NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Robert P. Moses, founder of the Algebra Project, will speak at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College at 4 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 5, in the Rotunda of the Faye and Joe Wyatt Center on the Peabody campus.
The lecture is free and open to the public. Local educators are especially encouraged to attend.
The Algebra Project is a national mathematics literacy effort aimed at helping students in under-served rural and inner-city areas-particularly African-American and Latino students-achieve skills required to successfully pursue a college preparatory math program. The curriculum enables middle school students to make the conceptual transition from arithmetic to algebra by the 8th grade.
Since the mid-1980s, the Algebra Project has developed curricular materials, trained teachers and trainers of teachers, and provided ongoing professional development support to schools seeking a systemic change in mathematics education. The project reaches approximately 10,000 students and 300 teachers per year in 10 states, with a particular focus on the southern United States.
"Bob Moses is a genuine innovator whose vision springs from a personal commitment to enabling students to demand all that education can offer. Having him speak at Vanderbilt is a rare opportunity," said Camilla P. Benbow, Peabody College’s Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development.
For Moses, the Algebra Project represents a continuation of work he began as a civil rights activist. Born and raised in Harlem, N.Y., he began his career as a middle school mathematics teacher in New York City. He went on to organize civil rights efforts in Mississippi during the 1960s. He continues to teach at the Lanier High School Math Lab in Jackson, Miss. He also has taught in Tanzania, East Africa and Cambridge, Mass.
Moses is a past recipient of a prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and is the author, with Charles E. Cobb Jr., of Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project. In addition to the MacArthur Fellowship, he has received the Heinz Award for the Human Condition, the Nation/Puffin Prize for Creative Citizenship and the Jane Conant Bryan Award from the Education Commission of the States. In 2002, PBS featured Moses and the Algebra Project on the Bill Moyers program "NOW."
Moses’ presentation is part of Peabody College’s Maycie K. Southall Distinguished Lectures on Public Education and the Futures of Children. Peabody College’s Department of Teaching and Learning sponsors the lectures named for a distinguished Peabody alumna and faculty member whose high standards of teaching and devotion to the cause of children influenced undergraduate and graduate students nationally and internationally. To learn more, please contact the Department of Teaching and Learning at 615-322-8100.
Media contact: Princine Lewis, (615) 322-NEWS
Princine.l.lewis@vanderbilt.edu