAA Section meeting. One goal for the project is that Fellows become active members of both MAA and AMATYC. Sections with a Section NExT program are asked to include ACCCESS Fellows in these activities. Fellows were overwhelmingly positive about their experiences at section meetings during this past year, but indicated that they would like to see more talks or sessions focused on the first two years of the undergraduate curriculum.

Not every Section has an ACCCESS Fellow in these first two cohorts, but the project funding includes money for the creation or support of a Section NExT as well as for other types of Section-based activities for two-year college faculty. Information about applying for funding can be found at: /projectacccess. Also at the website is a complete list of both the 2004-05 and 2005-06 ACCCESS Fellows.

id: 
4145
News Date: 
Thursday, October 27, 2005