Dr.

Brian Travers
Associate Professor of Mathematics
Promotion Narrative
September 17, 2018

1. Teaching Effectiveness

This is the beginning of my 15th year at Salem State University. I teach a wide range of under-
graduate and graduate classes, including those in our MSM program. I have also observed over 60
undergraduate and graduate student teachers in both middle school and secondary placements and
taught the practicum seminar each semester before I became department chair. Every summer I
also teach two classes each session, which gives me the opportunity to teach more graduate courses
and work with the teachers in area schools.

During the last nine years, I have taught 18 different undergraduate classes and 10 different gradu-
ate classes. This large variety of classes provides freshness to my presentation of material because
I am teaching different classes almost every semester and invariably, with this quantity, there is
often a brand new prep. Now that I have taught most of the undergraduate course offerings, I look
forward to how I can improve my teaching in those classes by updating the way I teach based on
the skills of a particular set of students and based on any new, innovative techniques that can help
the level of understanding.

One such change I have recently made is that I have begun using slides in many of my classes. I feel
like there is not enough discussion in early mathematics classes because there needs to be a level of
comfort with the rote calculations in order for the students to understand the application of theory
and it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture when students are struggling with mechanics. To
this end, I project detailed slides that are much more than a slide show that would be used for a
presentation; my slides show how the solutions come about and explain why we use the applied
techniques. This way I can have the students focus more on our discussion because I post these
notes on my web page after we finish a section or topic so they can use them as another resource
when preparing for class. It is very time consuming, but allows me to better facilitate discussions,
even when the material is calculation-heavy, because I can circulate the room and spend more time
talking to students. The classes have become more discussion based and I feel like both the energy
in the room and the level of conceptual understanding have increased.

In all of my classes, I promote active learning and conceptual understanding. I assign work that
emphasizes what I feel are the key concepts and also stress the importance of being able to commu-
nicate mathematically through both verbal and written means. It is very important to me that the
students understand the reasonableness of their work; it is sometimes more effective for a student
to get a problem wrong and realize that there is an error based on context than for a student to get
a problem technically correct while lacking the ability to understand the rationale and importance
of the application.

I feel that I have a good rapport with my students. My goal in each class is to create a comfortable
environment so that students not only feel free to participate, but want to participate. I feel that
the students will get more out of the class if they take an active part in their education. The stu-
dents seem to like this approach as my SIR II reports are always strong. Over 85% of the ratings
are above the mean during this evaluation period and more than two-thirds of those ratings that
were not came from non-major courses. In analyzing the results, most of these ratings were from
earlier in the evaluation period and from the outcomes section of the evaluation. This made me
rethink how I present material, which is where the decision to write slides originated. Some of the
lower rating appear to be from students who are not really assessing the class fairly as well, such
as those who gave lower marks for timely return of assessments when they are always returned the
next class without exception.

My evaluation scores in DGCE classes shows that I am reaching the demographic that populates
those classes as well. Many of my sections during the regular academic year have been filled by
teachers and teacher candidates during their practicum semester and I see many of these same
students in content courses they are taking either as part of their graduate program or for state
licensure requirements. I also teach many undergraduate courses over the summer. Analysis of the
evaluation results shows that over 90% of the ratings were in the agree or strongly agree range,
while less than 2% of the ratings were in the disagree range or below. I know no person’s teaching
style can catch all learners, but I feel that based on the feedback from my students both in class
and on the evaluations, I am reaching a vast majority of my students.

The faculty that have observed me always mention this connection I have with my classes as well.
This rapport is also evident to anyone who walks by my office since I very often have multiple
students there for help with a class or for advice about something outside the classes I am teaching.
I make it a point to get to know the students so that they know any constructive criticism of their
work or comments about their progress towards their intended careers comes from someone who
genuinely cares about their success.

In addition, I have taught directed studies in graph theory, sabermetrics and a study on how ELL
students learn and retain mathematics. Having been heavily involved in teacher preparation, the
study of how ELL students retain mathematics was of interest as many of the school districts
around Salem where my students will be teaching once their academic careers have ended have
a large number of English language learners. My student used her job at Salem Cyberspace to
implement different activities and applications to see how the retention level was affected. Her
results are interesting and show the mountain we face as educators when a student falls behind if
we want them to get back to the appropriate level and have a chance at success in mathematics.

The most recent undergraduate directed study dealt with sabermetrics, which is the objective study
of baseball through the use of statistics. This topic is of particular interest to me, as I have been
active in historic base ball for the past 19 years as the captain of a team, and more recently, as a
national trustee for the Vintage Base Ball Association (VBBA). The student, however, was more
interested in football than baseball and he felt that football lacked the objectivity that sabermet-
rics provides for baseball analysis. We used the semester to discuss the uses and misconceptions of
baseball statistics to develop a metric for measuring the ‘clutch factor’ of quarterbacks.

During the summer of 2017, I conducted a graduate directed study in graph theory. This field
is closely related to my area of study but is not a class that currently exists in the Salem State
graduate course offerings. I am hopeful that this work will result in the creation of a new class
that can be offered regularly. We currently do not run any graduate level discrete mathematics
classes, so this course would be the first such offering and would give students an avenue to study
a different branch of mathematics at a higher level.

In both of these cases, I had the opportunity combine mathematics with the outside interests of the
students to create a unique class that suited their needs. Classes like this provide me with a great
deal of satisfaction because the students are working in an area that they are passionate about and
it helps them realize the real-life value of the education they are receiving from Salem State, and in
particular in these cases, from their mathematics professors. Directed studies like these also show
me that my approaches in how I deal with my classes and students are effective as they seek me
out to advise them on these projects. I have routinely advised students on their senior seminar
projects, as well, when their topic was related to my field of study.

As mentioned above, I observed all middle school and secondary teacher candidates during their
practicum placements from 2004-2016. During this evaluation period, I observed 64 candidates in
their placements, 5 of which were full-year experiences, in 39 schools covering 25 different school
districts on the North Shore. I enjoyed the time in the field as it helped me connect what is
currently happening in area schools with the concepts I needed to discuss during the practicum
seminar and when I taught the Methods course. The challenges of this work, however, lied in the
paperwork. For each student, I evaluated a portfolio and a Pre-Service Performance Assessment
(PPA). This document has over 50 criteria for which artifacts must be evaluated using the Profes-
sional Standards for Teachers. The state moved to a new evaluation system beginning in the Fall
2016 that Salem State adopted in the Fall of 2015. This new system better aligns the way we assess
our students in the field with the way they will be assessed during their evaluations in their chosen
profession. But, the change for Fall 2015 was announced late in the summer with little guidance
as to how the new process would work. It took considerable time to familiarize myself with the
new requirements and I reached the point where I was meeting with other field supervisors to teach
them how to use the paperwork.

I have included course materials that illustrate my comments above in the section labeled “Teaching
Effectiveness”.

2. Academic Advising

I hold regular office hours, but I meet with students outside of those office hours on a regular basis.
Over the past 9 years, my number of advisees has increased from approximately 10 a semester to
a peak of 42. This number of advisees increased quite a bit, as there was an increase of students
interested in teaching mathematics over the past few years. This increase in my advising load was
also due to my request to advise all students interested in licensure in teaching secondary and mid-
dle school mathematics. To facilitate the discussions I had with these students, I created a series
of advising forms and suggested plans of study. In addition, I created an interactive spreadsheet
for each student that tracks their grades, observation hours, and licensure exam performance, as
well as allow us to run scenarios for different outcomes in classes. Each change in either the core
or the secondary education minor brings about the need for new tools so that I would be fully
prepared to discuss all options with my advisees. The number of advisees has decreased since I
became department chair and passed the role of secondary education coordinator to a colleague,
but I still maintain the second largest advising load in the department.

It takes a great amount of time to get to know my advisees to the level that allows me to best pre-
pare them for their future careers, but it is time I feel is well spent every time that I hear that one
of my students reached a career goal. Every one of my undergraduate teacher candidates was hired
in a full-time teaching position after graduation. This gives me a sense of pride as I was directly
responsible for their education in both mathematics classes and in teaching the Methods course
and helped them reach the goals they set for themselves. By spending the time to get to know the
students and give them the outlet to discuss their goals, fears, concerns and expectations, I had
their trust and they knew that the discussions we had about their futures were not taken lightly.
They learned to come to me for not only academic advice, but with any problems or issues that they
may have had. I felt I served as more than an advisor to them - more like a mentor for those stu-
dents who have the necessary skills and dispositions to reach their goal of being a classroom teacher.

Unfortunately, not all students make it to their final goal, and it is my responsibility to both advise
them in these situations and also make sure that the students who graduate from our program and
receive licensure are the kind of teachers we want educating the next generation. One of the most
difficult aspects of advising students is dealing with the students who do not have the required
skills or dispositions to be successful classroom teachers. Many of these students have had the goal
of being an educator for many years prior to the start of their collegiate careers, and they often
realize on their own once they begin the major that they are not as suited as they once believed
to enter this profession. In these cases, our advising time is spent finding a better avenue for their
abilities. But sometimes, a student does not realize that they are not suitable for this profession.
The conversations that we have about this to help them realize the changes that had to be made to
get them back on track were only possible because of the time I spend learning about the person
instead of looking at them as a series of grades and assessment scores. I feel they appreciate the
time and effort I give them and in turn, they respected the advice I give them.

When I took over as chairperson of the Mathematics department during the summer of 2016, I re-
linquished the role of Secondary Education Coordinator. The part of this role I miss the most is the
connection with the students during their pre- practicum semesters, but I give the same attention
to my current advisees as the secondary students received. During the Spring 2017 semester, for
example, there were three faculty members in the Mathematics department that were on sabbatical
and I took over all of their advisees as to not put the burden on my other faculty. This allowed
me to get to know a number of students that I had not yet met or had the pleasure of having in
class. Their needs and plans are different than those with career plans in the education field, so
the conversations were very different.

I spend a large amount of time each semester advising students that are not officially assigned to
me as well. I have a number of students who solicit advice from me about elementary education
and also concerning the MTELs. As a department chair, there are countless conversations about
classes or transfer credit or career plans with students from many different majors. My door is
always open to any student who needs help or advice and I feel like those arrive with questions
leave with answers and a better sense of what they need to do to succeed.

In the “Academic Advising” section there are supporting materials.

3. Continuing Scholarship

In this category, I have contributed to the content of the discipline through my course preparations
and through the creation of a new course, as well as through the writing of texts for both Salem
State students and for outside industry, and also a new assessment tool for the School of Education.
This assessment tool, the Assessment of Professional Dispositions, originally came out of a need I
saw in that we had a great number of ways to assess our students in classes, but nothing to assess
them in regards to the dispositions that a successful teacher must possess. I wrote a draft, intending
it to be a teaching tool at the time, and brought it to both CLAS (the Committee on Licensure
in the Arts and Sciences, which has since been replaced by PACE, which stands for Program Area
Content Education) and the Unit Assessment Committee. Through many revisions, a much larger
document was produced that was to be used throughout the Education programs at all levels. The
new document was now to also assess practicum students as well as pre-practicum candidates. I
was proud of the creation of the document but felt that it was difficult to apply and that there was
some overlap in the dimensions being assessed as compared to the state licensure forms. During
the summer of 2015, I worked with a small group from the School of Education on the new version
of this document that returned it to my original vision. It now has 10 dimensions and no longer has
an exemplary rating. I believe we want to push our students to excel, but as teachers, we should
always be working to improve our craft and giving exemplary ratings to student teachers seems
counter to this belief. The usage became mandatory at multiple levels throughout the pedagogy
classes, first introduced during Exploring Education and used throughout, culminating in a formal
assessment during the practicum experience.

My newest scholarship project involves the elevator industry. I was approached in the spring of
2017 by a representative from NEIEP, the National Elevator Industry Educational Program. They
were seeking a new author for their mathematics curriculum, as they had been using Cengage for
the past several years and were unhappy with the lack of connection to their content as well as the
inability to customize any of the materials. They also felt that their previous writers did not take
into account that the demographic was adult learners and that the instructors, while experts in
their field, were not mathematician. This set of circumstances provided different challenges than I
had encountered before when preparing materials of this nature, but I was confident that my writ-
ing style and experience with teaching students from all walks of life had me prepared to exceed
their expectations.

I first met with their representatives in May, 2017, and discussed a plan for six units on topics
such as basic mathematics, ratios and proportions, appropriate measurement tools, and equations
and formulas. The content was to also include applications to their field, such problems dealing
with electrical current and with precision of measurement. Over the next several months, I worked
closely with NEIEP with frequent conference calls to discuss drafts of both the units and also the
assessments I wrote. They reported to me that they were extremely happy with the product and
found it far superior to what they had previously used. Before the final unit was even written,
the early ones were being used in offices across the country, as far away as Hawaii. This was a
very satisfying experience in that my work will be used by thousands of students throughout the
country. They are currently translating my work into Spanish, with initial use to take place in
Puerto Rico, but eventually will be available to all students. In addition, if NEIEP follows through
with plans for interactive materials, they have expressed interest in a continued partnership.

Another major scholarship endeavor I have in my materials is a new textbook, entitled Quantitative
Methods for Business and Finance. Due to changes in curriculum in the School of Business, the
Mathematics Department decided to create a new course that would best serve the business stu-
dents’ needs. This course combines multiple elements from different classes as well as concepts not
currently covered in any existing course we offer. The problem we ran into with a text, however,
was that there is no textbook we could find that contained all of the concepts we wanted to cover
in this course. The only option publishers could offer was the creation of a custom textbook where
chapters were drawn from varying sources written by different authors. This was concerning to me
because of the lack of consistency in writing. The students who take this class generally do not
have extensive mathematics backgrounds and the lack of consistent presentation of the concepts
could cause comprehension issues. I felt the best way to remedy this situation would be to write
a textbook that would directly address the concepts of the class with one writing style to help
alleviate the mathematics anxiety that I have found exists in many of the business students I have
taught over the years. This text was submitted to Pearson in the Fall of 2016 and was accepted for
publication by Pearson Custom. I decided not to sign a contract for this, however, as I feel I can
reach a wider audience by publishing through a different avenue. To this end, I had the textbook
published on Digital Commons in 2018.

In my love of teaching and baseball, I found a natural match in the creation of a new class on saber-
metrics. This course was created in response to a call for more topics for first year seminars and
ran for the first time during the Spring of 2017. This was my first experience with teaching a FYS
course and I was unsure at the beginning how to blend the intended content with the prescribed
goals of the program. Very quickly, the students took to both the material and my facilitation of
the discussions and the end result was a very successful class. I received very positive feedback from
both the FYS coordinators and also the students themselves. I have had contact with some more
than half of the students in the class since the semester’s end and am happy to report that they
felt the lessons of the class served them well heading into their sophomore years. I look forward to
finding ways to improve the student experience when the class runs again.

For the past 19 seasons, I have been captain of a historic base ball team, the Providence Grays, who
play by the rules and customs of the 1884 National League. One of the biggest issues in my game is
the lack of attention to the correct rules, customs and interpretations of the accounts of the game
we have available to us through research. In my role as a national trustee for the VBBA (Vintage
base Ball Association) I presented an idea to the board about conducting an accuracy study so we
could identify what aspects of the game are not being accurately portrayed and if there are any
trends with regions of the country in regards to inaccuracies. To this end, I created a survey to
be completed by both a representative from VBBA teams and also by independent members while
watching other clubs. My hope is that the teams will be honest when assessing themselves and
that we will have corroborating data from the independent reviewers. This on-going project is in
the data collection phase now and will culminate with analysis and reports on what steps we can
take to improve any deficiencies we see and how we can better educate our members to portray the
game accurately.

During the winter of 2014, I participated in a PARCC judgement study for the Algebra II exam-
ination. PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) is potentially
going to be the common assessment that will replace the MCAS exam in Massachusetts public
schools and the Board of Higher Education and the Department of Elementary and Secondary
Education was interested in the opinions of the exam from the point of view of the post- secondary
educators. This study was conducted on a national basis and Massachusetts was the state that was
most represented. I was the only mathematics participant from Salem State and this was followed
up with a meeting at Worcester State in August of 2015 to discuss the next steps in the process.
It was at this time that the Salem State contingent, led by then Asst. Provost Everett, realized
that we need to be proactive in determining how the adoption will affect the enrollment of our
future students. To this end, I served as a PARCC Liaison, with a primary role of meeting to
determine what will be Salem State’s course of action in the event that the state voted to use this
assessment. I also served last year as a Faculty Assessment Liaison for PARCC, which involved
state-wide meetings and discussions with colleagues in the Mathematics department regarding the
impact that this assessment will have on our future students.The state, however, voted to not adopt
the PARCC exam in November of 2015, and this role changed. With an eye towards MCAS 2 to
be the replacement for the old state assessment system, a group was created to review the Com-
mon Core Standards in ELA (English/Language Arts) and Mathematics. I was asked to serve on
this panel by one of the organizers of the PARCC group and accepted, knowing full well how the
changes to the standards and to the assessment would affect our students for years to come. We
met several times over the course of that academic year, but with the state’s decision to no longer
use the PARCC exam and instead create a new assessment, this role changed over the last year.

After deciding not to continue with the PARCC exam to assess high school students, it was deter-
mined that Massachusetts will create it’s own assessment, tentatively named MCAS 2.0, that will
be administered beginning in the Spring of 2017. In order to revise the Standards leading to the
creation of this assessment, a standards panel for ELA and Math was formed in 2016 and I became
of the 23 Mathematics panelists from across the state. This group consists of educators from all
grade ranges from public schools in Massachusetts, as well as a handful from higher education, who
were charged with reviewing the current standards to make suggestions to the Board of Higher
Education and to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. This process entailed
several meetings to discuss the level of rigor and appropriateness of the certain standards for dif-
ferent grade levels and refine language as necessary. These proposed changes were to be vetted by
a separate content area specialist group and then presented to DESE and BHE in October of 2016.
Working with this group gave me a very different experience working with middle and high school
teachers than those I had while serving as a field supervisor for practicum experiences because I
was afforded the opportunity to discuss the usage and implementation of the Common Core at
a fundamental level rather than at the application level as with student teachers. With an eye
towards an improved assessment for high school juniors in MCAS 2.0, instead of the sophomore
level as with the original MCAS exam, this work will hopefully prove to be a very important set of
revisions that will better guide teachers for years to come.

I am also a member of several professional organizations, including the MAA, AMS and NCTM.

Supporting documentation can be found the the “Continued Scholarship” section.

4. Service to the Department and to the Community

In the past nine years, I have been involved in the operations of the Mathematics department
through attending meetings and serving on department committees. Among these department
committees are the Assessment, Curriculum, and Search committees. I also have several commit-
tees and activities that are either campus-wide or are in the community outside of Salem State.
More recently, I became department chairperson in July, 2016.

I served as the Coordinator of Secondary Education for Mathematics from Spring 2005 through
Summer 2016. I also served as chairperson of CLAS (Committee on Licensure in the Arts and Sci-
ences) from 2007-2014. This committee was comprised of secondary education coordinators from
all of the departments of the SOAS as well as from specialist programs, such as the SMS depart-
ment, and education faculty from the AEL department. In this role, I helped to lead Salem State
through a successful NCATE accreditation process in the Fall of 2013. This process involved the
coordination of all of the departments of the School of Education and all of the departments across
campus that are involved in teacher preparation. The Unit Assessment Committee, of which I was
a member, was also instrumental in the presentation of data and artifacts for both SPA reports
(reports associated with each discipline’s national council) and the site visit by the national and
state accreditation teams.

As chair of CLAS, I facilitated meetings among faculty to discuss the issues we faced and to discuss
the preparations for accreditation. One of the important contributions this committee made during
my tenure include the split of practicum and seminar into two classes. Prior to this split, student
teachers would have a field supervisor assigned by Salem State and would attend a weekly seminar
with students of many other disciplines. I felt that this was not the most effective manner to hold
the seminar as it would be more beneficial for student teachers to be able to discuss their successes
and difficulties with others teaching the same subject. The committee worked to write a proposed
syllabus and outline the important outcomes that all of these seminars with which the students
should be provided. Since this passed through governance, I was able to run the seminar for the
students I observed. This allowed me to shape the discussions based on elements of observed classes
and gave the students the opportunity to discuss the teaching of mathematics with those who also
understand mathematics at a level similar to their own.

Another curricular change I worked to achieve was the inclusion of a second Methods course in the
new 4+1 program in the School of Education. I feel that the students gain a great deal of insight
into the general practices and techniques of teaching, but do not have enough of an opportunity
to directly practice and discuss teaching in their intended discipline. Having only one semester to
teach all of the aspects of teaching high school or middle school mathematics always made me feel
like there was much more I could do to help the students be more prepared for their practicum
experience that I could not cover. I pushed for this new program to have two semester of Methods,
which will take place during the candidate’s senior year, and this will allow for the extra time to
help the students shape their ideas about how to teach into practices that will be effective for their
own students’ learning.

A long standing problem within the School of Education centered around the identification of ed-
ucation minors that intend to obtain licensure at the end of their academic careers. Too often,
students would take the classes they felt they needed to take without proper advising and would
realize that they had taken either the wrong class or were missing a required component for accep-
tance into the licensure program. To better serve the students, we needed a way to track them and
to this end I created two forms. The first form is for pre-licensure students. The idea of this form
is to facilitate a meeting with the program supervisor in the student’s discipline as early in their
time at Salem State as possible. By completing this paperwork, the student would be identified
by the School of Education so that they can receive important notifications and also so that they
can have the requirements of the minor associated with their Navigator account. But at this point,
the student is not officially in the minor. There are certain benchmarks that must be met before
official entry can take place. Because of this identification, we could be assured that the student is
educated on this process so that they have the best chance at satisfying the requirements in timely
manner. The other tracking form was the application to the licensure program. Prior to the use
of this form, students would request the minor in secondary education at any time they wanted
and would often have to drop the minor at a later time. Under the new process I created, they
had to wait until they met the benchmarks before their application would be accepted and they
would apply for the minor at the same time. This way we were letting Salem State and the state
of Massachusetts both know of the student’s intentions at the same time. I feel that this process
was used as a model for the new 4+! entrance requirements as there are many similarities between
the process I laid out and the one currently employed in the new program.

After the School of Education came to be, CLAS morphed into a new department within the School,
PACE. This department is compromised of representatives from all of the secondary licensure pro-
grams and is responsible for decision making regarding both undergraduate and graduate licensure.
I served as the Mathematics department voting member for the 2015-2016 AY, during which the
discussed and voted on new initiatives centered around the 4+1 program. At times, I was the only
voting member to raise concerns about the process, and unfortunately, some of those concerns that
were not addressed are coming to light now and creating potential problems moving forward.

I also served on the Education Unit Assessment Committee from 2008-2014. This group, during my
tenure on the committee, wrote a set of teaching proficiencies for all education students. We also
determined the benchmarks that must be reached for all education students at different levels of
their pedagogical studies. This committee also gave me a group of involved colleagues with whom
to discuss the Professional Attributes Scale when I first created the document. The comments and
revisions helped shape the document into the tool that was to be used across programs and levels.
We also spent considerable time evaluating the lesson and unit plan templates and the associated
rubrics, and passed recommendations along to the departmental committee within the School of
Education that initially proposed the templates.
I have served on the Curriculum Committee in the Mathematics department since 2007. One of the
important achievements of this committee is the creation of a new course, Quantitative Methods
for Business and Finance. When the School of Business changed their requirements to only one
mathematics course, we felt that there were many topics that students were no longer going to
have exposure to that were necessary for them. We developed this new course, with comments we
solicited from the School of Business faculty, that combines elements of the two courses that the
students were formerly required to take while updating the topics to reflect what the faculty re-
ported to us as important. I worked with a publisher to explore the possibility of a custom textbook
and when I teach the initial offering of this class during the summer of 2016, I intend to revisit this
text and see if it is a strong fit now that the course has been formalized and taught over the last year.

We also worked to create suggested syllabi for MAT 123 and MAT 124, the sequence of Mathemat-
ics for Elementary Teachers courses. The main motivation behind these syllabi was a comparison of
what were teaching in these courses with the mathematics required of students to pass the MTEL
examinations and also how our courses aligned with the NCTM guidelines. I researched the latter
and the committee factored these skills into the topics lists for the courses. I wrote the drafts for
these syllabi and have used them myself when teaching the classes since that time.

While examining the syllabi for these courses, it became evident that there was little consistency
in the way the course descriptions were written. I rewrote all of these descriptions to provide
this consistency, and since formal paperwork would need to be submitted to governance to fix the
wording, we took the opportunity to update the topics intended for the courses as well.

Another project for this committee was a common final examination for MAT 090 students. This
course serves to fulfil the mathematics competency requirement and we felt it important to ensure
that all students completing this class had the same baseline skill set. We discussed the topics that
should be covered during the class and designed the types of questions that would become the final
examination. We also asked instructors to report to us with an item analysis so that we could see
where we needed to improve our topics so that students would have the best chance of success in
their future mathematics classes.

I served as chair of the Assessment Committee during the 2009-2010 academic year. Some of the
projects that I initiated during my tenure on the committee were completed during this year. One
study involved the collection of grades from all students who took six different service courses be-
tween Spring 2005 and Fall 2008. I compiled the data to look at how the students were performing
in these classes by semester and based on whether or not they were a day or DGCE student. I
wanted to look for trends in when students had higher scores and which semesters resulted in higher
failure or withdrawal rates. I also completed a project looking at the correlation between the grade
a student received in MAT 090 and the follow-up course. It is interesting to see that the correla-
tion is moderate in each of the classes and graphs do show the visual characteristics necessary to
conclude that the prerequisite course has a positive impact.

The other assessment study I initiated that concluded during this academic year involved the
method by which students satisfied competency. The students are supposed to have taken MAT
090 if they did not place out of the class and then could move on to other mathematics classes,
but a loophole existed by which earning a passing grade in any mathematics course would satisfy
competency, even if the student should not have been able to register for the course because they
hadn’t satisfied the prerequisite. This study showed that students were more likely to pass com-
petency by taking statistics or mathematics for elementary teachers than if they took one of the
courses more generally taken by business students. This goes to the heart of the material in basic
algebra being more suited as a prerequisite for finite mathematics or business calculus.

One of the most satisfying roles I have served in the department is being on the Lathrop Awards
committee. The Thomas G. Lathrop Award is given annually to the top mathematics and com-
puter science students. I have represented the department each of the last three years, twice on
the committee that selected the winners and twice as a presenter to one of the recipients. I also
created a certificate that is given to each winner, as before they were presented with a check only
at the ceremony.

I served in 2013 on the search committee that hired the current and first ever Dean of the School of
Education, Dr. Joseph Cambone. This was an interesting process to me as I have served on search
committees in the department and in the community, but had never been part of a search to hire
someone I would work under in my role as secondary education coordinator. Consequently, this
process and eventual selection was personal to me and would have impact on the work I do with
my prospective teachers. I could not be happier that Dr. Cambone was the applicant who would
be appointed to the position.

During the Spring semester of 2018, I was once again asked to serve on a search committee within
the School of Education. This time, the position under consideration was the Associate Dean of
Education. There were many strong candidates and the search successfully concluded with the
hiring of Dr. Nicole Harris-Sealey.

I have also represented the Salem State in the community in a number of roles. In 2013, I was
part of a contingent from Salem State that began discussions about a partnership with Salem High
School. The purpose of this partnership would be that the high school would serve as a location
for our students to perform pre-practicum hours and would work with the high school students
as tutors or in labs. Salem State would also teach sections of education courses at Salem High
School to give our students a better experience on site. We would also place student teachers with
the provided cooperating teachers, as well as have opportunities for our students to work with
students outside of a traditional practicum placement. We would in turn provide the faculty of
Salem High School with professional development opportunities, Since I already place my Methods
students with the mathematics department of Salem High School, this formal agreement will give
the students more opportunities to get practical experience before the end of their academic careers.

During the summer of 2014, I served on the search committee to hire two new assistant principals
at the Nathaniel Bowditch School in Salem. The committee consisted of myself, the new principal
who had been in that role for about six months, and 4 faculty members. Being a K-8 school, the
administrators had to possess a different skill set than if they were to apply for the same role at an
elementary school or a middle school. We selected two strong candidates, one who was more data
driven and would be primarily used in teacher evaluation and analysis of standardized testing, and
the other who was better suited for working with student-faculty and faculty-faculty relationships.
This experience provided me with insight into the inner workings of the middle school that I can
use to help better prepare my students who are interested in teaching at this level.

I have also had the pleasure of serving on the doctoral defense committee for two different candi-
dates in computer science at the University of Massachusetts- Lowell. The first opportunity was
for Alessando Agnello, a former undergraduate computer science major at Salem State. I met Alex
when while he was working on classes towards a minor in mathematics and we remained in touch,
often discussing his work in the field and his research in graduate school. When it came time for
his doctoral proposal, he reached out for my help with editing his papers and his proposal. His
dissertation, ‘Human-Information Interaction through Analysis of Common Heterogeneous Data’,
was successfully defended during the Spring, 2016 semester.

The second candidate for whom I am serving on the defense committee is Mehrdad Nourai. His the-
sis, ‘Securing Human-Information Interaction and Privacy via New Protocols and Architectures’,
explored ways to tighten security with electronic messaging and transactions. I spent a great deal
of time with the editing process and advising on his work, which deals with security protocol for
data sharing. The proposal defence in October of 2017 and the dissertation defense in November of
the same year were both successful for Mehrdad, as he is now a newly minted Ph.D. in Computer
Science.

Finally, a former student who is now a faculty member at North Shore Community College con-
tacted me over the summer and wanted to discuss a program in which he was involved. We have
always had a professional relationship where he would stop by from time to time when he needed
advice, so I thought this request was along these lines. When he arrived, however, he asked me
to be his mentor for his participation in The Academy for Leadership and Development. This
program involves meetings roughly every six weeks over the course of the year to discuss his goals
and plans with respect to taking on more responsibility in his faculty position. This far, we have
discussed his individual plan assessment and his self evaluation. We also, through the aims of this
program, are in the early stages of a DPDS course in mathematics that we hope will serve both
Salem State students and North Shore students with designs on transferring to Salem State. The
topic for this class will be statistics centered around politics to hopefully generate great discussions
while educating students on issues using numbers instead of inherent biases.

Documentation to this effect can be found in the “Other Professional Activities“ section.

5. Alternative Professional Responsibilities

Although I have served as Coordinator of Secondary Education since 2005, I began receiving re-
lease time for this role only a few years ago. The primary function in this role is the advising and
tracking of the secondary education minors and observing them in the field after they complete
their academic requirements. To better serve the candidates, I have created ways to advise and
track the students. I developed a filing system by which I color code different benchmarks so that
I can track which students have reached what level quickly. I matched this coloring system to a
spreadsheet I keep on all advisees who are in the prelicensure stage and who are in the licensure
program as well. This spreadsheet is updated on a semesterly basis and includes the students’
grades in major courses, support courses and education courses, the dates they reached the differ-
ent benchmarks, along with the number of observation hours they have logged. I also keep paper
files on each student that contains such artifacts as drafts of educational philosophies from their
preparation courses, copies of their observation hours log sheets and copies of their MTEL report
forms.

With advising, I have created suggested plans of study and also an advising form that I used to
help map out their entire academic career at Salem State. There are so many requirements on these
students as they progress through the program and I feel that a solid plan helps them focus and
also makes them aware of what the expectation are from the state’s point of view. And, once they
reach the end of the mathematics major, I wrote a content review form that I complete for each
prospective teacher to make sure that they have satisfied all requirements and are ready for the
next phase of their lives. This advising occurs much more often than just the designated advising
weeks during the semester. I spend at least 5-10 hours each week with my advisees in conference,
whether about class decisions, future plans, concerns about their classes or workload, or anything
else that they need to talk about. My role may have a title of Coordinator, but any title would be
too narrow a descriptor of the responsibilities I feel I have to these students. It is my responsibil-
ity to determine which students have the right skill set, personality and dispositions to become a
successful teacher. For those who I feel will reach this goal, I must do what I can to help them be
the teacher and productive member of society I know they can be.

Beginning in July 2016, I relinquished my role as secondary education coordinator and assumed
the role of interim chairperson for the Mathematics department. It is a bittersweet change, as I
have greatly enjoyed the time spent working with future educators and helping them realize their
dreams. But, I am excited for the change in role and looking forward to building on the success
I feel my predecessors have brought to the role. They have provided me with a model of how to
effectively and efficiently run a department and I feel i have continued in this role to bring about
positive changes to the department. My colleagues seem to agree, as they elected me as chair for
a three-year term beginning in July, 2017.

During my first year as chairperson, I had several challenges to overcome, including being down
several faculty members due to sabbaticals and also the loss of the supervisor of the math lab. The
supervisor had a personal situation arise in November of 2016 and passed away in the winter of
2017. This is a paid position, but with her being on leave, we did not have the funds to hire a
temporary replacement. Consequently, it fell on me to hire tutors, write schedules, oversee payroll,
and handle any issues that arose with tutors. This work continued through the summer and into
the fall semester. We were funded for a search for this position to take place during the Spring
2018 semester, but with the hiring freeze, this fell on me to continue to oversee the hiring, payroll,
and daily operations of the lab. With luck, we will gain the funding to hire a lab manager, as we
are going on two years so far without this position.

During this first year, I started a new system for logging the students who come to the math lab
for help. We formerly had a sign in sheet that was seldom used and gave little to no information
about the reason the student visited the lab and for which class and instructor the student needed
the help. My new system provides the student and the tutor the opportunity to express thoughts
on the session and, once logged, are given to the instructors so they can see which of their students
needed help with which concepts. A colleague was granted an APR during the Spring 2018 semester
and one of the results was an improvement in this system being placed online.

This first year also saw the groundwork laid for a new retention policy for the major. There has
long been concerns with the ability of students to succeed in the major when they did not perform
well in the early courses and some colleagues have also expressed concern with students taking
advantage of several repeated attempts at early major courses. We renumbered our Linear Algebra
I course from 304A to 240 so that the course is more appropriately labeled as a second year course
and because the new policy will address major courses numbered 200-300. We also changed the
number on two service courses, Mathematics for Liberal Arts and Precalculus, because students
are often misadvised based on the perceived difficulty due to the number of the course. Math for
Liberal Arts is now the credit bearing course with the lowest number and Precalculus is the highest
numbered course of any in the 100’s.

One major project we began last year was the creation of a new STEM major for elementary ed-
ucation teacher candidates. Currently, most of those preparing to teach at the early levels have
second majors in a wide range of fields that are not generally STEM-related. There is a long
history of too few elementary school teachers with mathematics and the sciences as their second
major during their academic careers. We want to combat this by adding another Mathematics
for Elementary Teachers course (we currently have two, the state and MAA recommend four) and
by consulting with chairs and education coordinators in Chemistry/Physics, Biology, Geology and
Computer Science to devise the most appropriate series of courses for students with this career goal.

We also are in the early stages of planning in regards to the State Pathways Initiative. It is de-
sirable for students to gain entrance into credit-bearing courses as early in their academic careers
as possible, and being forced to take non-credit bearing courses has been a roadblock for many
students over the years. We will be piloting a new Functions and Modeling course next Spring as a
first step in this process. Once we can separate the students who need Precalculus from those who
need a more application-based mathematics class to be successful in their major, we can figure out
the best way to support the students in both populations.

A final curricular goal involves the Basic Algebra course. Currently, this course serves to pro-
vide mathematical competency but is not a credit bearing course. But, with the changes at the
state level in how competency can be achieved with high school courses, fewer students need this
class for this purpose. We see the need, however, for a stronger version of this class for those
students who are in STEM related fields but need the reinforcement of the early concepts before
undertaking Precalculus. We want to rebrand this course for this purpose and replace the compe-
tency aspect with a mathematical literacy course that may be considered as a credit bearing course.

Outside of curriculum and the standard responsibilities, like scheduling and the writing of annual
reports, I have a goal of reconsidering departmental policies on searches, honors, elections, and
other matters of interest. These policies and procedures have not been revised in over 10 years, at
minimum, and were not all located in the same place. To this end, I have compiled the current
ones into a hyper-linked document for easy reference and have appointed an ad hoc committee on
procedures to explore any relevant changes to be made to the documents. A timely addition to this
set of procedures will be the steps to hire a math lab supervisor.

One final project we have begun involves student retention and success. I brought the idea of a
mentorship program to the department and it was well received. We are collecting names of poten-
tials student mentors and creating a Canvas course to allow for better communication with majors.
Our hopes are that the combination of these two new aspects of the department will increase the
number of students actively participating in the mathematics community and will create a sense of
camaraderie among the new and more experienced majors.

Supporting documentation can be found the the “Alternative Professional Responsibilities” section.