The 2005 Mathematical Association of America- Ohio Section Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics has been awarded to Dr. David Singer of the Mathematics Department of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland.

The faculty member receiving the teaching award this year has been teaching since 1975. Dr. Singer has been ranked each of the past three years as “outstanding” by the students in that college. In 2002, Dr. Singer received the Undergraduate Student Government Undergraduate Teaching Excellence Award.

Mentoring is also a common theme to Dr. Singer’s teaching. He was nominated for an Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Mentoring. He is known for working individually with students, for working on individual study projects, and as an advisor both for Master’s and PhD students – even outside of the Mathematics department.

Dr. Singer is a consistent contributor to the MAA Monthly, usually on questions in geometry. He is an author of a book on geometry called “Geometry, Plain and Fancy”. Dr. Singer testified before Congress on a prototype post-doctoral program in the mid-1990’s. Later, he participated as a Principal Investigator on this project with a multi-million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation, where Dr. Singer was a mentor for all the post-docs.

Dr. Singer is nationally-known in areas related to pre-college mathematics education. This is not part of this professor’s regular job description and is in addition to the usual college professor job responsibilities. He gave a talk at the Ohio Board of Regents Teaching Fellows Conference, with a title of “Teaching higher-level mathematics using the inquiry method”.

The Cleveland School system recently obtained a major grant from the National Science Foundation. It involves several local colleges and universities. Dr. Singer designed and taught summer workshops for teachers and is supervising a class of experienced adults in an active learning environment.

One of his students wrote: “.. this is what Dr. Singer loves about his job; he loves helping people advance…(the course I took) was a third course in his teaching schedule. He overloaded his schedule because he knew that several students would benefit from taking this course. He is one of the most unselfish instructors I have met!”

The 2005 Distinguished College or University Teacher of Mathematics award was presented to Dr. David Singer of Case Western Reserve University on March 31, 2005.