Professor Guershon Harel has been awarded a two-year grant to serve as the Purdue-site director of the IAS/Park City Mathematics Institute (PCMI).
PCMI is a mathematics education program that integrates the research and education components of the mathematics community. Program participants are high school teachers who are interested in the dual role of initiating reform within their own classrooms and assuming a leadership role in local and national mathematics reform. At the program's core is a summer session for researchers, graduate and undergraduate students, and high school teachers of mathematics, which is linked to a year-long program in six geographic sites for participating high school teachers. In addition to Purdue, other regional sites include Clark Atlanta University, Duke University, Idaho State University, Rice University, and the University of Louisville.
The program is designed to deepen teachers' knowledge of mathematics and to explore new methods of teaching. During the school year, teachers will translate what they have learned at the summer workshops into more effective pedagogy in their own classrooms and will work in collaboration with university site directors to become leaders of reform in their schools, school districts, and communities.
The first of two PCMI program summer workshops will be held July 9-29, 1995 in Park City, Utah, with a second workshop scheduled for summer 1996 in Princeton, New Jersey. A "team" of seven high school teachers from the Lafayette area will join teams from across the country at the summer workshops. In total, about 40 teachers will be chosen to work with the Institute.
The PCMI is sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and receives major support from the National Science Foundation. The Exxon Education Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and Xerox Corporation provide corporate funding.