Interview with Michael Krach

Richard Michael Krach received his bachelor's degree in math education in 1974 from The Ohio State University. Dr. Krach taught mathematics with high school students for several years and then returned to Ohio State to complete his master's

and PhD degrees. He accepted a position in the mathematics department at Towson State University in 1987. These are his reflections.

Dr. Krach, thank you so much for taking your time to come and talk to us about your own preparation as a math teacher and your teaching here and in public schools. You're more than welcome, Karen.

I think a good place to begin is in the beginning. So would you share with us a little bit about your early social context, where you grew up, what kinds of thoughts you were having as you went through school, about what kind of

career you might pursue? Sure. I was born in Kobe, Japan, and then moved to Canton, Ohio, when I was three years old.

And I grew up in a little suburb called East Canton, Ohio and went to school, I think my senior class was 89 students. OK. So it was a great environment.

I wanted to do one of two things growing up. I wanted to be a professional baseball player or mathematics teacher. Even though I was on the team at Ohio State University, I knew I

wasn't going to be a professional baseball player. OK. But I think the reason I wanted to become a mathematics teacher is I had a terrific junior high school and high

school mathematics teacher, Miss Robertson, and I did get a chance to go back and tell her after I got my undergraduate degree how much she influenced me in terms of being a mathematics teacher.

I never got a chance to do that after a PhD because she had passed away. But she was very demanding. And five of us were valedictorians of our high

school, my high school class, we were all four point averages. And we got a lot of press, but had we been in one of the city schools, we'd have gotten even more press. But I attributed a lot of that to Miss Robertson.

I mean, she really worked us hard, demanded things from us. We were not always pleased about that, of course. But as I look back on it, that was the major reason why I decided to become a mathematics teacher, to sort of emulate her

with respect to learning and teaching. So you graduate from high school, valedictorian, and you're off to the Ohio State University. I was a Michigan State Spartan for a while.

Oh, you were? They accepted... I only applied to two places, Michigan State and Ohio State. And right before school started, Ohio State offered me a full scholarship.

Whoa. And I decided to stay in state and it was a great experience. My first semester, our first quarter there, I was ready to, I had never been away from home that much.

And it was my, it was tough, the first quarter there, and I was ready to transfer to Kent State University. And I'm glad I didn't, you know. So, I mean, how big a campus was that then?

We had 55,000 on campus, you know, and that's what I was used to, you know, and when coming here, how little Towson State University is. But I guess you make it as big or as little as you want it to

be. And, you know, a lot of people ask me, well, I don't want to go to a big school, but, you know, you can make it as small.

But it's nice to have the medical school, the dental school, the optometry school, you know, the NCAA golf courses on campus and airport on campus. There's all those kind of things that I was accustomed

to that wasn't here. You know, when they showed me the football stadium here, I thought that was a high school stadium, not a college stadium. But anyway, things got, you know, better every year

that I've been here, you know. But, so, you're at Ohio State and at first it is, and probably it's just a really big place. No, sure, absolutely. And when did you decide that you were going to major in math?

Did you? Right from the beginning. You knew going in? Junior high school. OK. So you really stuck with that plan then.

Yes. Yeah. There was no deviation from that other than had I been drafted in baseball, that would have made things different.

But no, I wanted to be a mathematics teacher. Absolutely. It's a long time ago, but do you remember much about your education courses there?

At the undergraduate level? Yeah. No, not a whole lot. I mean, they were pretty much typical education courses. What was neat though, is it's very much like the UTeach program

here, even back then, because during the junior, I was secondary mathematical education, and during the junior year we did an elementary and middle school rotation.

You did. So I taught 4th graders for a while. I remember that. And that was really kind of cool.

And some of my colleagues decided, hey, you know, I really like this age of students. And they dropped out of the the math ed program and went into elementary education.

Interesting. And then the senior year was strictly high school and my student teaching was only at the high school level, not at the middle school level like they do here. Right.

But it was very similar. I mean, they got you out into the real world, so to speak, right away, as soon as possible. And that would have been very unusual to do that in your

junior year. I mean, that's sort of like the beginning of your professional coursework. Right. To have you out in the schools.

And how wonderful that they would expose you to elementary as well as the secondary. It's a great experience. Yep. So we had a very good experience doing that.

And so when you actually went out and you did student teaching, that was maybe like a semester's worth? I don't know what kind of scheduling Ohio State...

Yeah, it was quarters. It was quarters. And as I recall, it was at West High School in Baltimore... I didn't mean in Baltimore, in Columbus, Ohio.

And I had a great mentor teacher and I believe I was there for at least a quarter and maybe the spring quarter and probably a little bit longer than that because I wanted to get as much experience as possible with that.

So you probably did a mix of grade level kinds of math courses or... I think she was teaching, it was a lady, mostly, I think seniors. And so I was at the senior level at that time,

but again, I can't remember exactly what it was. It wasn't AP calculus because you didn't have that at that time, but it was, like, some upper level mathematics. I think the lowest was actually Algebra 2 and then something

like trig and maybe geometry, but I don't recall exactly. But I had a great experience there. So you're ready to graduate. Are you feeling fairly confident that this is something you can

do? Absolutely. You know, they prepared us very well. And so where did you go from there?

What was your first teaching position? I was recruited by Upper Arlington Public Schools, which was one of the best school districts in the United States at that time.

And I was really, I sort of wanted to do that, mainly because baseball coaching was part of that as well. But I went back home to Canton, Ohio, and there's a place, a town near Canton called Massillon, Ohio, And they had just started a

new jail there called the Ohio Youth Commission, a jail for kids. And the director of that was a friend of my father's, my stepfather, and knew that I was graduating, said that, well,

we're hiring teachers there, OK. And we want a teacher to create the mathematics program for the juveniles that were, you know, were incarcerated to Ohio Youth Commission.

And I thought, Gee, that sounds pretty neat. And but I was sort of torn, you know, of course, because the coaching and then being in Columbus, because I like living in Columbus.

But I decided to take the Ohio Youth Commission job. You did. And it was really neat. I got a lot of experience. Initially the kids that were there came from Mansfield, which

was a jail, I mean, for adults, yes, they were moving them in there. And so we had murderers and rapists and all those kind of things there.

But I didn't, you know, I didn't talk about their, if they wanted to talk to me about their crimes, that's fine. I didn't go to their files or anything. I treated them as students, you know, and I created the

mathematics program. So it's basically a K through 12 because I had some people who if you ask them what's 5 + 2, they'd go... OK. And some did trigonometry, you know.

So it was interesting to be able to use my, what I learned at the college level almost immediately with these people. And then so that was very rewarding, very rewarding. And how long did you stay in that position?

I did that, I believe for approximately two years. And then they had a graduate program that they introduced so you could apply for it. And I was the first, actually, because there was a brand new

school, to apply for it and they awarded me. So I went back to Ohio State to get my master's degree and then I worked there. I got, I think it took me about a little bit over a year to get

my master's degree. Then I went back to the Ohio Youth Commission. Oh, you did? Went back, and that was part of the deal. I think I had to go back for a year or two.

But what was interesting is that the clientele had changed quite a bit. The hardcore people were no longer there. It was mostly incorrigibles, drugs, you know, armed

robberies, things like that. OK. And a lot of these kids were very, very bright, and they just happened to get caught selling drugs, you know. And actually,

as a matter of fact, a few of them were so bright that when I went back for my PhD at Ohio State, I saw someone on campus. Really. Yeah.

It was kind of funny to see that. There you go. But that was a great experience at the Ohio Youth Commission Indian River School.

And so were you were still doing the curriculum development as well? Right. Yep.

And how long did you stay after you finished your master's degree? I believe it was another couple of years. Then I decided to go back and finish my degrees.

You know, the terminal degree, the PhD. And were you involved in teaching at all as part of that? Oh yes. Master's and PhD I was teaching.

I was a teaching assistant in the mathematics department. At that time they didn't tax the the money. When I was getting ready to leave, they've started taxing the money.

So I got, during the master's, PhD, I got school free, and then a stipend on top of that. Yeah. Yeah, that's...

Well, now they find any way to find revenue, even if it's taxing things that seem ridiculous to tax. Tell us about that experience working on that doctorate. If you look at it as an entire picture, it's just not...

It's unattainable. But if you look at it in bite sized pieces, then it's certainly attainable. Interesting.

So I assume you, well, you navigated it successfully. So I guess you figured out what size those bites needed to be. Yep. Yep.

And, well, say a little more about it. This is intriguing. Obviously, as you know, it's just a lot of work. You know, I was teaching the mathematics department, so I had

colleagues in the college education, but mostly it was mathematics. And I taught every quarter. And basically I taught courses for elementary school

teachers, which is basic kind of things I'm doing at this point as well. But it's slightly different at Ohio State because the teacher education was in education and as opposed to here with respect

to the mathematics, all the math ed type courses are in the math department. That was not the case at Ohio State. And so I didn't realize that that was different in other

places. I didn't know any better than that. So I kind of like both aspects. I like, for us, even though math ed is in

mathematics, we work very closely together with the College of Education here. And I didn't notice that quite as much, of course, I wasn't a professor then as well, at at Ohio State,

not nearly as much now. That may be different now. Well, and it may have, as you said, have something to do with the size of the institution.

It could be, could be. I mean, although you've been here at Towson long enough to know that that does change over time. What started out as very small isn't so small anymore here.

But I had some very excellent professors there. You know, Lauren Woodby at the master's degree level, math education, Richard Shumway at the undergraduate level were very influential, and Jim Schultz at the master's and PhD

level. Actually, Jim was on my dissertation committee as well, and he's very well known in terms of math education. So yeah, we had a lot of great influences starting from Miss

Robertson at the junior high school level and then at undergraduate and graduate levels at Ohio State. So you're looking for something to do after you're finishing this doctorate and did somebody give you a call or did you see

something in the Chronicle or... I was hoping to stay at Ohio State, but they don't hire their own. What was neat about Ohio State, though, is that in general, a

lot of institutions, once you graduate, you're gone. They boot you. At Ohio State, they give you a year to look for a job. They only hire actually their own in terms of medicine and

law, mainly because, you know, that's, it's Ohio stuff. In terms of mathematics or English or other areas, they like to have new blood to see, you know, to have these new thoughts.

And so, but had they offered me a different position. I certainly would have stayed. But it was interesting. I don't know if you know Bob, Bob Hanson.

Sure. OK. He actually wrote to me and said, hey, we have an opening and we thought you would fit this opening.

And so I only interviewed two places, here and a place in California. And I interviewed with Bob Caret, because he was the... Dean of...

What was he at that time? Dean of the college? Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics, actually. And I liked what he had to say.

And I decided to accept this position here. And well, you know, they offered me the position and I've been here ever since. Wow.

Well, I'm very impressed that somehow we got chosen over California. So that says something right there. So you came to Towson as an assistant professor?

Yep. And what kinds of courses were you asked to teach at that point? Primarily the courses that I was accustomed to teaching over at

Ohio State, other than the methods courses, because the methods courses were done in the College of Education. Interesting. But the, like, the math 204, 205, 251, which were the

courses for elementary education. So I did that a lot here. But then I taught the methods courses for early childhood and for elementary, and that was a little different.

I had not done that before. Even though you think about those things when you're teaching content courses, you didn't do it necessarily directly with methodology.

So I had to do some scrambling. I had to learn some more things, you know, but that's what I basically teach here now, even at the graduate level, undergraduate level and student teaching and those kind of

things. And that's, as you talk about student teaching, that's one thing that I wanted you to talk with us about. Now we are in this PDS paradigm, if you will, for for preparing

individuals to become teachers. And that probably might have been different from your experience at Ohio State in terms of their programming or even here earlier on in your career.

What kinds of experiences do our students, our pre-service teachers have now in terms of getting ready to become math teachers? When does that begin?

Well, the UTeach program, which is brand new here to campus, starting them when they were freshmen. OK, tell us a little bit about that. I don't know how directly involved you are in UTeach.

Not as much. I plan to get even more involved, but yeah, what we want to avoid is a student who gets into their last semester, senior year student teaching saying this isn't what I want to do.

You know, it's too late then. And so I think part of the UTeach program is getting them out immediately. And they're doing that with the elementary level as well in

their first two semesters here to see if they really, this is something they really want to do. Do they want to work with children or, you know, elementary school children, middle school children or high

school students. And so I think that's one of the really great aspects of the UTeach program. Uh huh.

And that originally I think came out of Texas. University of Texas at Austin, I believe. And so there are a number of institutions across the country. Quite a few now, yes, and I believe College Park is going to

start doing that as well. But we were first. As well it should be. Exactly. But we try to pride ourselves in having the best. I mean, your CPP office does a really great job in terms of

getting mentor teachers who are, who emulate the kind of things that we want our teachers, our pre-service teacher, to be. Matter of fact, I have a, you know, I'm going to see him, I have a

young man right now who is student teaching at Dundalk High School with a gentleman named John Hill who was a graduate of ours and is a terrific teacher. And my student teacher couldn't have had a better

mentor teacher in terms of learning about how to be an effective mathematics teacher or effective teacher, in this case, mathematics. So well, that's great.

And of course, Kim Burton- Regulski, who I told you about, is a presidential scholar and is the chair at Eastern Tech and is a graduate of ours. We have a lot of great teachers out in the community.

And the nice thing for you is, of course, you've been involved with this for a sufficient amount of time that you get to now go back to some of your graduates and ask them if they would like to be part of the process for students.

A matter of fact, last night I, I'm teaching the methods for Math 621 in the MAT program. And I had Diane Richmond, who's the principal at Summit Park Elementary School, come and speak with my Math 621 students

and they really enjoyed her presentation. That's wonderful. So now you are working with MAT students a lot. So you're looking at the graduate level courses in that

program. Yes. And that program, I think now are we just doing full time now? I don't remember. Right now this semester, yes.

So that is a quick journey for them. And very different from UTeach because as you said with UTeach they start going into classrooms as freshmen?

As freshmen. Yeah, so and MAT I think you really have a summer and a year or something. Yeah. But they do have field components to a lot of the courses.

Before they actually get to their internships, student teachings. I have them do some field assignments and they do have assignments through CPP, matter of fact, they've just had their

ITE's. Which is? The intensive teacher experience for three days. They had one a couple of weeks ago. I think they're having another one in early December.

And what does that involve? Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, as I understand it, teaching all day. Really? And that would be in their professional year?

Or is this MAT you're talking about? This is MAT, yes. So this is in this semester, and next semester, they're out student teaching full time.

So even in the semester before they're doing three days of teaching. And that must have advantages because you're sort of following through the next day on something you initiated the day

before. Sure. So a lot of them come to me and ask me about looking at their lesson plans and, you know, looking at different activities and things like that because I have them write lesson

plans for my Math 621 course as well. Very interesting. Tell us a little bit about your perspective on, and probably not just math education, but in terms of teacher education

across time. What have you decided are sort of the essential components that need to be in a good program? Yeah, I wrote a few things down because I saw that question

here. I guess I look at in terms of the teacher education is that you need high quality mentor teachers in the programs who our pre-service people can learn by doing, not necessarily learning

by counter example. Obviously dedicated faculty, college faculty, is important. You know, competent and dedicated college faculty as well is extremely important.

Administrative support is certainly important. Just the evolving of the discipline of math education or education in general, try to make things better.

For instance, like the Common Core State standards, you know, that's an evolution process there. And there's a lot of uneasiness right now because it's so brand new.

And I'm hearing that from my in service teachers quite a bit. But I think once this transition is over, I think it'll be a great asset in terms of the Common Core and the

standards for mathematical practices that they have. So, yeah, I guess that's probably what I'm thinking there. Yeah.

In terms of, it's interesting that you talk about the Common Core and state standards. Do you think that that's the transition too for our faculty for university as well?

Sure, absolutely. In terms of math, math education, I think a lot of the kind of things that the CCS has focus on, we've been doing it quite a while now.

I don't want to, you know, I don't want to pat our, you know, blow our horns too much. But really, I think all of our math ed faculty have bought into this and have done this many, many years ago.

And so the transition isn't quite as traumatic, if you will, for us. And we've had a lot of number of discussions about that in terms of textbooks and approaches and, and, you know, syllabi and all

those kind of things. And that we sort of looked at each other and said, hey, you know, this is the kind of things we've been doing all along. Not that, you know, we're complacent.

We're always trying to do better and get better and make modifications, things like that. But yeah, overall, I think we've done a good job mainly because one reason I say that is that a lot of the

LEAs around here hire our graduates even before they graduate. You know, they call me and say, hey, do you have, we have an opening.

Do you have anybody? We want them. I think Parkville High School, I'd say 80% of their math department are graduates of ours, OK.

Our graduate program and math ed for the secondary level and the middle school level are teeming with students. So I think they realize that what we offer is quality, you know, in terms of the program and in terms of the

instruction. Mike, you said that when you talk to each other about that, is this, are the faculty on campus who are in math ed, do they meet regularly to talk to each other?

Yes. Pretty much once a month. I was going to say, is there somebody who sort of oversees that?

Is that something that you do or... I did. Letting some of the junior faculty take over things. But yes, we do. We have an overall math ed committee and then we have,

we break it up into elementary, early childhood, and then secondary, middle and high school. Because that's terribly important. As a matter of fact, Dean Lorion is coming and speaking

with our group next Thursday. He wants to talk to us about elementary and early childhood education and maybe middle school program as well. Interesting.

So we've tried, you know, we try to keep that two way street between the College of Education and the Fisher College of Science and Mathematics. Well, it's interesting that, and you're talking about it at Ohio

State, and the difference between how we approach it here at Towson and how it was done there. I think there also is a standing invitation for teacher education faculty across campus to participate in these once a

month Monday and team meetings as well. Sure. So one of the things that impressed me most in looking at your Vita was the deliberate way in which you have remained

connected to public education, even going to the point of using your sabbatical time, which is very, very important to any faculty member in higher ed, to go back to public schools and do some teaching there.

Could you tell us a little bit about that experience? I think I read that you've done this twice. Yep. And hope maybe I'll do it a third time at the high school

level. Well, there you go. But the first time I did it at Hampton Elementary School, which is just right up the street.

And because I was doing a lot of, I was teaching a lot of elementary mathematics courses. So I figured it, that's the best place to start. And I had a tremendous experience there.

It's a great school. You know, the principal, the teachers, the kids were terrific. No discipline problems that I saw.

I got to teach quite a bit at all grade levels from kindergarten through the fifth grade. I met a tremendous little girl named Sarah who was in kindergarten and I was doing some abstract algebra type

things with her, which, kind of neat. And she's now, I believe, a junior at College Park, but she was the concert mistress for the Baltimore Youth Orchestra. Really?

And a terrific pianist as well. I tried to talk her into being mathematics, but she wants to be a pediatrician. But she was, I've worked with her and worked with other kids

as well and had a great time there. And then after that, it was a few years and I thought, well, the next stage is, next step is middle school. And so I was the director, along with Lori Moller, of the

Governor's Academy that we had here on campus a number of years ago. And I met the math chair who was working with the Governor's Academy before I took over, Rich Cook, and he was the chair at

mathematics at Fallston Middle School. And I asked, we were just sort of talking. I said, well, I'd like to do a middle school experience and sabbatical and would it be OK for me to come to Fallston?

And he said it'd be great. And so I know Sarah Morris there, she's the math specialist for the Harford County Public Schools. And we okayed everything and I went out there and it was a

terrific experience. Again, it's very atypical, for 45 minute periods, I probably taught for 43 minutes. No discipline problems.

The faculty, they were great. The kids were great. Matter of fact, what was neat is that one of the teachers was sort of technology phobic, and so when I was teaching in

her class, because I rotated through all the classrooms, I showed her some things about using the document camera and the TI-84 graphing calculators. Now she's using technology pretty much all the time, so

that was kind of cool. That is nice. It was, I used technology with the kids too. We did.

I don't know if you know what CBRs are, they're calculator based rangers. They're attached to the calculator. And we were using those with the 8th grade class in algebra to look at slope and we were out in the hall.

OK. And so everybody was talking about this after this was done, but what was neat is that one of the APs came by and she was a math person too.

And actually took part in what we were doing and was so impressed that she said that she would buy these CBRs at least one set for the school so that the 8th grade could use them to do the kind of activity that I was doing there.

So I guess not only did they influence me in terms of my academic perspective, but also I think I helped them as well. Oh, it certainly sounds like you contributed significantly. But it was a great experience.

It went too quickly. The three months went way too quickly. Now I'd like to, my next step would be the high school. Do high school sabbatical, and I'm working on that too.

So we'll see. And that, now you're getting into some pretty heavy duty math if you're doing high school. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see.

I try to take, do the same model is go through all the teachers, whether it's, you know, algebra one through AP calculus. But it, again, that will help me just as much hopefully as I help them.

Well, I think just the connection is so important. It keeps you fresh, you know what's happening in the schools. And I like working with the kids, whether they're, you know, 4th graders or middle school or high school.

Or kindergarten. Potential pediatricians. Yep. Yeah, like I said, working with the kids and working with the teachers was just really great.

Can we go back to something that you mentioned? You talked about the Governor's Academy. Could you tell me a little bit about that? Yeah, it was here for quite, actually, I think it started at

UMBC and then they split it. I think the the elementary was here and the secondary was at UMBC. Lori Mollor, I think, was the person who was in charge of

that. And so, but after a while there, a few years, I think they brought everything here. And so initially I was one of the presenters.

I did, you know, a few workshops for the teachers, but then Lori retired and so Kate Denniston and I became the directors of it. And so we had a $500,000 grant from the state.

MSDE. No, no, MHEC, one of them, MHEC or MSDE, OK. And we ran it from here and it was a residential, a three week residential program during the summer for teachers K through

12. And were... Was it all subject areas? Math and science. Math and science. And it was an in service for them?

Did they get any kind of credit for it or... Yes, they got in service credits. Yeah, yes. Continuing education, I think, CEUs.

The education units. Don't do we still do those? We do not anymore. They changed the focus of the Governor's Academy. I see.

So we haven't been doing it for, like, I think 5 or 6 years now. But that was a real endorsement then of math and science education. Absolutely. Because it sounds like that was a fairly significant grant. Yep.

That's another thing that I would like you to talk about if you could, is just the kind of need and supported need there is out there for higher ed to create more math and science teachers.

There's a lot of grants, you know, STEM grants out there. We had a number of them, actually, Gail Kaplan, Todd Moyer and myself had MHEC grants that we, we interacted

with Dundalk teachers from Dundalk High School, teachers and students from Dundalk High School and had PD for the teachers and then did on-campus activities for the kids there.

Also Sonali Raja from the chemistry department, Gail Kaplan and I also did some things with the Dubois High School, not only with Dundalk High School also, but also Dubois High School which is a city school as well.

The same type of thing. Part of... Gail and I worked with the mathematics part, Sonali did the science part and then they we had some deco people do the part for the students.

They brought them on campus and did some other things about, you know, college careers, things like that. So, but yeah, we again, we enjoyed working with the teachers and the students as well.

And these were high school. So, but actually the Dundalk grant also worked with Dundalk Middle School and Holabird Middle School and students and teachers as well.

So we try to keep active as much as possible in terms of working with teachers and students. And it sounds like with the Maryland State Department of Education, too, there seems to be a pretty good relationship

there. Absolutely. Yep. That's where the money comes from. Right. Yeah.

So they're good people to have as friends. Absolutely. Absolutely. There you go. And we're looking at doing some more things too.

And what was kind of interesting too, out of the the grant for Dubois High School is we got two articles published in the Mathematics Teacher, which is like the premier mathematics journal in the, if not the United States, the world

actually. So yeah, Sonali, Gail and I had two articles published. So we're trying to do more of that too, in terms of looking at these grants and then getting articles published with respect

to doing the grants. Well, it certainly is nice to share your success with other people so that it's not just a select group of people benefiting.

Yep. So what else should we be talking about? I don't know. I guess some of the culminating things with my career again,

it's sort of on the downside now a little bit, getting closer to the retirement, is that a couple of the things that I guess treasure or I really am proud of is that I was president of the Maryland

Council of Teachers and Mathematics for two years. So that was, it was a tough job, but I enjoyed doing it. And what kinds of things did you do in that job?

Just run the meetings and the conferences and make sure everything was running smoothly with the organization, you know, recruitment of new members, just things like that.

And during my time as president, we had a National Council of Teachers of Mathematics regional meeting here. Like, we had just one this past month in October, and we had one also when I was then.

And that's a lot of work. And how many people would attend something like that? Maybe 5,000. That's a big group! Yeah, not as many as the national meeting, but quite

a few. It's downtown at the Convention Center. So, you know, like between 3,000 and 5,000 people. But that was a lot of work. And we started, you know, we worked with the State

Department in terms of looking at mathematics and how best we could influence the mathematics of the state, offer workshops, things like that for in-service teachers. So it's grown quite a bit even since I've been

president of the organization. The other thing is being assistant chair of the mathematics department. Yes.

I never thought I would want to get into administration, you know, but the chair, Doctor Bullis, asked me about six or seven years ago if I would, if I would do that. And I said, reluctantly, I said yes.

And that's been a very rewarding experience. Well, good. I'm no longer, I decided to step aside and let other people take that.

But I did it for six years and that's good enough. And what kinds of responsibilities did you have in that position? Working with students a lot, answering questions, transfer

petition forms. The biggest thing was working with the adjunct faculty. A lot of complaints both ways, you know, student complaints and also instructor complaints.

But it was, I enjoy that a lot because I get to work with the part time instructors or the adjunct instructors and I was part of the, now we have adjunct one status and adjunct two status, and that transition or that promotion, if you will.

So I was a head of that. And then, you know, the observations of our adjunct faculty and things like that. So I got to know the adjunct faculty very well.

So I really, I enjoyed that quite a bit because a lot of times you just see them and say hi and that's about it. But then I could really actually get to talk to them. Some of them I didn't even know.

I didn't put names to faces. But now being that I knew who people were. A very important responsibility. And when people just come on campus to teach one course or

so, it's hard to have a sense of being part of anything. So it sounds like that's one of the things. My door is always open. Yeah, well, and there's somebody they know, and they

know where that office is and when you're available. And those two categories for adjuncts, is that something the math department did, or is that university?

That's the university. And so now we have adjunct 1 and an adjunct 2. Yes. And what's the essential difference?

Salary difference? Yes, slightly, yeah. We don't pay our adjunct people nearly as much as we should. I know.

You know, but at least it's something. It's a little bit of recognition. Yes, absolutely. And what do you have to do to qualify?

You have to submit a dossier, and then it's on the website. They've got all the information that you have to put there. It's basically, it's quality teaching. And again, you know, if they weren't quality teachers, we

would be hiring him. Well, that's true. So sort of obvious. Yeah.

But it's nice to reward them in some way. And as you said, it sort of documents that. Absolutely. If you get this, it says that we acknowledge that you are a

quality teacher. And we give you a few bucks extra. Yeah, I know. You know, a meal out maybe. Yeah.

Buy some gas. Yeah, truly. So you can get to your schools. Yeah.

And the other, actually two things, is I was voted as teacher of the year with the Maryland Council of Teachers in Mathematics and the Fisher College of School Mathematics a few years ago. Very nice.

So that was, that was nice as well. So that award for the Maryland organization can go to someone in higher education?

Is there a category? There are different categories. I see. Well, what a nice feather in your cap and in ours as well to have that happen.

And tell me about this, Fisher College now has some kind of award? Yeah, they have awards for different categories actually.

That forum that, I guess we call it the fall forum, is coming up very soon, this month actually. And they have different levels. And so that award was a teaching award.

Yeah. Teacher of the year or something like that. Wonderful. Yeah.

And then they have other awards to researcher of the year and then for the staff as well. Very nice. And I think also is a nice thing for your students to see and

know is that you have been recognized as a quality teacher. Sure. So that's great. Even though they may not think that around exam time.

Well, maybe not, but hey. But later, after they've graduated and you go back to them... That's what I tell them is that, you know, the grade you get in this course now, you may know now, but five years from now, you're not going to care.

It's the information that you take from this, the resources you take from the course that you utilize five years from now. That's the important part. Absolutely.

I'm not sure they quite believe me at this at this point, but hopefully later on. And I've had people that actually come back and said some things about that.

Yeah, wonderful. That's so rewarding. Yes. Yeah.

Absolutely. That's about the only type of reward that you get, which is fine. It's the best.

Yes, absolutely. Actually, I rarely go to that, like, ratemyprofessor.com, but I was told that one of the comments was he's the reason I'm a teacher.

And, you know, what better praise than that? None. That's great. Wonderful.

Yeah. I wish I knew who that was. Maybe you'll find out at some point. We always have one last question.

Sure. And that's what kind of advice would you give to someone who's considering becoming a math teacher, teacher of mathematics, or a teacher?

I thought quite deeply about this, and I did actually write something out here that I thought I'd read, so I didn't forget. I said to be a good teacher at any level and in any subject

area requires flexibility and dedication and a clear realization that to be an effective teacher requires a firm commitment to lifelong learning. And I believe all those things, especially the idea of lifelong

learning. You know, I've been doing this a long time, but I'm still learning something almost every day. Absolutely.

Yeah. From little ones to medium sized ones to high school to college. So I'm learning something all the time. Well, it seems like your career reflects that.

I mean, the fact that you want to go back and you want to be in schools says that this a real need for teachers to continuously renew and to learn and to learn. Absolutely.

And hopefully I'll be around long enough to do the high school rotation, high school sabbatical. I certainly hope so. We got to get that in there.

How long before you can have another one? Probably a couple of years. Oh, OK. Well, hang in there.

Yeah, that's right. I think that would be wonderful. Unless I hit the lottery. But yeah, absolutely.

I know. That's what we all say. So far none of us have. Not yet. But we can keep trying. And you being a mathematician

know just how likely that is. Yeah. I don't want to think about that. Probably is quite slow.

Quite small. I'm sure. Anything else, Mike? This has been great. No, nothing I can think of right now.

It's just, you know, I do value the relationship that we have with the college, Fisher College of Science and Mathematics, with the College of Education in terms of working together to make our students better prepared to become teachers at all,

with any subject area. Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the things that Ray continually mentions, as does the President, Maravene Loeschke, is that teacher education

is across colleges at this institution. And we understand that it is a primary mission of the institution. And with that kind of belief and support, I think, teacher ed is

probably where it needs to be and should be. It only gets better. I hope so. Thanks so much for doing this.

You're welcome. Thank you very much.