BMCC PROFESSOR ANNIE HAN RECEIVES FULBRIGHT-HAYS GRANT TO FUND GROUP STUDY OF HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS IN CHINA
May 6, 2003
Borough of Manhattan Community College Associate Professor of Mathematics Annie Han has received a Fulbright-Hays Grant for a group travel abroad project in China during summer 2004.
Professor Han will use the $61,000 grant to together educators from Borough of Manhattan Community College, Hunter College, and schools in Community School District One for four weeks of intensive study in China on the history of Chinese mathematics. They will visit four cities in China and their surrounding areas: Beijing, Huhhot in Inner Mongolia, Xian, and Hangzhou.
“The goal of this project is to promote participants’ growth in knowledge about the history of Chinese mathematics and to improve the quality of teaching about mathematics in New York with the goal of motivating students to learn math,” explained Professor Han. According to Han, Chinese mathematics focuses on applications rather theory.
Professor Han integrates mathematics history into the general process of teaching and learning mathematics, especially the history of Chinese mathematics in the mathematics curriculum, is sought. “The history of mathematics, particularly the Chinese history of mathematics, does not now have the place it deserves in mathematics education,” Han observes. Chinese mathematicians, she points out, were employing what Westerners term the Pascal triangle 300 years before Pascal lived.
The teachers from Community School District One are elementary and middle school math teachers, who teach in Chinatown. “These teachers normally have no chance to go abroad to study, so this grant provides an opportunity for them, as well as an opportunity to discuss mathematics with scholars in their field,” Han said. The educators will participate in a wide range of activities to help them design effective lesson plans incorporating the history of mathematics in China.
Last summer, Han presented a paper on “Using History of Mathematics In Teacher Education” at the 2002 International Congress of Mathematicians in Beijing China. Han received the American Mathematics Society Travel Support for Young Mathematicians to attend the conference and present her paper.
In 2002, Han also received an Input Award from the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges (AMATYC) for creative teaching in statistics.
