National Science Foundation awards MVCC Math Corps, partners $3M to study urban-youth learning

UTICA, N.Y. — The Mohawk Valley Community College (MVCC) chapter of Math Corps will use a federal grant of nearly $3 million “to identify the nature, extent, and reasons for Math Corps’ success with youth [learners] in [an] urban setting.”

The MVCC Math Corps is partnering with Wayne State University in Detroit, Cleveland State University, and a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia to “help develop better analysis methods” in this project, MVCC said in a news release issued Monday.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded the grant funding.

“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,” Todd Kubica, director of MVCC Math Corps, said.

MVCC directs the local chapter of Math Corps, the school said.

It will provide 40 7th graders, along with a “number” of high school and college students, a four-week summer camp that includes classroom instruction and “fun,” project-based, learning activities.

The 2017 Math Corps camp will run Mondays through Thursdays between July 17 and Aug. 10 for the 7th grade participants.

The program will hire high school and college students to tutor and mentor the 7th graders.

The high school and college students will also 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,” MVCC said.

The Mele Family Fund and the M&T Bank/Partner’s Trust Bank Charitable Fund have provided “generous” donations to support the MVCC chapter of Math Corps. The release didn’t provide dollar amounts.

Mele Family Fund and the M&T Bank/Partner’s Trust Bank Charitable Fund are donor-advised funds of the Community Foundation of Herkimer & Oneida Counties, Inc., MVCC said.

About Math Corps

A team at Wayne State University originally developed Math Corps over two decades ago 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, and interact with professional mathematicians in a university setting.

The program seeks to create a “self-perpetuating corps” of students from middle school through college, according to the news release.

The students “excel” academically; hold personal values that “breed success in general;” and who “pass their knowledge and their values” on to younger students through mentoring relationships.

“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,” Linda Tettamant, coordinator of MVCC Math Corps, said in the release. “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.”

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com