Catalysts at JSM

Does this picture really
need a caption?

Whew! What a trip for the Catalyst team. Michelle Everson presented an invited paper on using online discussions for a session Rob Gould organized on the effective use of instructional technology. Bob delMas was super busy participating in an invited panel that Joan organized on starting a career in statistics education, organizing a topic contributed session on collaborative research in statistics education, chairing a session on Statway—an alternative pathway to a college credit-bearing statistics course for students who place in developmental mathematics; representing the statistics education section at the Statistics Education Booth (twice!), and being made a Fellow of the American Statistics Association. Congratulations Bob!

Michael Posner, Robin Lock, 

Joan Garfield and Leigh Slausen '

are "Stayin' Alive"

Over the course of the week we made great progress on the CATALST curriculum we will be implementing this fall. Allan Rossman, Beth Chance, George Cobb and Rob Gould met with us several times during the week to brainstorm and map out the progression of learning, as well as the activities, homework and assessments that we plan on using for Units 2 and 3 of the curriculum. (We hope to post a blog entry soon laying out our current thinking on these units!)

In between sessions, section and CAUSE business meetings, and long working meetings with Allan, Beth, Rob and George, we also still managed to get in some great meals. Joan went three for three on the choice of restaurants this year. The dinner conversations were stimulating, continuing the discussions started earlier in the day. Nick Horton and Danny Kaplan also joined us several times for dinner pushing us to think even harder about the projects we were working on. Overall an A++ conference.