Chris Ograin giving a talk at the November 2018 Fast & Curious lectures
The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) has approved the UCSB Department of Mathematics to begin offering a Subject Matter Preparation Program (SMPP) in Mathematics. This program is intended for undergraduates seeking admission to single subject teacher credential programs to teach secondary mathematics. It consists of a sequence of mathematics content and teaching methods courses, and it provides these students with the knowledge and skills they require for becoming outstanding junior high school and high school mathematics teachers. The new SMPP at UC Santa Barbara is directed by Dr. Christopher Ograin, who holds a joint appointment in the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Education.
“The Subject Matter Preparation Program in Mathematics at UCSB prepares mathematics majors in the specific mathematics content areas they need to be successful secondary teachers,” Ograin says. “For example, one of the domains in the program is geometry since this is a high school area. Undergraduates in the SMPP must take a course in geometry that is an advanced treatment of the topic that goes well beyond the geometry they will be teaching about in a typical high school geometry course. It is a university-level course intended for mathematics majors, but it lays a solid foundation for the particular content they will be teaching. We need all of our secondary teachers to really know their mathematics at a high level, and this program aims to make that happen.”
UC Santa Barbara joins 46 other approved institutions of higher learning that offer a Subject Matter Preparation Program in Mathematics; it is the sixth UC campus to do so. Undergraduates who complete the SMPP are not required to pass the California Subject Examination for Teachers (CSET) to earn the Preliminary Teaching Credential in Mathematics. There are two versions of the SMPP in the UCSB Department of Mathematics. The SMPP in Mathematics is for students who intend to teach any level of mathematics in grades 7-12, including calculus. The SMPP in Foundational-Level Mathematics is for students who want to focus on teaching foundational topics such as algebra, geometry and probability & statistics.
The Teacher Education Program at UCSB's Gevirtz School offers students the opportunity to earn a single subject teaching credential in mathematics.