The last couple weeks have just zipped by. Time has been slipping by that way this semester. Fortunately, the wheels aren't falling off or anything, and because of my upcoming Fall sabbatical, I don't have those preps hanging over my head as another thing on my to-do list. Of course, that doesn't mean that there isn't a list.
I emailed the Provost yesterday with an updated sabbatical plan. Last year when I was applying for sabbatical, the plan was to complete the UNLV Data Analytics certificate over the summer and then find some type of work for a few months to get some practical work experience. As it turns out, that certificate is being phased out so that they can introduce a Masters program in Analytics. Fortunately, the program coordinator was able to suggest a pathway through the MIS Certificate that is basically the same thing. This will definitely require me to take a class during the Spring 2021 semester. But it seems like a good pathway. As soon as I get affirmation from the Provost's office, I'll begin the process of applying to the program and all of that.
Classes are cruising along. I'm very happy with the MATH 454 class. It's been a really fun class and the structure makes things all very casual. Also, with only 5 students in it, the grading load is pretty light. The MATH 352 course just transitioned from probability into statistics. I'm going to have to spend a little more time reviewing the notes for that class, because I don't have as much intuition about the overall trajectory of that course, and it's leading me to ramble a bit in class. (It doesn't help that this is the first time teaching this course.)
MATH 127 has been more fun than average. There's a cluster of students that are having some fun with the course and there's a little bit of playful back-and-forth happening. For example, we were solving the equation 2*sin(x) + 4 = 3, and they were having trouble seeing through all the symbols. So I write down 2x + 4 = 3 and asked them what algebraic steps they would use to solve that equation. Then I told them that the exact same algebraic steps will work for our problem. From the back corner, I hear, "Oh my gosh! No way!" To which I replied, "Mind = Blown!" And we all got a laugh because I referenced a 10-year old meme in class.
The ART 240 course is doing pretty well. I think they're about to get buried in some assignments because before the start of the semester I had imagined that they would be better at things than they are. So I'm going to have to make some adjustments for that one. But the class is having a good time learning to do the things, and I think they'll really be excited by the transition into Fusion 360 when we get there in a few more weeks.
Beyond that, the search committee work is starting to wrap up. The math search submitted a recommendation to the Dean and that's now at the Provost level. So our work that is almost certainly officially done. (The only way it's not done is if it gets kicked back or if the candidate we recommended declines.) The data science search is coming into its last couple on campus interviews at the end of the week, and then we will probably have some interesting deliberations. I'm fairly optimistic that one of the candidates will come through with the right balance of all the things we're looking for, but I still have to wait that out to see if it works out that way.
I think I've really started to turn the corner with R, and now I feel pretty comfortable cranking out graphs, cleaning data, and things like that. I'm still playing with just the first semester of the ATMI data (student attitudes towards mathematics). So far, it's just looking at the overall picture of things. Students value mathematics, but they lack self confidence, and are neutral on the level of enjoyment they derive from it. I'm currently writing scripts to plot that out by different demographics, such as ethnicity, course, and whether the students are first generation. But the big question I'm interested in whether we can identify change over time in particular students, but that data won't be available for a while.
I'm also starting to learn about OpenCV, which is a computer vision package. I was in a conversation with one of the science faculty, and they're doing a project in one of their classes involving setting up a camera to take pictures of the animals that come through our farm. They're doing a small enough number of pictures that they can do it manually, but if they were to do video or increase the number of camera stations then it would require going to up a computer algorithm for identifying things. I've skimmed through some tutorials, and will probably go back to those after I finish this and probably over the rest of the weekend.
The impending remedial math policy is still being worked on. At this point, I've been tasked with trying to set up a coherent set of materials to help students quickly get up to speed on their basic algebra stuff. Some students come and are functionally at a middle school level. Helping those students complete a college level precalculus course without the benefit of an additional semester to get more experience and really shore up their math skills is the challenge we're facing. So it's going to be a mixture of some just-in-time remediation as well as trying to help them reframe mathematics in a way that will hopefully help them make more sense of the math that they know. Because at some level, that time between middle school and college is not completely wasted. They have some ability to manipulate symbols, and some amount of memory/experience doing things even if it was symbolic nonsense to them. So hopefully, the framework we create will give them some categories for really starting to think about things and also improve their overall capacity for mathematical thought. So that's something else I've got to work on (though probably not much time this weekend on it).
The church vision team is wrapping up. We met for 6 weeks in a row, and we're doing a retreat next weekend, which will bring this phase to an end. It's not the sort of thing where we were necessarily expecting to be completely done with it at the end of this time. It's really more starting to get ideas onto the table and bringing people into a greater ownership of the ideas that will drive things forward. I appreciate that so much of this has been outwardly focused instead of really trying to keep or maintain people who are already Christians. Obviously, that's still a part of discipleship, but a lot of churches are turned so inwardly that they've lost connection with anyone on the outside. I think some of these Christian bubbles have gotten worse in the last 5-10 years, especially in more conservative corners. There are still some things that I'm inclined to push harder for, but it all has to be done in the framework of corporate passions and not just individual ones. For example, I still think Christians need to be more explicit about the diversity of opinions there are on various topics rather than not talking about it and just assuming that everyone is on the same page with everything. That steps into some scary places for some, and it also forces others to confront some of their assumptions in a way that can be a little dangerous (someone *might* get offended!), but I think it's for the overall benefit of the Kingdom to start to work those things out as a community rather than leaving individuals to try to figure it out by themselves (or approach it dogmatically where the individual church claims to have "the" answer to the question).
That wraps up most of the big things that are on my mind today. I did play some piano for a bit, which felt good and I should really do that more often. Having friends come through town is always fun. The Nevada caucuses are today (it's a closed caucus and I'm an independent, so I get to sit it out and am not at all bothered by that). Little by little, Thor is getting more and more comfortable being pet, though I haven't gotten him to a point where he is comfortable being held. (I've got a couple scratches on my arm from a few nights ago.) My aunt has been in the hospital for a couple weeks, and things have been back and forth for a bit. But there's a lot of family nearby that are checking in on her and trying to keep her encouraged, which is good. YouTube stuff is on the back burner. Life is pretty good.
