Frank Bauerle–Teaching Statement 2000-01
Lecturer, Mathematics

The process of learning is one of the fundamental and most important endeavors in a human's life. It is obvious that a teacher plays a very important role in a student's learning experience in any circumstance. Quite often a student's liking of a subject, effort, and ultimate success are directly linked to the teacher's performance and attitude. While on the surface it may seem that a teacher's main task is the passing on of facts and knowledge, in reality it is substantially more than that. A teacher is always also an educator, a guide, maybe a role model, or sometimes even a mentor for his or her students. Teachers need to be aware of their students' personal and academic situation and address these issues constructively while teaching the subject matter. For example, teaching first-year students at UCSC covers a lot of important ground outside of the subject area. It is crucial to help students collectively and individually to make the transition from high school or junior college to the different pace and challenges at the university. Many first-year and transfer students are inadequately prepared for what's ahead of them and simply don't have the tools yet to realize and analyze that. Recognizing a student's situation is a golden opportunity to make a difference.

Teaching mathematics classes, particularly the large lower division introductory courses that I primarily teach, has its own set of challenges. A good portion of the work I do is to try to help students slay their demons of math anxiety, math agony, and sometimes even math hatred. I often teach a very diverse crowd of student--in background, ability, motivation, and goals. It's never easy to keep things inclusive, interesting, and challenging without it being too easy or too difficult for a sizeable chunk of the class. I struggle really hard to keep the balance. I try to keep things relaxed in class and in perspective generally. Students appreciate it when I wear my court jester hat to exams, play Mozart before exams, or throw in a light bulb joke during lecture. Students are often amazed when I tell them it's not a character flaw if they do not get an "A" or a "B" in Precalculus. Of course I expect everybody to try their best to do just that. In my view, the main task of a teacher is to lift every student from whatever level of comprehension they have to as high a level as one can get them to go. My goal is to push each student to his or her personal level of excellence and to acknowledge that. Some of my best students did not get an "A" in the class. I wished I'd had more time to address students' successes and failures more directly and personally.

On a personal level, a teacher needs to be friendly, personable, but also in control of the situation; i.e. have authority without being authoritarian. I try to be as professional as possible without being stubborn or passionless. I find it unthinkable to deny a student a request for turning in late homework or taking a make-up exam when there is a reasonable explanation for it. There needs to be a lot of structure to manage a large class properly, but good management must include the ability to grant exceptions, or it is not management but containment. To observe the personal struggles, joys, or tragedies that some of my students go through is often very humbling for me. We really have great students here at UCSC, both personally and academically.

Since I have started teaching at UCSC, new technologies have made their impact in how we teach mathematics. In particular the World Wide Web is a fantastic tool to help students learn, instructors teach, and everybody to communicate more, and more effectively. I have had course Web sites since 1996, and I simply love it. (Check out my interactive course Web site at http://mathclass.ucsc.edu.) Electronic mail has proved to be an amazingly effective tool for me to manage my classes and be accessible to my students outside of class and office hours. I often spend upwards of an hour online at home in the evening updating my Web site and initiating or responding to e-mail. While this is often a lot of work, it also gets information to flow a lot more effectively, for more people. It really is worth it.

The funny thing is, I have wanted to become a teacher since I was a little boy, and now I am a teacher and I really like it. I do not regret the decision to forgo the rat race over the hill for teaching mathematics on the hill. Teaching at UCSC has kept me stimulated to learn new things and remain an active scholar. I very much like the fact that teaching mathematics bridges the gap between quite often isolating intellectual activity and contact with other people as an integral part of the job. Teaching mathematics also provides the opportunity for me to share some of the fascination and excitement I have for mathematics with others. I have met many fantastic people here at UCSC who deeply care about education. That helps me keep the faith that we can touch people's lives and make a difference.

I feel very honored to have been nominated for this award and thank my students for their support and good energy over the years that I have been fortunate to be at UCSC.