Forty Years of Teaching Math, Computer Science and Engineering Science at a Community College- Part VII, Remedial Math

Sometime in the mid 70's NCCC added a remedial math program that began with arithmetic, and continued with algebra.  The program was self paced, and a student could review k-9th grade math in one semester. That allowed a seamless transition to whatever math requirement a curriculum required, with the exception of some STEM curricula that would have further requirements. 

The original intention of the program was a review for non-traditional students who had been out of school for a long time.  In that regard the program worked very well.  I taught the course at night a few times, and the students were quite motivated, with many of them working through three books in 15 weeks.  The three books took students from 1st grade up through 9th grade algebra and a bit beyond. 

By the 90's remedial math during the day had expanded to 15-20 sections of arithmetic, mostly inhabited with 18-year-olds.  Arithmetic and algebra were also separated, increasing the requirement to two semesters for most students. Such students were put in a holding pattern for a year or so, after which they could enroll in courses in their intended major. 

Paul Kwitowski and I had another idea. We intended on putting together 1-hr courses for various curricula that would be taken concurrently with whatever quantitative courses were in a student's major.  An accounting student, for instance, would take a concurrent 1-hr course (meeting once per week), whereby the instructor would intensively cover the necessary math for the week.  That way the accounting instructor would not get bogged down with math, could concentrate on accounting, and the students would not be put in a 1-year holding pattern. 

This program never got off the ground.  I did put together a course called "Math For Physics" that students would take concurrently with Calc-Based Physics.  There were other compelling reasons for teaching this course, which I won't get into. The course worked well in cutting down attrition for physics - customarily 80-90% at NCCC - and was run once.  After that it was cancelled by Academic Affairs.  Doc opened it, and the admin closed it.  This cycle went on a couple times, until I was "caught" teaching the class. The math department at the time had an average class size of 21.6 - highest in the college - and NCCC was well into having resources being moved from across the college to Fine Arts.  By Gerry Miller's admission, he built the most comprehensive Fine Arts program in the state. The "comprehensive" part was due to cannibalized resources from other divisions. 

How much were we asking to bootstrap this program?  The pay for one credit hour was $450 at the time, so we were asking for $450x3=$1,350 per semester, initially.  That money and more would have been repaid through tuition and state aid.  At the time classes with 6-10 students in our division were being cancelled in favor of classes in Fine Arts with anywhere from 1-3 students. 

In return, NCCC would have had countless students for two full years, instead of one or two semesters of remedial math. 

Around the same time we were given computers for our offices.  Each division was asked to come up with a 5-year plan.  Our division was asked to take the lead on this initiative, since we had all the computer nerds on campus.  

Doc and a few of us met a couple times per week and produced a long document, detailing what we would do with the computers, and how we could offer training for the remainder of the college. What ever remuneration was involved would have been minimal.

Our proposal was rejected in whole. And our division was the very last to get computers in our office. At the time I was teaching the main sequence in computer science - Computer Programming Logic I&II and Data Structures - and went some time without a computer in my office, while the rest of the college did, including the HPE teachers!  Many of my comp sci students were surprised by this. I was embarrassed. 

Paul Kwitowski and Gerry Miller had a conflict that went back more than a decade.  Paul had led an effort to get Gerry Miller removed as academic dean. I assume that was the reason why Paul Kwitowski's sound initiatives were all blocked for the whole duration of the 90's.  Doc had a Ph.D. in chemistry and Gerry Miller was a former middle school teacher. Doc thought someone in that position should have academic credentials themselves. 

Doc also tried, repeatedly and unsuccessfully, to showcase our successful math and science students. We had a lot.

Over twenty years later Dan Miller in the math department would do an exhaustive study, and conclude that our 18-year-old students stood a better chance of graduating WITHOUT remedial math. The statistics were both startling and compelling. Apparently students were pretty good at figuring out math on the fly, and being in a 1-year holding pattern would discourage a high percentage to the point of causing them to drop out.  After that, remedial math at NCCC was mostly dismantled, with the exception of a couple sections for non-traditional students who wanted a review. 

Doc and I were right.  Our program would have worked famously.  Hundreds, if not thousands of students were hurt by our initiative being thwarted. 

Innovation in the 90's was a Sisyphean struggle.  But, the pay was decent and I enjoyed teaching my classes. 

There is a silver lining to this story................

Forty Years of Teaching Math, Computer Science and Engineering Science at a Community College- Part VI

Gerry Miller was president of NCCC from 1989 to 1999. The best way to paint a picture of President Miller is with broad strokes. Up close it is easy to find fault with anyone, after all.  But, if you look at anything too closely, it is easy to miss the big picture.  And so it is with Gerry Miller. 

The state and county were quite generous in funding the college when President Miller took over in 1989.  Tech and business were funded at a 20% premium, and the state was also generous with funding corporate training, community ed, learning labs, etc. Shortly after President Miller took office he used 700k in surplus corporate training money to purchase computers for our offices.  That would be about 1.8 million today.  It is difficult to imagine almost 2 million just laying around in today's tight funding scenario. 

George Pataki became governor in 1992, on the heels of a recession and three years into Miller's Presidency. Pataki was not kind to community colleges. He eliminated the 20% premium for tech and business, cut state aid for ancillary programs and slashed state aid for regular instruction.  Cuts were so deep that by the late 90's state comptroller H. Carl McCall pleaded with the state to restore CC funding. Well after the '91 recession ended, and prosperity followed, funding remained flat, although public k-12 did very well. Public k-12 had a stronger lobby than us, after all. 

Throughout this period President Miller's mantra was that "funding cuts will not touch the classroom." President Miller made good on that promise to the end. Faculty and staff got regular raises and hiring and retention continued, unimpeded. Of course, other budgets suffered, but something had to give. 

President Miller was in love with NCCC. He was always involved with students, and had a certain excitement that comes with loving the vibe and being part of the energy that came with a growing college that was full of life. 

President Miller loved seeing students socializing in the cafeteria.  President Miller loved seeing students engaged in the classroom. President Miller loved walking the hallways, and seeing a living, breathing, thinking organism called a community college.  President Miller was on fire with enthusiasm. 

President Miller came from theater, and the theater program was exemplary. Everyone I knew from the Sanborn area gave the theater program rave reviews and were uniformly shocked at the quality of each and every play.  Yes, shocked is the appropriate word here. 

During that era and after, Tech programs across the state shrank, or folded all together.  At NCCC we went from a high of 14 full time employees to a present low of 2.  In the 90's NCCC had ABET accreditation for numerous programs, both day and night. Many of those programs are gone, and what programs remain are not accredited. The effect was no different at Finger Lakes, Jamestown and others. 

The decimation of tech at the CC in New York falls squarely on the shoulders of George Pataki, and also on Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo ran for governor on a platform of being an education governor, and then cut state aid to community colleges by 25% shortly after taking office. 

I used to e-mail Governor Cuomo from time to time.  I knew that nothing I wrote would be read by the governor. On one such occasion I told the governor that I hoped he would be like his dad, Mario, when he grew up. I guess I was venting.  Mario was good to community colleges, of course. 

That is how I remember President Miller.  His vision of a Niagara County Community College was what I wanted to be a part of. 

Forty Years of Teaching Math, Computer Science and Engineering Science at a Community College- Part V

Sometime in the 90's our department took a Myers-Briggs test. The presumption was that a little self reflection would help us get along.  One conclusion I remember was that everyone was bossy except me.  That explained a lot. 

As soon as I arrived in the fall of 1985 I made a few suggestions for improving things.  I was put in charge of Calculus III, after all, and there was a lot of missing content. There was nothing about cylindrical or spherical coordinates, little about multiple integration, and absolutely nothing about line integrals, surface integrals, flux, and the theorems of Green, Gauss and Stokes.  

Every bit of this content is important in multiple areas of STEM.  Without this content most students will steer clear of certain STEM fields, or at best, hang on white-knuckled. I mentioned each area in a department meeting and met uniform resistance.  One colleague mentioned that, "Our students already have enough to learn."  Another colleague, who taught remedial math, also piped in with, "We don't get good students here, so don't bother." 

Both of the above points are myths.  We get a surprising amount of talent at SUNY Niagara.  And, if students are given something worthwhile to work on, they will work surprisingly hard. 

My approach, from the beginning, was to figure out how to get students to master the most difficult content.  The easy content would take care of itself.  For almost 40 years I did so with very low attrition. 

While the Myers-Briggs test did show who was bossy, there was no measure of stubbornness. If there was, my score would have exceeded the sum total of the rest of the department.

Last year I had the pleasure of receiving a phone call from a former student who is a pharmaco-kineticist. He develops mathematical models for drug diffusion and interactions for new drugs, before they come to market. Such models are necessary because it is impossible to do tests for all possible contingencies.  I won't mention his name, for legal reasons. 

My friend said he needed some help with a 2-compartment drug diffusion model. He thought one of the terms in the system of differential equations was incorrect, but was not sure, and wanted to be certain before a publication.  This model has been used to build more complex models since 1940. Like a lot of these allied fields, there are few mathematicians, but many professionals that just use given equations without a whole lot of understanding. 

It turns out my friend was correct.  I rewrote the system of differential equations to make it more evident that he was indeed correct, and explained what every term meant.  The funny thing was, this system was similar to something I taught in my differential equations class. All that content that I added when I took over differential equations propelled my friend straight through his Ph.D. program in pharmaceutical chemistry.  

After I left that initial meeting with the math department, I put together an well-attended independent study course, which eventually became a special topics course, and ultimately was incorporated into our Calculus sequence. It took a while, but I had the last word. I knew I would. Calculus I & II needed to be reworked for a Calculus III makeover to be effective, so this venture could not be completed alone. At present our Calculus I-III syllabi match SUNY Buffalo's and pretty much any university, and our professors do a much better job teaching it than most. 

A few years before I retired, Mark Voisinet and I put together a list of successful STEM grads.  The list was close to 400 in length and was hastily put together. It is an impressive list that I will talk about at a later date. I am sure there are many hundreds more that we forgot, or just don't know about.  We were impressed.  No one outside of C-Building was, with the exception of Deb Brewer in the Foundation. 

Forty Years of Teaching Math, Computer Science and Engineering Science at a Community College- Part IV

 Dr. Donald Donato was the president of NCCC from 1979-1989. I arrived right in the middle, in the fall of 1985.  The prevailing opinion after I arrived was that Dr. Donato was a great president for his first five years, and not so great during the last five. 

There are conditions worth mentioning that gave rise to friction between Dr. Donato and the faculty. In the mid to late 70's New York paid up to 40% of the total cost of running a community college - likely about twice in real dollars what NYS presently is paying. A significant decrease in state funding began in 1992 when Gov. Pataki went to work in cutting our funding. Tech and business was also funded at a 20% premium, and the state was also generous in providing state aid for community ed., corporate training and attendance in learning centers. 

There was also a deep divide among young and old faculty.  In 1985 older faculty were all at the top of the pay scale, at roughly $40,500.  I started out at $19,300, and would never reach $28,000, under the contract that was in place. Classmates from college had already exceeded what would be my top pay at the end of my career, and my classmates had a better benefit package- I had no dental, no vision, had pretty high copays and had to pay for vaccinations for my growing family. Our pension was pretty good but that did not pay the bills. 

As time went on, the top of the pay scale was moving away from us younger faculty, and those at the top were quite happy to take the lion's share of  money appropriated for faculty pay. Sometime in the mid 70's a contract had been imposed on the faculty by the county.  A merit system was promised by the county, whereby new faculty could reach the top.  That promise was never kept. 

Things were so contentious that at one faculty meeting Bob Olans from History explained that faculty at the top needed bigger raises than those at the bottom because he shopped at Jenss, while us folks at the bottom shopped at K-Mart. 

Mike Laymen, after almost having a stroke, stood up and threatened to take over the union with younger faculty, and would propose to the county that everyone gets paid the same amount. Mike had the backing to do so, and would have done this if things continued as they were for much longer. 

I don't remember much about Dr. Donato, being that I was spending most of my time figuring out how to teach, but one thing I do remember was his obsession of  cheaply running NCCC. At all-college meetings  Dr. Donato always mentioned that we were the second cheapest CC in the state, on a per student basis. I think he wanted to be the cheapest.  Maybe that was his obsession. I have no idea what he would have done with all the extra money, but he was paying his wife generously for driving senior citizens around town -  well over 50% more than I was making, by the way.  

Things became more contentious when we went 10 months without a contract - a contract at the time that was negotiated directly with the county - and Donato stuck his nose in and stalled negotiations. Dr. Donato took his case to the public, and went on radio (WLVL?) and called the faculty a "bunch of greedy bastards."  My wife, who was teaching 2nd grade at St. Matthew Lutheran School in NT, was on track to make more than me very soon, if Donato and the county had their way.  Donato must have curried the favor of the county because during his stay, the county was able to dip way below their 1/3 share of funding that was supposed to be in place. That was a bad habit for the county - a habit from which the county never recovered. 

Dr. Donato should have offered us a contract roll over for six years, simply because older faculty were being replaced with cheaper young faculty as they retired. I assume he wanted to stall negotiations indefinitely, not replace retirees, etc., which would be the cheapest of all.  Dr. Donato's intention was that my meager salary be frozen, and that it go backwards in purchasing power.  One suggestion by Donato was that the starting salary be frozen, which would allow us new faculty to move away from the bottom!

By 1989 I decided that there was no future for me in teaching, at least at NCCC. After having my 2nd child my wife had stopped teaching and I was a hair above qualifying for food stamps. I sent out a few resumes, had a couple offers, and seriously considered leaving. I also talked to the computer science chair at U.B. about doing a Ph.D. I had their verbal blessing and would have easily been admitted. U.B. had a strong computer vision group that proved useful at Xerox and should have been useful at Kodak, had they not balked at cutting into their film business, giving Fuji an edge they could never overcome. 

There is one more story worth telling, as it was told to me by the late Ken Raymond on two different occasions. 

Ken mentioned that at Donato's first faculty meeting he told faculty he had an open door policy, and was eager to hear from faculty from around the college. So, Ken made an appointment for a meeting.  When Ken walked into Dr. Donato's office, Donato locked the door behind him and sat down, and berated Ken. According to Ken, Donato said "What makes you think I give a shit about what you people think......." 

Prior to leading NCCC, Donato had been president at Quinsigamond Community College. He was let go for striking a faculty member. 

On a Monday morning I came to work, only to find out that Dr. Donato was hastily put on administrative leave. I won't comment on what malfeasance was involved. There was hope. 

Forty Years of Teaching Math, Computer Science and Engineering Science at a Community College- Part III

 My first year at NCCC was fairly uneventful. Since I had a temporary position I could not see the benefit of starting anything significant.  I was also new at teaching, and it does take a few years to get the hang of things.

At the end of the year a tenure-track position did open up and I applied.  After the search I was assured that I was the number one choice. As Ken Raymond explained, he wrote a long page about me and a short paragraph about the other two candidates he sent to the admin. 

The Academic Dean, Dorothy Harnish, tried to undermine the math department's wishes by promoting their second choice.  I can't remember the name of the second choice, but she taught remedial math for us and likely would had to have reached pretty high to teach anything beyond that. I had been criticized earlier in the year by Dean Harnish for not having a degree in education. 

Roger Lehman, my division chair, went over to the admin and told them to cut it out.  Without  Roger's influence, my employment at NCCC would have ceased.  

I thought Dorothy Harnish was basically an honest person, and easy to work with, although she had little understanding of what our needs were and what we were trying to accomplish in math and science. What were we trying to accomplish? It is very simple. The underemployed, first generation college students, single moms, the disenfranchised, minorities, and anyone else on the outside looking in, came to NCCC looking for a prosperous career in math and science, and we provided the social capital for them to make their way in a very meaningful way. We never offered up a substandard education.  We offered something better than a standard education. 

Why did the math department recruit me with a full court press? The last few hires in math had no inclination to teach multivariable calculus or differential equations or anything else at that level.  Gail Bolster and Carolyn Goldberg were hired for the singular reason of running our remedial math program, so their interests were elsewhere, and they should not have been expected to teach these courses.

Mike Layman carried his weight by teaching some basic programming courses, Calculus I & II and also by developing a new Discrete Math course.  Mike certainly could have taught anything else if required, but it made more sense to hire someone with an inclination toward multivariable calculus, etc. 

Carolyn Goldberg had a graduate degree in reading, and an undergraduate degree in math ed. and teaching experience at the junior high level, so she was a natural choice for running our remedial math program. I had already wrapped my brain round spherical coordinates, Jacobians and infinite series, so I was a natural choice for multivariable calculus. No student would ask a question in multivariable calculus or differential equations that would stump me, in 40 years of teaching, and Carolyn could easily read the literature in remedial math and bring it to bear in our program at NCCC. 

Ken Burg told me once that the math department was reluctant to teach arithmetic and elementary algebra in the mid 70's when such courses were introduced to community colleges in NY.  He said John Hunter told the math department that if no one would step forward, he would lay someone off and hire someone to do this.  Ken Burg stepped forward, likely because he was the last one hired. Ken did a good job, but was a stand-in until Carolyn was hired. 

Speaking of Deans, there is one more story to tell from my JCC days. As soon as I arrived I taught a course called Computer Literacy for computer-phobes, and Introduction to Computer Science for Comp. Sci. majors. In the literacy class, students were to go next door to Blumenthal's and buy a "DEC Rainbow floppy disk." The cost was $6.95 and it was part of the course syllabus I was given to use. 

I explained to the Literacy students that there is no such thing as a "DEC Rainbow disk." There are only floppy disks, which can be formatted for use on the DEC Rainbow computer.  I told the students to go around the corner on State Street and buy a box of 10 disks for about $7.99 and I would show them how to format a disk on the DEC Rainbow.  This was Computer Literacy, after all.

The very next day I was called into the Dean's office, and it was explained to me that JCC-Olean was working out a deal with Blumenthal's where faculty and staff could buy computers at a deep discount, and she did not want me to "blow it."  One of my students was a sister of an employee of Blumenthal's.

The Dean was a stern German lady named Edna.  No, she was not wearing leather and brandishing a whip, but I did envision her doing so. I was tempted to verbally give her the finger, but restrained myself. I left her office, walked down to State Street, purchased a couple boxes of disks and passed them out the very next day.

Fortunately no administrator ever put my moral flexibility to such a test during my 38.5 year stay at NCCC.  

On the docket: Dr. Donald Donato. 

 

Forty Years of Teaching Math, Computer Science and Engineering Science at a Community College- Part II

I was hired full time at NCCC in the summer of 1985.  In July I was visiting my mom inSanborn and painting my Uncle Bill's house on Griffin Street. During lunch hourI rode my bike over to the college to see if anyone was around, and I ran into Mike Layman and Ken Raymond. 

Mike and Ken mentioned that there was an open position in the math department for thefall.  I told them I was not interested, since I had a tenure track position at Jamestown Community College. 

After a half hour or so of visiting and a customary barrage of Ken's subtle and cerebral jokes, he mentioned that a few more members of the department would be in tomorrowif I was interested in catching up with them.  I agreed that I would come back the next day during lunch.

The next day I showed up in my painter's clothes, as I had the day before.  My outfit included old jeans, a t-shirt, a baseball cap and a pair of boat shoes with no socks. I was also wearing a pretty heavy coat of paint. And so it was that I came to my "job interview" wearing no socks.  

There were 6 or 7 faculty in the conference room, all there to "say hello."  We talked fora while and had a great time.  As I got up to leave, Ken Raymond handed me a jobapplication.  I reiterated that I was not interested in a job. Ken said I should fill it out "to have it on file in case there was another job opening in the future." So I did. 

Three days later Mike called me up and offered me the job.  I again mentioned that I was not interested.

Eventually I did relent and accepted the temporary full time job. Why?  Well, one factor is that I knew and respected many of these people.  Between Doc Kwitowski, Dr. Raymond,Ted Georgian, Meredith Kellogg and a few others, my perception was that NCCC wasa place to innovate and probably a great place to work.  

Of course I faced the real prospect of looking for a job in a year, since the NCCCposition was temporary.  That was no concern. Teaching jobs in math were easy to comeby. Previously I applied to JCC, Mohawk Valley and Herkimer and received callsfor an interview from all three.  The JCC position had been vacant for 18 months.My brother Joel had relocated to Hawaii and I also considered following him there. I knew that being young and with a couple years of experience and solid referenceswould serve me well. 

One drawback at JCC was that I was teaching at a satellite campus in Olean, and could lose my position if enrollment went down on either campus. Sometime in the mid 90's there was a huge layoff of staff at JCC.  I think it was around 25% of tenured faculty. My position at JCC was cut and a skeleton crew remained.  A handful of their best Math & Computer Science people bolted and went to Alfred.

Another drawback at JCC was that I had received a mediocre evaluation. My student evaluations were well above average - very high, actually -  but my supervisor wrote that I was "deficient in computer science."  

I was not sure how to take that criticism. I had worked as a programmer in college. On Saturdays I would get my own work done by 9 am, which meant I would get two or three programs debugged and running, and then I would walk around the room helping everyone else get theirs running. And while at JCC I wrote code for my own word processing program that I used togenerate worksheets and notes for class. There was not much on the market at the time. And, I had a better theoretical background than anyone on their faculty, including the main campus.One exception might have been Karl Klee. 

 I was pretty sure I could out-proof and out-program anyone on their faculty, yet somehow, I wasdeficient.  I suppose there are politics in any workplace.

One vivid memory is from a meeting I attended on the main campus in Jamestown.  A faculty member stood up and expressed concern with how many faculty members had died of cancer over the past several years, and also mentioned how much stress faculty were under with allthe responsibilities outside the classroom - including, I kid you not, a committee on committees. One of the deans responded with, "We will form a committee to study the problem." I thought the aggrieved faculty member was going to have a stroke. 

 Aside from that I worked with a great bunch of people at JCC-Olean.  It is nice to have options. 

    

Forty Years of Teaching Math, Computer Science and Engineering Science at a Community College - Part I

 In the fall of 1977 I began studying at NCCC.  Four years later I was enrolled in a Ph.D. math program at SUNY Buffalo. I chose Buffalo because of their strong theoretical math program, and this was my interest - particularly mathematical logic and real analysis. 

At the time Buffalo's graduate math program was ranked 20th in the country.  There were the usual suspects at the top - MIT, etc. - then the IVYs,a few more like Stanford and Carnegie Melon, then U.B.  The plan in the 60's and 70's was to make U.B. the Berkeley of the east.  A hiring binge brought such greats as John Myhill, Stephen Shanuel and John Isbell, among others. 

In the graduate prospectus for U.B. we were told that there were no jobs in theoretical math. I didn't pay attention,not really caring in my senior year of college. Apparently what they said was true, since my friends who went on for their Ph.D. ended up not working in math.  One works in finance, and another is currently trying to get some AI certifications to find work and stay employed. A third did find work in higher ed at a small college that just closed. Another did a 6 month teaching stint and then hid the fact that he had a Ph.D. in math to get a software engineering job - a job not much different than I had worked part time in my junior year of college. 

I passed my first two qualifying exams with ease, having an interest in topology, which was two abstractions above calculus. It seemed to come easy. In the second semester we had 8 problems to solve. I solved 7, which was the most of anyone in the class.  A couple Asian students solved 3 or 4. The problem I did not solve was a box product topology problem, which was unsolved at that point.  It is still unsolved, as the professor, Scott Williams, worked on it his whole career. I did prove several theorems that could have been published, however. I proved several statements that would be an immediate consequence of the box product topology problem which is how I knew the problem was unsolved, because none of the statements themselves were proven theorems. 

Also in that semester I took an 800-level computer science seminar called, "Machine Inductive Inference". I did not have the prerequisites, but I had room for an extra course, so I took it. This work is foundational now for machine learning and related things. 

Before the class began our secretary asked me if I could drive John Myhill to the seminar, since it was on the Ridge Lea campus and Dr. Myhill did not drive.  I said yes. I also drove Po Cheng Chen to the seminar, who was a math graduate student and also did not drive. 

I soon learned  why Dr. Myhill wanted to attend.  In the first two weeks the professor, Dr. John Case, proved quite a number of theorems that were provem by Dr. Myhill in the 50's and 60's. It was a great experience getting to know Dr. Myhill.  He was British and did foundational computer science that built upon Turing, Von Neumann and other greats. Myhill also was a great. 

At the end of the semester Dr. Case passed out a stack of current research papers.  Our task was to provide a synopsis of our paper. I guess that way we would be reading at the forefront of research in that field.  My paper was written by a Russian, where he proved 5 or 6 theorems about probablistic inductive inference machines. Three of his theorems were incorrect, so I restated the theorems correctly and provided my own proof for each.  I could have published in that field very easily. 

While I was wading through all this terse math I also taught Differential Equations at NCCC at night.  I was a fun venture. I am still friends with a couple of my students.