Dr. Joanne Caniglia and Elaine Richards are coordinating a Conference on Lesson Study to be held at the Wayne County RESA on June 24-25. The conference is sponsored by the Michigan Department of Education Teacher Quality Grant. Lesson study is a professional development process that was developed in Japan in which teachers collaborate to plan, observe and refine a lesson. This conference will focus on lesson study as a tool to improve teaching and student’s achievement in mathematics.

Dr. Kathy Chu spent about a month during her sabbatical leave at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts to attend a workshop in "Advances in Genome Technology and Bioinformatics". Woods Hole is located on the southwestern tip of Cape Cod, across from Martha's Vineyard Island. Dr. Chu used her sabbatical leave to attend this workshop to broaden her knowledge and experience in the area of bioinformatics.
She attended lectures and labs throughout the day. “We learned so much, but I wish we had more time to absorb the material learned. It was very intense”, said Dr. Chu, “There was only one week that we had Saturday off, so I went to Boston to visit my son and had dinner with him. That was really nice.”

Dr. Jiuqiang Liu will spend two months this summer at the Center for Combinatorics at Nankai University in China working on his research.

Dr Paul Howard will be on sabattical during the winter semester 2006.

Cheryl Sanders, our secretary in the Department of Mathematics, has begun work on her graduate degree in women’s studies.

Drs. Carla Tayeh and Barbara Britton serve as co-editors for the problem solving feature of Teaching Children Mathematics, a feature that encourages teachers to incorporate more problem solving in their classrooms. Recent issues include the following articles that they have co-authored:
“Winning Strategy” Teaching Children Mathematics, November 2004
“A Word to the Wise” Teaching Children Mathematics, January 2005
“Make It 36” Teaching Children Mathematics, February 2005
“Measuring Up”, Teaching Children Mathematics March 2005
“Risky Allowance”, Teaching Children Mathematics April 2005
“Candy Conundrum”, Teaching Children Mathematics May 2005

Dr. Bette Warren is developing and teaching an online statistics course during the spring semester. This is the second online course for our department.

Dr. Gisela Ahlbrandt has been teaching an online college algebra class.

Dr. Joan Jones with Kristine Ajrouch, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology, is designing UNIV 179, an interdisciplinary mathematics course. In addition, Dr.Jones will be in Traverse City again this spring, teaching her multicultural mathematics class.

Dr. John Ginther will be a member again this summer season of the Toledo Symphony's summer incarnation, the Toledo Concert Band. The TCB is the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, minus its string players [who don't like to play those wooden string instruments outdoors!] and plus some added wind players. This summer, the TCB may be heard nearby: on July 2, 7:30pm, in Monroe, MI in St. Mary's Park