St. Paul Middle School Teacher Awarded Arnie Cutler Scholarship – Additional Scholarships Available
Fifth year St. Paul middle school teacher, May Vang, was recently awarded the Arnie Cutler Scholarship for Mathematics Course Work for Middle Grades Teachers by the Minnesota Council of Teachers of Mathematics Foundation, www.mctm.org/foundation.php.
May Vang teaches 6th-8th grade mathematics at Capitol Hill Magnet School. She will use the $1200 award to continue work toward her masters in mathematics education at the University of Minnesota. In her proposal May indicated, “Students, too often, see math as what is in their textbook and not what is going on around them. I was able to connect the probability of finding errors in codes and transmission to their lives because everything is based on codes and transmitting information. Students really enjoyed hearing about why wi-fi does not work at times or why websites crash. It made a lot of sense to them to know that since there is so much information going back and forth, there is a chance for error and a chance that the error is corrected before the receiver notices.” Her masters degree coursework includes work in statistics, probability, finite fields, algebraic curves, and error-correcting codes, among other mathematical content courses.
The Arnie Cutler Scholarship for Mathematics Course Work for Middle Grades Teachers is awarded semi-annually to MCTM members who teach middle school mathematics and who have at least 3 years of teaching experience. Established in honor of Arnie Cutler, former middle school teacher of mathematics and Executive Director of MCTM, the scholarship is designed to provide financial support for improving middle school teachers’ understanding of mathematics by completing course work in mathematics. The next deadline for the awards will be March 31, 2015. Further information, directions, and application materials are available at www.mctm.org/foundation.php.