This PREP workshop offers the tools to plan, establish, and run an Emerging Scholars Program (ESP) for under-represented students. An Emerging Scholars Program helps promote greater achievement by under-represented student populations and provides a model that can be expanded to other introductory science courses. This has already been demonstrated at many institutions of higher education.
Developed by Prof. Uri Treisman and implemented during the past 20 years at a variety of schools across the U.S., ESP workshops build student success through collaborative problem solving. Led by faculty and teaching assistants, a typical ESP workshop focuses on student-driven approaches to difficult worksheet mathematics, with Socratic questioning forming the primary assistance given by the ESP leaders.
Participants will learn about successful models from liberal arts institutions to research universities. Workshop participants will receive (1) training time with Uri Treisman; (2) ESP materials including problems and an ESP directors’ guide; (3) practice developing and leading (simulated) ESP meetings, including writing worksheet problems; (4) ongoing support through an online forum and through follow-up meetings at the Joint Mathematics Meetings and MathFest; and (5) access to a database of thousands of calculus problems appropriate for workshop use.
The concluding day of the workshop will be devoted to implementation issues, including suggestions on how to obtain administration buy-in and support. Each participant (or pair of participants) will draft a proposal to his/her home institution for piloting ESP. The full group will discuss each proposal and help participants (a) revise the proposal and (b) anticipate potential challenges to its implementation.
We strongly encourage participants to come in pairs from the same institution or from neighbor institutions.
For more information, see the workshop webpage at http://www.smcm.edu/users/dtkung/2007_PREP.html.