Mathematics in Service to the Community

Book excerpt: Publisher description: This book looks at the wide variety of ways in which math, statistics, and math education teachers have incorporated service-learning into their courses. These projects are not just stand-alone community service initiatives, but rather they specifically target the improvement of mathematics skills and insights of the college students in the courses with which they are associated. In some cases, the projects are the major focus of the courses. In others, they may range from an essential component to one of several options. The book also speculates about heretofore untapped possibilities for service-learning, even including courses in pure mathematics. College faculty often may not fully appreciate the wide range of support mechanisms for such ventures even within their own institutions, so the book includes a lengthy chapter on the details of converting a rough idea to a solid action plan, sometimes even picking up financial support and other often unexpected benefits along the way. Creative teachers rarely implement a project in exactly the same way as a colleague might have, so the emphasis here is to display a wide range of successful projects in order to encourage readers to develop some of their own.