Teaching Citation

Award for

for

Distinguished College or University

Teaching of Mathematics

presented to

Steven Kahn

The Michigan Section of the Mathematical Association of America is pleased to announce that Professor Steven Kahn of Wayne State University has been selected as the 2003–2004 recipient of the Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics.

Steve Kahn is a native of Brooklyn, New York. He did his undergraduate work at SUNY at Stony Brook and his graduate work at the University of Maryland, where he earned a Ph.D. in algebraic topology. He came to Wayne State University in 1981, where he has had a profound influence on Wayne State University students both through the Emerging Scholars Program, which he initiated, and through his unique teaching style. He has also made a major impact on the K–12 Detroit Public Schools through the Wayne State University Math Corps (summer camp) program.

Troubled by the low success rate for students in calculus and pre-calculus courses, particularly for minority students, Steve created an Emerging Scholars Program at WSU similar to the programs Uri Treisman created elsewhere, except tailored to Wayne State University. The program has been spectacularly successful and WSU has the statistical data to prove it.

Steve understood very well that academic life does not begin at the college or university level. Back in 1987 he began his involvement with K–12 students, and in 1992 he started the WSU Math Corps for Detroit Public School students. The heart of the Math Corps is an intense six-week-long summer camp. This is a large-scale operation; for example, 180 DPS middle and high school students attended camp in summer 2002. In the camp the middle schoolers are tutored by high school students, who, in turn, are mentored by college students. All of the DPS students take classes taught by WSU faculty.

All of the programs began with Steve’s personal involvement, but he managed to institutionalize them so that they continue to thrive with other instructors.

Regarding Steve Kahn and the Math Corps program, one of Professor Kahn’s former ESP students says, “He has some sort of a hyper drive button that he pushes when it comes to motivating children to take charge of their education and to do the work necessary to get ahead.”

Another student, talking about Steve’s teaching, says, “…he translates the lessons from the book into stories and adventures. He spends a great deal of time thinking about how to explain things in the simplest terms.”

Finally, two other students put it this way. “Professor Kahn always says that as a teacher, you are there to touch and change lives. Well, he has definitely touched and changed ours.”