Partners

(Links to partner sites will open in new windows.)

Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC)

The Education Development Center (Newton, MA) has partnered with PROMYS for over a decade. In particular, EDC in partnership with the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, conducts five full-day workshops during the academic year with a focus on pedagogy and connecting the immersion experience in mathematics back to the classroom. Teachers explore mathematics inspired by the secondary curriculum, and collaborate to plan lessons.

Since PFT's infancy, Co-Director of PROMYS for Teachers, Al Cuoco (EDC) has shared visions with PROMYS Director, Glenn Stevens (BU) that are now being realized in a profound way. After fifteen dedicated years of commitment and leadership, the EDC/BU partnership has led to the following results:

PROMYS teachers are Teacher Leaders in their schools,
PROMYS teachers are having an impact on the students in their classrooms,
PROMYS teachers have completed successful internships as Professional Development Leaders, as evidenced in the PCMI-led courses and curricula that PROMYS teachers develop and deliver in Park City, Utah (see below),
PROMYS teachers are participating in NCTM conferences and publishing their research,

and finally, and perhaps most exciting of all, is the development of the new Masters degree in Mathematics for Teaching that has at its core, the key ingredients that led to the proven success of the PFT program: the six week immersion experience, an internship in professional development, and a research experience. Now, PROMYS teachers (and others nationwide) will have an even greater opportunity to effect educational reform in their schools; obtain a secure career path; and contribute to the mathematical community, at large.

Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI)

The Clay Mathematics Institute (Cambridge, MA) is dedicated to increasing and disseminating mathematical knowledge.

Students who find their PROMYS experience especially worthwhile may be invited to return for a second summer to participate in advanced seminars and research activities. To ensure that returning students and counselors find their experience intellectually stimulating, PROMYS, in partnership with the Clay Mathematics Institute, offers a variety of advanced seminars and research projects each summer. In 2006, returning students and counselors participated in the following seminars for their further enrichment: Galois Theory; Geometry and Symmetry; and Combinatorics. Past seminars have also included: Algebra; Values of the Riemann zeta function; Modular Forms; Hyperbolic Geometry; Graphs and Knots; Random Walks on Groups; Dirichlet Series; the Mathematics of Computer Graphics; and the Mathematics of Algorithms.

Since 1999, the CMI/PROMYS partnership has also run research labs. PROMYS participants form teams of four to engage in open-ended exploratory mathematics projects with the guidance of research mathematicians, Mentors, and Seminar Leaders.

Visiting research mathematicians and Mentors have included: Avner Ash, Marjory Baruch, Henry Cohn, Keith Conrad, Ed Early, David Fried, Ira Gessel, Paul Gunnells, Jonathan Hanke, Kiran Kedlaya, Jonathan Lubin, Haynes Miller, Cleve Moler, Robert Pollack, David Rohrlich, Steve Rosenberg, Dev Sinha, and Cumrun Vafa.

Students write up their projects and give a presentation of their research results during the last week of the program to the PROMYS faculty, counselors, and all of the PROMYS participants.

Park City Mathematics Institute (PCMI)

The Park City Mathematics Institute (PCMI) of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ offers comprehensive professional development for mathematicians and teachers of mathematics, as well as programs for students aspiring to a career in mathematics. The High School Teacher Program is one component of PCMI. The High School Teacher Program summer session is a three-week experience for secondary mathematics teachers. A related but separate program is a special one-week session for mathematics supervisors or curriculum coordinators. The HSTP is structured around three goals:

continuing to learn and do mathematics,
analyzing and refining classroom practice, and
becoming resources to colleagues and the profession.

The strand that focuses on continuing to learn and do mathematics is led by PROMYS teachers. The summer of 2007 will be the seventh consecutive summer that a group of PROMYS teachers have developed a curriculum and facilitated the one-week professional development session in Park City for other in-service teachers.