About Us

Collaborative Approach

MINDSET project personnel are excited to collaborate with high school teachers across the country.  Participating MINDSET teachers can...

• Receive professional training
• Access all course modules and supporting materials online
• Search and contribute to a customized knowledge-base
• Discuss course topics in online community forums
• Get help through in-person and online technical assistance

This support infrastructure will be continuously evaluated and improved with your critical feedback, with a goal of making it sustainable and sufficiently flexible to be reproduced and utilized by others.

Improving Student Performance in Mathematics

Performance in mathematics is a critical factor affecting students' success in areas of sciences and engineering trades and several states now require a fourth year of high school mathematics. The MINDSET curriculum uses math-based decision-making tools from Operations Research to present standard mathematics concepts in a non-calculus fourth-year mathematics course.

Some of the goals of the MINDSET project are to

1. enhance students' mathematical knowledge and skills, especially their ability to formulate and solve multi-step problems and interpret results; and
2. improve students' attitude toward mathematics, especially those from underrepresented groups, thereby motivating them to study mathematics; and
3. obtain adoption at the state level of the curriculum initially in North Carolina and Michigan, then in other states.

A multi-state, multi-school district assessment will determine if the MINDSET approach leads to statistically significant improvement in these areas.

Project Members

To read more about a project member, advisory board member, or consultant, click on the linked name.

Project Principals

Dr. Robert E. Young is Principal Investigator and Project Director, and Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University.

Dr. Kenneth R. Chelst is CoPrincipal Investigator and Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at Wayne State University .

Dr. Thomas G. Edwards is CoPrincipal Investigator and Associate Professor of Mathematics Education at Wayne State University in Detroit.

Dr. Karen Keene is CoPrincipal Investigator and Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education at North Carolina State University.
Dr. Karen Norwood is CoPrincipal Investigator and Associate Professor of Mathematics Education at North Carolina State University.

Dr. David Pugalee is CoPrincipal Investigator, Professor of Mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Interim Director of the Center for Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education.

Consultants

Dr. David Goldsman is a Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Dr. Shlomo S. Sawilowsky is Professor and Distinguished Faculty Fellow, Wayne State University and program coordinator of Educational Evaluation and Research.

Project Advisory Board

Ms. Everly Broadway is Section Chief for Middle and Secondary Mathematics at the State of North Carolina 's Department of Public Instruction.

Dr. Brenda L. Dietrich is an IBM Fellow (one of 67 worldwide and one of only 199 since IBM's founding), Director of Mathematical Sciences, at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, and is President of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS).

Dr. Thom J. Hodgson is the James T. Ryan Distinguished University Professor, an Alumni Distinguished Research Professor, and the Director of the Integrated Manufacturing Systems Engineering Institute at North Carolina State University (NCSU).

Dr. John Kenelly is the Alumni Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at Clemson University (emeritus).

Dr. Irene Nordé is a career mathematics educator in the Detroit Public Schools, where she has served as supervisor of secondary mathematics since 1994.

Mr. Steven Rasmussen co-founded Key Curriculum Press in 1971 and is its CEO.