Queens College of the City University of New York
We will describe an innovative model for preservice secondary mathematics teacher education, called TIME 2000 (i.e., Teaching Improvements through Mathematics Education). This four-year undergraduate program was initially funded by the National Science Foundation in 1997, and has since become institutionalized at Queens College of the City University of New York. Students are recruited directly from high school, are block scheduled into a coherent sequence of courses in mathematics and secondary education, and taught by a select group of professors. Unlike traditional programs, students begin their involvement in schools and their study of educational psychology in the first semester of their freshman year. Among the many innovative components of this program that will be described are monthly seminars, regular field trips, annual conferences, a student-run tutoring club, a monthly newsletter, and summer internships. As well, excerpts from the monthly journals and annual portfolios that the students write documenting their experiences and their evolving knowledge and beliefs with regard to mathematics and mathematics teaching and learning will be shared. We will also discuss the trials and tribulations associated with the collaboration between a mathematician with a content-driven perspective and a mathematics educator with a pedagogical perspective as they planned and implemented the calculus course for the TIME 2000 freshmen.
---Alice Artzt and Alan Sultan
Alan Sultan received his Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctoral degrees from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, in the Unified Honor's Program. He is now Professor of Mathematics at Queens College of the City University of New York, where he has been for 32 years and is currently the mathematics advisor for elementary and secondary mathematics education students. He has been a member of the project staff for the TIME 2000 Program since 1997, and has authored or co-authored numerous research papers in mathematics and some in mathematics education. He is the author of the successful book entitled, Linear Programming: An Introduction with Applications, published by Academic Press, and is the recipient of the Queens College Presidential Teaching Award and the Golden Key Teaching Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has received several research grants and has been a grader for Educational Testing Services' advanced placement mathematics exams for the last six years.