Bridge to Calculus Program

Northeastern program preps Boston teens for calculus

by Greg St. Martin

For six weeks this summer, some 120 stu­dents from Boston Public Schools made an early morning trek from across the city to Northeastern’s campus, where they engaged in a math enrich­ment pro­gram designed to pre­pare them for cal­culus courses in high school.

The high school students—most of whom will be seniors starting this fall—wrapped up their final exams and pre­sen­ta­tions in the Bridge to Cal­culus pro­gram late last week, and many mar­veled over what they had learned and accomplished.

The cur­riculum con­sisted of instruc­tion, group work, and projects cov­ering pre-​​calculus topics including appli­ca­tions and inter­pre­ta­tions of func­tions, trigonom­etry, and intro to cal­culus. This year, thanks to sup­port from the Massachusetts-​​based Math­Works, the free pro­gram added a com­po­nent for select stu­dents fea­turing MATLAB—a dynamic com­puting lan­guage the com­pany developed.

This pro­gram really allows you to propel your­self for­ward, espe­cially if you have the will,” said Daniel, who attends the Jere­miah E. Burke High School.Rising seniors Jason Daniel and Ronald Fran­cois raved about the pro­gram on Thursday, a short time after com­pleting their finals. The pro­gram, they said, pro­vided an intel­lec­tu­ally stim­u­lating envi­ron­ment in which they were eager to learn, chal­lenged to push them­selves aca­d­e­m­i­cally, and given the oppor­tu­nity to get hands-​​on expe­ri­ence with MATLAB.

Holly Liao, a rising senior at the John D. O’Bryant School of Math and Sci­ence, said math is her favorite sub­ject but she strug­gled with pre-​​calculus as a junior. She applied to the Bridge to Cal­culus pro­gram to advance her knowl­edge in prepa­ra­tion for taking an Advanced Place­ment cal­culus course this fall. But like Daniel and Fran­cois, she also became intrigued with MATLAB and learning the basics of coding.

I think it’s really opened doors for me,” Liao said of the program.

The pro­gram ran Mon­days through Thurs­days from 7:30 to 9:15 a.m., with the MATLAB com­po­nent taught in ses­sions imme­di­ately there­after and on Fri­days. Boston Public School teachers led the in-​​classroom instruc­tion. Joining the teachers were men­tors, most of them North­eastern under­grad­uate and grad­uate stu­dents, who assisted with tutoring and pro­vided per­spec­tive on col­lege life and the appli­ca­tion process.

Retired North­eastern math pro­fessor Bob Case founded the pro­gram with National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion funding 20 years ago, and the pro­gram now runs out of Northeastern’s Depart­ment of Math­e­matics in the Col­lege of Sci­ence. Rajini Jesu­dason, a part-​​time lec­turer in the depart­ment, is coor­di­nating the pro­gram this year, having been involved with the pro­gram for six years. North­eastern asso­ciate pro­fessor of math­e­matics Donald King is the fac­ulty chair of the program.

At the com­ple­tion of the pro­gram, stu­dents are rec­om­mended for pre-​​calculus, cal­culus, or AP cal­culus based on the progress they’ve made. Overall, pro­gram admin­is­tra­tors said, Bridge to Cal­culus aims to cul­ti­vate greater access to a strong math cur­riculum in stu­dents’ schools and pro­vide high school stu­dents with math and crit­ical thinking skills that will help them achieve suc­cess in their final years of high school, in col­lege, and beyond.

The goal is to strengthen the public school system,” Jesu­dason said.

Originally published in news@Northeastern on August 11, 2015.

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