Mohawk Valley Community College Math Corps received a nearly $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation, along with partners Wayne State University in Detroit, Cleveland State University, and a not-for-profit organization in Philadelphia. Math Corps is designed to enhance mentorship, enthusiasm for, and understanding of mathematics concepts, and the grant was awarded to help develop better analysis methods to identify the nature, extent, and reasons for Math Corps’ success with youth learner in urban setting.
“Through the generous support of the NSF, we hope to deepen our understanding of why the program has been so successful and how it can be replicated by other community colleges to enhance mathematics learning, particularly in economically disadvantaged areas,” said Todd Kubica, director of MVCC Math Corps.
MVCC directs the local Math Corps, and will serve 40 rising 7th graders, as well as a number of high school and college students, through a four-week intensive summer camp that includes classroom instruction and fun project-based learning activities.
The 2017 Math Corps camp will run Mondays – Thursdays from July 17 until
Aug. 10 for the 7th Grade participants. High school and college students will be hired to tutor and mentor the 7th graders. The high school and college students will participate in a professional development training session at Wayne State the week prior to the start of the camp.
MVCC Math Corps applications are currently being distributed in Utica. To learn more about MVCC Math Corps, contact program representatives at 315-792-5828.
The MVCC chapter of this program has also been supported in Utica by generous donations from the Mele Family Fund and the M&T Bank/Partner’s Trust Bank Charitable Fund, both of which are donor-advised funds of The Community Foundation of Herkimer & Oneida Counties, Inc.
The program seeks to create a self-perpetuating corps of students from middle school through college, who excel academically, hold personal values that breed success in general, and who, through strong mentoring relationships, pass their knowledge and their values on to younger students. As they grow, those younger students do the same.
“The central idea is that math can be fun, and we allow our students to investigate and discover all the joys of the discipline while instilling a desire to learn more,” said Linda Tettamant, coordinator of MVCC Math Corps. “At the same time, we seek to create mentors who can carry the enthusiasm for math they learn this summer to younger students joining the program next summer.”
Math Corps was originally developed over two decades ago by a team at Wayne State University, with the goal of creating a combined academic enrichment and mentoring program that could bring middle and high school students from urban centers together with college students to learn mathematics from each other, as well as to interact with professional mathematicians in a university setting. Math Corps received the prestigious 2016 New York Life Excellence in Summer Learning Award, sponsored by the National Summer Learning Association.
