A Culture of Collaboration
Swing by Hamilton College’s math department in the late afternoon, and you’ll find a swarm of activity.
Math homework is usually due at 4:30. As that hour approaches, some 50 students work in groups in the department’s home, on the first floor of Christian A. Johnson Hall, known as “CJ” on the campus.
That’s the scene Richard Bedient, a professor of mathematics, describes in a message that he and a colleague shared with us.
Math departments may not spring to mind when you imagine welcoming places for students to gather. Many students (and plenty of journalists) simply don’t see themselves as math people. Combating that attitude is one aspect of an emerging movement to reinvent college math, which our former colleague Shannon Najmabadi wrote about here. Among the strategies explored in Shannon’s article — which focuses largely on teaching math to nonmajors — is an increase in group work.
Collaboration is important to Hamilton’s math department. When CJ was renovated, in 2012, its faculty offices were placed around — and designed to open into — a large student study area. Students don’t just work on homework with one another; they also have easy access to their professors.
That’s a good reminder that the arrangement of physical space has implications for teaching and learning. As it happens, Shannon wrote a good article about that, too — you don’t want to miss her examination of the “humble circular table.”
Not all faculty members, however, want to work so closely with students. For Hamilton’s math professors, the setup provides a gauge of whether a prospective hire will fit the department’s culture. Interviewers pay close attention to candidates’ reactions when they hear descriptions of those busy afternoons.
“The upshot of all of this,” Mr. Bedient writes, “is that students get to see how math is really done.”
Part of that is seeing who’s doing it. Students may arrive at college with stereotypes about math majors, but at Hamilton, those stereotypes will be challenged. About a tenth of the college’s seniors major in math, and around 40 percent of those majors are women. “It’s a lot easier to see yourself as a math major,” writes Courtney Gibbons, an assistant professor in the department, “if you can actually see someone a lot like you who is planning to be (or already is) a math major.”
Math is hardly alone in being intimidating to students. How do you combat stereotypes of your field? What does your department do to make your discipline more welcoming?
