We are very sorry to share the news that Bert Waits died on July 27, 2014, in the company of family members in Orlando, Florida, from complications following five weeks in the hospital to set a broken leg. Bert Waits was a professor emeritus of mathematics at Ohio State University. He was the cofounder and director of the Ohio Early College Mathematics Placement Testing (EMPT) Program of the Ohio Board of Regents, which became a model for the nation. He authored over 70 publications in internationally recognized professional journals and presented many keynote lectures, workshops, and mini-courses at national meetings of the MAA and NCTM. He also presented at AMATYC conferences. He was a coauthor of the NCTM’s 1989 Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics. He has also served a three-year term on NCTM’s Board of Directors and has been a member of the College Board’s AP Calculus Development Committee. Working with Frank Demana, he played a key role in designing the Texas Instruments family of graphing calculators and promoting the use of handheld technology in mathematics education. They developed a graphing approach to the study of functions, which impacted secondary and college curricula worldwide. The inroads of their approach included the notion of a “complete graph” capturing the key features of the graph of a function and the power of parametric equations applied to interesting applications, such as the path of baseball hit over a fence for a home run. Demana and Waits capitalized on the concept of the “Power of Visualizations” long before other mathematics educators saw it’s value on understanding and memory in mathematics education. Waits and Demana were co-founders of T-Cubed, Teachers Teaching with Technology, the annual International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics (ICTCM), and the biannual International Conference on Technology in Mathematics Teaching (ICTMT). They co-directed many mathematics education projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Bert co-authored numerous middle school, high school, and college textbooks, both precalculus, and calculus textbooks. Together with Frank Demana, Bert Waits received the distinguished Glenn Gilbert Award of the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics and the Ohio Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ Christopherson-Fawcett Award for “inspiration and achievement in education in mathematics”. Known to many as “Hank”, he was known not only for his substantial contributions, but also for his keen sense of humor. In his presence others, you not only learned something, but had fun doing it. He was a great friend to many. He enjoyed the last several years in the warmth of the Florida winter sun. Bert is survived by his wife Barb and two sons, David and Jeffrey, three step-daughters, and their families. He lives on in the countless people throughout the world who were inspired by his contributions
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 17:35:18 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015