Welcome New COMMITs

These new communities bring new expertise to our network in the form of complex instruction, inquiry oriented instruction, and more. We are particularly excited to have two of the founders of a new Indigenous Mathematicians community as leaders in two of our new COMMITs, and are eager to see what synergies are possible between this community and our network. Our four new COMMITs are in the process of building websites and organizing events; in the meantime, you can learn more about them below.

Southern Arizona COMMIT

We are the Southern Arizona COMMIT, serving the greater Tucson community, with plans to expand to our partners in higher education throughout the southern Arizona region. Our leadership team includes members from the Mathematics departments of Pima Community College and the University of Arizona. Our leaders have extensive experience with Active Learning, Inquiry-Based Learning, and Complex Instruction at the undergraduate level. We have ties to AMATYC and its Southwestern Regional Section, the MAA and its Southwest Section, ArizMATYC, the Academy of Inquiry-Based Learning, and TODOS: Mathematics for All. The starting goals for our COMMIT are to establish a presence in the region, both more widely within our institutions as well as with our K-12 partners in the Tucson community. We hope to eventually incorporate Cochise, Tohono O'odham, Eastern Arizona, and Western Arizona Colleges. Along with outreach we want to provide professional learning opportunities that promote dialogue and help our members expand their network of colleagues in student-centered teaching. We plan to use our funding support to encourage partnerships and peer learning for faculty through participation in teaching circles, classroom observations, and course collaborations.

Leadership team: Kyley Segers, Ana Jiménez, José María Menéndez, Marta Civil, Brenae Bailey, James Sheldon, Emily Whittington

Four Corners COMMIT

The Four Corners COMMIT aims to encourage and advance inquiry-based teaching and learning in the four corners states of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. We aim to incorporate interested teachers from 4-year and 2-year colleges as well as K-12 schools. The leadership team includes Gulden Karakok and Nathaniel Miller from the University of Northern Colorado, Spencer Bagley and Jonas D’Andrea from Westminster College in Utah, Ellie Blair, Dana Ernst, and Angie Hodge from Northern Arizona University, and Belin Tsinnajinnie from Santa Fe Community College. We aim to provide productive regional meetings and workshops, encouraging participation throughout the large Four Corners region.

COMMIT Hawaii

Commit Hawaii serves as a backbone for connecting collegiate educators across the Hawaiian Islands. Our members range greatly in experience, but our common denominator is a passion for serving the unique and diverse student population. We hope for our meetings to be a place where our members can discuss national evidence based practices related to inquiry based learning, active learning and place based learning and tailor these philosophies for our students. Currently all of our members reside in the University of Hawaii system and we have at least one active member from each Island (well, all the islands with community colleges or universities).

Our leadership team is:

• John "Curlee" Robertson, University of Hawai'i at Manoa

• Kamuela Yong, University of Hawai'i West O'ahu

• Nadiene Wolf, Kapiolani Community College

• Efren Ruiz, University of Hawai'i at Hilo

• Maureen Kearns, Honolulu Community College

• Ruth Haas, University of Hawai'i at Manoa

COMMIT California-Nevada

We are a group of mathematics educators and education researchers across California and Nevada who seek to promote, encourage, and support high-quality inquiry teaching through collaboration and community. Through local conferences and workshops, informal gatherings, and formal mentoring we connect with, support, and learn from faculty and students at diverse institutions and with diverse identities and backgrounds towards the goal of providing a more meaningful and equitable education to all of our students. These connections also support collaboration between education researchers and practitioners in our community, both to inform and strengthen the research, and for the promotion and dissemination of research-based effective practices across our region.

Leadership Team:

• Brian Katz, California State University, Long Beach

• Julia Olkin, California State University, East Bay

• Chris Rasmussen, San Diego State University

• Megan Selbach-Allen, Stanford University

• Elizabeth Thoren, Pepperdine University

January 2021