Indiana Section of the Mathematical Association of America
Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics
Citation to
linda mckinley
The Indiana Section Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics recognizes the accomplishments and contributions of Section members who have been identified as extraordinary teachers in the mathematical sciences and whose teaching effectiveness has been shown to have had influence beyond their own institutions.
This year’s recipient has a record of over thirty-five years of distinguished teaching and program building, enriching undergraduate education at all levels, and, through her mentoring of future college mathematics teachers as they learn the art of teaching, influencing the many colleges and universities in Indiana and around the country where they now practice that art.
One of her most outstanding marks has been her effective leadership of her home institution’s Groups Scholars Program, designed for first generation underrepresented students. Her nominator writes, “For thirty years, she has been the backbone of this essential program.” She has exquisitely balanced the special needs of these students with the development of the fundamental mathematical skills necessary to their future success.
In 2018, she won the University’s Gordon Faculty Award, based on her extensive work with the Office of Disability Services for Students. She is also the faculty member most involved in recommending math courses for thousands of incoming students. She has played a key role in hiring undergraduate interns and graduate TA’s. She has guided the department courses for prospective elementary school teachers and worked as a liaison with the School of Education.
She is also an outstanding teacher in her own right, using activity based learning methods, developing problem solving skills, insisting on high standards. Over ninety percent of her students in the many courses she has taught said they would recommend this instructor.
She has had tremendous influence teaching graduate students to teach, explicitly through instructing a course “Seminar in Teaching College Mathematics” and implicitly through mentoring them as they teach or assist in teaching, many for the first time. One of those students who is now a professor herself wrote, “She taught me that students deserve an advocate in their mathematics education and that I could be that person. She instilled in me the notion that mathematics is too beautiful of a subject to be intentionally withheld from those who do not fit preconceived notions of successful mathematicians and scientists. Moreover, she showed me how to communicate this aesthetic without watering down the subject into a caricature of itself, based on memorization and rote pattern following.”
This year’s Indiana Section of the Mathematical Association of America Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics goes to Linda McKinley, of Indiana University.
Andy Rich, Chair, Distinguished Teaching Award Selection Committee
Matt DeLong, Section Chair,
Indiana Section of the MAA
March 27, 2021