UPJ Greek Alumni
  • Home
  • About
    • Purpose
    • Philanthropy
    • By Laws
    • History Timeline >
      • UPJ 1927 - 1959
      • UPJ 1960 - 1970
      • UPJ 1970 - 1980
      • UPJ 1980 - 1990
      • UPJ 1990 - 2000
      • UPJ 2000 - 2010
      • UPJ 2010 - Present
    • The Owl
  • Fraternities
    • Acacia
    • Delta Chi
    • Delta Sigma Chi
    • Kappa Delta Rho
    • Lambda Sigma Rho
    • Phi Delta Psi
    • Sigma Tau Gamma
  • Sororities
    • Alpha Kappa Pi
    • Alpha Gamma Delta
    • Alpha Sigma Alpha
    • Alpha Xi Delta
    • Chi Epsilon Nu
    • Delta Zeta
    • Kappa Zeta
    • Omega Alpha Tau
    • Phi Sigma Sigma
    • Zeta Sigma Tau
  • Reunions
    • Events
    • All Greek Reunion 2013
    • All Greek Reunion 2010
  • News
  • Contact

Teaching excellence fair: Speaking of numbers

11/24/2005

0 Comments

 
It’s no mystery that communication skills are an important part of every profession and that the ability to express ideas clearly is one mark of an educated person.

Math majors are no exception, but when a team of professors from Pitt Johnstown sought to tailor a public speaking course to the practical needs of math students, they found plenty of resources on technical writing, but next to nothing on technical speaking.

Further investigation revealed that most math graduates, far from pondering theorems and proofs in isolation, regularly are required to make presentations as part of their job.

So, UPJ associate professors of mathematics Stephen Curran, Michael Ferencak and John Thompson and communication instructor Susan Wieczorek developed their own specialized speaking course. The project is a 2004 Innovation in Education Award winner.

Introduced last spring, Technical Speaking in Mathematics soon will be required for all UPJ math majors.

The course helps meet general education requirements implemented about five years ago at UPJ. To ensure that its graduates are armed with verbal skills, UPJ requires students to incorporate some sort of public speaking into their coursework. UPJ students must take three “speaking-enhanced courses” or take a primary speaking course plus one enhanced course.

“We had been thinking about how we’d been addressing the new general education courses,” said Ferencak. They didn’t want to whittle away at the time spent teaching math concepts to make room for speech in upper-level math classes, he said. 

“Modifying a public speaking course seemed to be the way.”

While one might not initially think that math majors must have good speaking skills, the need is a practical one.

Curran cited a National Science Foundation survey supporting their recognition that math majors need to be taught speaking skills. It showed 58 percent of mathematics graduates go into business or government sectors — areas in which they’ll be likely to make presentations rather than cloister themselves away with formulas and calculators.

The professors’ own survey of 195 UPJ math graduates closely aligned with the NSF statistics.

“A majority are going to have to communicate technical ideas to a non-technical or semi-technical audience,” said Curran. 

Of the UPJ math grads working in high-level math occupations, 70 percent reported they were required to make presentations on a daily basis. Twenty-three percent said they had to make presentations monthly and only 7 percent reported they never had to make presentations to groups.

When asked how well prepared they were for the task, 60 percent said they either were “somewhat” prepared or not prepared at all.

What’s more, Curran said, many of those who felt prepared reported they got their speaking skills through outside activities such as student government.

“It was an ad hoc type way that speaking preparations were being addressed,” Curran said.

With an eye toward meeting students’ future on-the-job needs, the four UPJ professors designed a course modeled after a typical public speaking class, with the added twist that math permeates the content of the presentations. 

Although the three-credit course is designated as a primary speech class, the math professors also scrutinize the technical content of the speeches for accuracy. Introduction to Theoretical Mathematics is a prerequisite.

“We wanted something the students could take with them to grad school and on the job,” Wieczorek said.

Six students initially took the course last spring. The professors found some of the results surprising.

The course includes five types of talks that might be found in any speech class, sequenced from least technical to most technical.

The initial autobiographical speech takes on the topic of why the student is a math major and what he or she hopes to do with a math degree.

A five-to-six-minute commemorative speech focuses on a mathematician. 

“One of the students gave a eulogy to Pythagoras,” Ferencak said.

The next — an applied problem-solving speech — to the surprise of the professors turned out to be the hardest. Students role-played as outside consultants or in-house group members with the job of explaining their solution to a practical problem and convincing the audience to buy into it. 

The persuasive speech was difficult because of the audience, Wieczorek said. The professors role-played a mixed technical audience, much like what one might find in a real-world business situation.

The increasingly technical speeches that followed proved simpler. 

Students paired up to give a theme speech in which they presented the proof of a calculus theorem. Another group speech, the final and most technical, grouped students into teams of three who chose a technical topic to discuss, much like what they might present as part of a project team in a real-world situation.

Wieczorek said she was impressed with the quality of the speeches.

“They were a notch above my general public speaking classes,” she said. “We found the students felt this was a very challenging course,” she said. 

The professors have described the class at several conferences and the concept is taking off, Wieczorek said.

“The question is does technical speaking really require something different?” she said. The four plan to continue to try to prove that to be the case.

Wieczorek is convinced there are different needs and different expectations involved in technical speech, but that mathematicians will benefit from learning standard elements of good public speaking.

The objective nature of scientific material doesn’t necessarily lend itself to persuasion per se, but in the real world, even mathematicians will find they need to communicate with audiences that aren’t completely math minded.

“In the sciences, they think they only have to explain content. In communications, we’re trying to convince the listeners of the validity of an argument,” she said. 

“There are some clearly defined parameters we need to engage our listeners,” she said.

The team plans to follow up with students who have taken the class to determine how well it served them in the work world.

“We tried to make the course as practical as we possibly could,” Wieczorek said.

“We’re teaching speaking with math as a topic.”

—Kimberly K. Barlow, via University Times

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    UPJ Greek News Today

    Find the latest breaking news about UPJ. You can search by your organization name of by a date below.

    You can also take look back into time so you can remember what happened while you where at UPJ

    Click the Social Media links below for even more current info...

    Categories

    All
    Acacia
    Alpha Gamma Delta
    Alpha Kappa Psi
    Alpha Sigma Alpha
    Alpha Xi Delta
    Delta Chi
    Delta Sigma Chi
    Delta Zeta
    Farewell & Parting
    Fundraising
    Go Greek
    Homecoming
    Housing
    Intramurals
    Kappa Delta Rho
    Kappa Zeta
    Lambda Sigma Rho
    Omega Alpha Tau
    Phi Delta Psi
    Philanthropy
    Phi Sigma Sigma
    Reunion
    Rush
    SGA
    Sigma Tau Gamma
    Student Senate
    UPJ
    Zeta Sigma Tau
    Zeta Tau Alpha

    Archives

    January 2022
    December 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    April 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    October 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    November 2011
    September 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    January 2011
    November 2010
    September 2010
    July 2010
    March 2010
    December 2009
    September 2009
    April 2009
    March 2009
    January 2009
    September 2008
    July 2008
    June 2008
    March 2008
    January 2008
    November 2007
    September 2007
    June 2007
    May 2007
    April 2007
    March 2007
    February 2007
    January 2007
    November 2006
    September 2006
    June 2006
    May 2006
    March 2006
    December 2005
    November 2005
    October 2005
    September 2005
    September 2004
    August 2003
    May 2003
    March 2003
    January 2003
    November 2002
    October 2002
    August 2002
    July 2002
    June 2002
    May 2002
    March 2002
    October 2001
    August 2001
    June 2001
    April 2001
    March 2001
    December 2000
    May 2000
    April 2000
    March 2000
    February 2000
    October 1999
    July 1999
    May 1999
    April 1999
    March 1999
    February 1999
    June 1998
    February 1995
    July 1988
    January 1968

    RSS Feed

Creative Commons License
UPJ Greek Alumni is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
©2023 UPJ Greek Alumni Council
site design by Rapid Production Marketing