Experience Summary
I have earned the BA, MA, and PhD degrees in mathematics and have held half-time college mathematics teaching positions at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara while a graduate student, and full-time tenure -track college teaching positions in mathematics at Cornell College of Iowa (2 years), Univ. of Hawaii (2 years), Penn State Univ. at McKeesport (15 years), and San Jose Community College (16 years). I have taught at one time or another all junior high and high school level mathematics courses and all lower division college level courses. During the 1980s for six years I traveled to the Princeton, New Jersey area to grade for the ETS the Advanced Placement calculus exams submitted by high schools throughout the nation. I held the position of Dean of Mathematics and Science at San Jose City College for 11 years, from which I retired in 2002.
Teaching Style
I am very patient with students of all ages and have an ability to get them to grasp fundamental concepts. My tutoring style is one of getting students to think critically and creatively and to see the fundamental patterns for successful problem solving. I do not just give students the answer to questions or a slick heuristic method for solving a particular problem. Rather I try to get them to think for themselves so that they will be able to solve problems of a wide variety on their own. I also like to teach students how to see a "picture" of the problem at hand and various ways of graphically representing a problem, and that there are usually several different approaches to solving the same problem. I also stress the need to have learned necessary background information so that they are not always starting a solution from scratch. Most of all, I want students to see the beauty of mathematics, and experience the intellectual rewards of solving a problem on their own.