{"id":800,"date":"2011-05-30T21:45:41","date_gmt":"2011-05-31T04:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/?p=800"},"modified":"2011-05-30T21:45:41","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T04:45:41","slug":"deciding-that-a-department-is-for-everyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/deciding-that-a-department-is-for-everyone\/","title":{"rendered":"Deciding that a department is for everyone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why do so many Williams<\/a> students major in mathematics? The Williams Alumni Review<\/em> magazine gives this answer:<\/p>\n

The mission of the math department had long been to identify and educate the most talented students, which meant the College graduated about a dozen math majors each year. But new department chair Frank Morgan and some of his colleagues contemplated a more inclusive view of the discipline…. “Everybody deserves a chance to do this,” Morgan says. “It’s like music\u2014people should have a chance to enjoy math.”<\/p>\n

Today the reconstituted math department graduates five times as many majors… a third of them women. More than half of all Williams undergraduates complete multivariable calculus [and introductory statistics]. Most impressive of all, 12 percent of the College’s graduates major in mathematics at a time when… the national average hovers around 1 percent.<\/p>\n

Has [this] led to a dumbing down of the discipline? There’s much evidence to the contrary. [Professors from elsewhere call the department] “unquestionably the best teacher-scholar math department in the country.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, the department did not become popular by chance or by working harder at it than other departments. Rather, it made a decision<\/em> to become a popular department rather than a selective department. The whole design of the curriculum and staffing is different when popularity rather than selectivity is your goal.<\/p>\n

Is this related to Dweck’s<\/a> growth mindset<\/em>? Does the belief that all students can enjoy and pursue math make it more likely that they will?<\/p>\n

The next question is: why have so many departments not<\/em> made this decision, choosing instead to continue to prioritize selectivity? Shouldn’t everyone also have a chance to enjoy physics and anthropology and comparative literature?<\/p>\n

Are academicians too focused on being “serious”? Do they take the fixed mindset, believing that only people with the right “talent” and “drive” can succeed in their field of study?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why do so many Williams students major in mathematics? The Williams Alumni Review magazine gives this answer: The mission of the math department had long been to identify and educate the most talented students, which meant the College graduated about a dozen math majors each year. But new department chair Frank Morgan and some of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Deciding that a department is for everyone”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}