FALL  2012

I am on a leave of absence in Fall 2012 and Spring 2013. If you need to contact me, please send me an e-mail.

EDUCATIONAL GRANTS AND ACTIVITIES

2010-2011 The Development of Online Tutoring for Calclulus. With Carol Shubin and Jacek Polewczak. This project was devoted to the development of an online tutorial service for all sections of Calculus I course. There was a moodle page created where students could ask their question in a forum post. Tutors were available at some specific times when this questions were answered quickly. However, other students or professors teaching the same class could answer the questions too. Sometimes the discussion over a problem would receive comments for about a week, however in most cases one day would be sufficient to resolve a question. Tutors were also available in chat sessions as well. Overall it was a great service to have. The idea was later tried on other math courses. In Summer 2011 the Math Department developed an ran an online workshop preparatory for the math placement test. Local high school students were able to participate and ask question to a college professor or to a well trained tutor. Overall it was an exciting project. This is a link to the CSUN Moodle page of the original project .


2007-08 Hybrid redesign of MATH 131 Mathematical Explorations. With Elena Marchisotto, and Mark Shilling. This project is devoted to the redesign of a large multisectional course (about 800 students annually) into a hybrid course. In the traditional course, the class meets 2-3 times a week and is taught by both part-time faculty and tenure faculty. In the hybrid setting, the majority of the classroom activities (including reading and writing assignments, discussions, tests and student presentations) is moved to an internet portal. One full time faculty is teaching the course with the aid of teaching assistants, usually hired from the CSUN graduate or the exceptional undergraduate students. One class meeting per week is reserved to help the students with the organization with regards to the online instruction, to perform the assessment, and to hold any additional discussions on the class topics.


2007 PUMP Winter Institute I. PUMP is an NSF program to enhance education of CSUN undergraduate students by sponsoring advanced educational activities and providing support for students to do research with a faculty advisor and to participate in the PUMP Institutes. In the Winter 2007 PUMP Institute I, the majority of students were in their first year of PUMP. Many of these students were in their second year at CSUN and have not taken the upper division courses in math. I therefore decided to focus the Institute on elements of Euclidian geometry. In the mornings, students were having a lecture on the axioms of Euclidian plane and some theory of lines in stereometry. In the afternoon sessions, students were working in groups doing proofs and solving problems. Each individual group was assigned to judge the work of another. The real thrill in these afternoon sessions were the practical problems that required unconventional thinking.

2005 NASA CSUN/JPL PAIR Summer Project. In 2005-06 I worked with three NASA PAIR undergraduate research assistants on the problem of brain fiber tracking using diffusion weighted MRI. The undergraduate research assistants (Sara Neyer, John Sikora, and Grace Michaels) created a three dimensional code to reconstruct tissue fibers based on the data on the diffusion in the tissue. The Summer 2005 NASA PAIR project gathered a cohort of 8 undergraduate students (75% of those students were either African American or Hispanic students and 75% were female). The students learned basics of diffusion tensor imaging, get familiarized with the mathematics of the numerical algorithm developed by their peers, and reconstructed fibers from the real diffusion data taken on a vegetable (cabbage).

2004-05 Accessibility Media Library for Calculus Class. Alexander Alekseenko and Al Sethuraman. This project was devoted to the development of a comprehensive media resource to help student with disabilities in remediation in the first and second semester Calculus. The project included short video tutorials, fully captioned, on the traditionally difficult topics of calculus and a coherent set of lecture notes. The slides used in the video tutorials can be found here (videos are available upon request).

RESOURCES

Math 581. Numerical Methods for Linear Systems:
sample Matlab code

Math 481a. Numerical Analysis:
sample Matlab code

Math 250. Mathematical Analysis III:
section summaries

Math 150a. Mathematical Analysis I:
video tutorials, slides and scripts for Calculus I
lecture notes

COURSES TAUGHT PREVIOUSLY

math 481a Spring 2007, California State University, Northridge
math 581 Fall 2006, California State University, Northridge
math 150a Spring 2006, California State University, Northridge
math 481a Fall 2005, California State University, Northridge
math 250 Fall 2005, California State University, Northridge
math 150a Fall 2005, California State University, Northridge
math 481a Spring 2005, California State University, Northridge
math 150a Spring 2005, California State University, Northridge
math 150a Fall 2004, California State University, Northridge
math 250 Fall 2004, California State University, Northridge
math 150a Spring 2004, California State University, Northridge
math 250 Spring 2004, California State University, Northridge
math 150a Fall 2003, California State University, Northridge
math 250 Fall 2003, California State University, Northridge
math 1051 Spring 2003, University of Minnesota
math 1271 Spring 2003, University of Minnesota
math 1051 Fall 2002, University of Minnesota
math 1051 Spring 2002, University of Minnesota
math 1051 Fall 2001, University of Minnesota
math 411 Spring 2001, Penn State