Annual Review Dr. Kris Green
Annual Review and Self Evaluation (Academic Year 2000)
Dr. Kris H. Green
MST/Computer Science/Mathematics Department
St. John Fisher College
This document is a self-assessment for the spring semester 2000, the summer semester 2000, and the fall semester 2000. This document addresses the three areas of responsibility for faculty – Teaching Effectiveness, Scholarship and Professional Development, and Service.
Teaching Effectiveness
Since this document covers three semesters, I describe each semester separately below.
Spring 2000. The table below provides a summary of my teaching evaluations for the spring of 2000. This table shows my performance, the departmental average and the college average for three questions. The number in parentheses by the college average is the standard deviation for the college-wide score. Students assign each question a score from one to seven. In all cases, my performance is well within one standard deviation of the average. Although, as discussed below, I believe that these numbers cannot possibly reflect my teaching in its entirety.
Question / GMST / MATH / MSTE / College Average (Std. Dev.)511 / Dept / 122 / Dept / 310 / Dept
Instructor encouraged active learning? / 6.6 / 6.6 / 6.8 / 5.9 / 6.8 / 6.4 / 6.0 (1.3)
Instructor promoted an atmosphere conducive to working and learning? / 6.3 / 6.4 / 6.6 / 6.0 / 6.7 / 6.1 / 6.1 (1.2)
Instructor displayed a clear understanding of course topics? / 6.4 / 6.4 / 7.0 / 6.2 / 6.7 / 6.0 / 6.4 (1.0)
It is important to note that the scores from students in GMST 511 are actually a combination of scores, since this course was team-taught with Beth Napoli. I feel it is also important for me to point out that reducing an analysis of teaching to a set of numbers, while appealing to the mathematical side of me, does not reflect a complete picture of the semester. This being said, it is also worthwhile to note that only two of my ratings (Math 122 – I would recommend this instructor to another student – 5.9; MSTE 310 – My grades accurately reflect my performance in this class – 5.0) were below a 6.0 out of 7.
Summer 2000. I developed this course – Modeling Change in Mathematics and Science
- as a content course for middle and high school math and science teachers in the GMST program. The goal of the course was to provide the graduate students with an in-depth review of mathematics applied to the context of real-world science problems. The course met five hours a day for eight straight days. This was rough on everyone, but the course was fun, and I feel that it was successful.
Because of timing, I was unable to administer the college teaching evaluation forms. Instead, I collected opinions on a course questionnaire that I developed and handed out in class. These documents are available in my office. Overall, the responses indicated that the course achieved its primary goal – to change the attitudes of the students with regard to the relationship between mathematics and science. Only one student out of 13 indicated that he or she did not enjoy the subject matter. Two students indicated that they did not really feel one way or the other about the subject matter. The other ten indicated that they enjoyed the subject matter. The other comments that I collected will be extremely useful in modifying the course for future students.
Fall 2000. The table below provides a summary of my teaching evaluations for the spring of 2000. This table shows my performance, the departmental average and the college average for three questions. The number in parentheses by the college average is the standard deviation for the college-wide score.
Question / MATH / MSTE / MSTE / CSCI120 / Dept / 211 / Dept / 310 / Dept / 150 / Dept
Instructor encouraged active learning? / 6.1 / 5.9 / 6.4 / 6.3 / 7.0 / 6.3 / 5.0 / 5.9
Instructor promoted an atmosphere conducive to working and learning? / 5.8 / 5.9 / 5.3 / 5.9 / 7.0 / 5.9 / 5.2 / 5.9
Instructor displayed a clear understanding of course topics? / 6.2 / 6.2 / 6.3 / 6.0 / 7.0 / 6.0 / 6.1 / 6.2
College averages and standard deviations for each question are 6.0 (1.3), 6.1 (1.3) and 6.4 (1.0).
Note that this semester was an extremely busy semester. Although only four courses are listed in the table, Dr. Allen Emerson, Dr. Carol Freeman and I developed and team-taught a new course. This course, MSTA 130 Mathematical Modeling and Quantitative Analysis, was developed as a service course for management majors. Since this was a new course and since the course was team taught, the instructors chose to give a different evaluation form from the standard college form. We have learned a great deal from these forms and the future design of the course will reflect this information. In general, students indicated that they appreciated the value of mathematics and the use of EXCEL as they relate to business and management.
Overall. In reflection, I would evaluate my teaching as effective. All of my scores on the standard teaching evaluations are well within one standard deviation of the college averages and most of the scores are higher than the college average. The only exception to this would be the CSCI 150 course in the fall. Primarily this was due to the heavy teaching load that semester. I do not intend to ever take on this heavy a load again since it prevents me from putting my best foot forward in all of my courses.
Scholarship and Professional Development
During the past year, I have tried to pursue my research interests. I have been working on several papers and projects in various aspects of the mathematics discipline, ranging from a continuation of my dissertation work to projects in mathematics education. Some of these projects are listed below.
· “A Solution to Einstein’s Field Equations for a Tachyonic Gas: Possible Astrophysical Applications” with W. John Cocke was rejected for publication in Physical Review D. I have revised the paper and submitted it to Astrophysics and Space Science.
· I am continuing to work on a paper for math education research based on vector calculus quizzes administered at the University of Arizona in spring 1999. This paper was almost complete before my laptop was stolen. After this unfortunate even, I began to revise the coding scheme I used previously in analyzing the data from these quizzes. I hope to complete the paper over spring break 2001.
· My current interest in mathematics education is focused on writing and reading in mathematics. This is related to the work above. I have also been collecting data from my calculus courses (using BlackBoard CourseInfo to facilitate online discussions of mathematics).
· I have also collected material from my MSTE 211 course in the fall. This material will be useful for a grant proposal related to the use of portfolios in mathematics classes. This grant proposal is being submitted by the seven college CCLI consortium involving colleges and universities in New York State.
I have also participated in several conferences over the last year and have made several presentations. These have been mostly informative presentations on different aspects of the MSTE/GMST programs at Fisher. I have presented the results of my research at a poster session in Washington, DC at the annual joint meetings of the MAA/AMS. Conferences that I have attended in the last year include the following.
· The Annual Joint Meeting of the MAA/AMS in Washington, DC: I participated in many sessions as a 1999-2000 Project NExT fellow. I also made two presentations – one at the poster session for Project NExT participants and one at a session on uses of the Internet in mathematics classes.
· MathFest, the annual meeting of the MAA at UCLA in Los Angeles: I participated as a 1999-2000 Project NExT fellow.
· Don Muench and I attended the Seaway Section meeting of the MAA in October.
Service
To the College. I am currently serving on the Instructional Technology Steering Committee (ITSC). In the spring, I served on the ITSC subcommittee whose purpose was to evaluate the effectiveness of the OIT (Office of Informational Technology). This fall, the committee met during one of my classes, which prohibited me from participating as fully as I would have liked.
To the Department.
· I now serve as the advisor for several MSTE students.
· I have represented the department at several functions for recruiting both mathematics and MSTE students.
· I have developed several courses – MSTA 130, MSTE 310, and GMST 570 – during the past year. These courses are described above.
To the Community.
· In the spring, I put on a workshop for the Webster School district on ways to incorporate writing into mathematics classes. This workshop was aimed at middle and high school teachers who are trying to meet new state requirements. This was a two-hour workshop for about 12 teachers.
· As a result of the workshop in the spring, the Pittsford, Penfield and Brighton school districts requested that I put on the same workshop. This workshop was a four-hour workshop over two days. Rather than carry out the workshop alone, a graduate of the GMST program – Casey Vaccaro - participated.
· In the spring semester, Beth Napoli and I completed the TechPrep workshops that we conducted for local area middle and high school teachers on incorporating technology into the classroom.
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