College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

Teaching all the time

Whether she's in front of a classroom or working on her research, statistics' Amy Froelich remains a classroom teacher.
Amy Froelich's a teacher.

She has an undergraduate degree in secondary mathematics education. She spent a year as a high school mathematics teacher.

Now as an assistant professor of statistics at Iowa State, Froelich is again in the classroom, teaching introductory courses designed for mathematics, psychology and political science majors.

Even part of her research component deals with classroom instruction.

"I've always enjoyed teaching," Froelich said, "and I think I've gotten a lot better at it over the years."

Evidently others agree with Froelich. This past fall she was named the recipient of the ISU Foundation Early Achievement in Teaching Award, which recognizes faculty members who have demonstrated outstanding teaching performance unusually early in their professional careers.

"Amy is an exceptional instructor and mentor," writes Kenneth Koehler, University Professor and chair of the Department of Statistics. "She has made extraordinary contributions to improving the quality of undergraduate teaching and revitalizing the undergraduate curriculum in statistics."

One of the primary courses Froelich teaches is Statistics 101, a course that many would find difficult to teach because of the varied backgrounds of the students and their general lack of interest when they enroll in the course.

In addition to teaching a section, Froelich also serves as the course coordinator. She directs the teaching of five to six sections of the course each semester. Each section has about 100 students and meets for three one-hour lectures and one two-hour laboratory per week.

As the course coordinator, Froelich sets the course syllabus and develops the homework and lab assignments. She meets with the other instructors, typically graduate assistants, and works with them on developing their teaching skills.

"As a teacher you want to explain the material as simply as possible and look at multiple ways of explaining it," she said. "I give students many examples of the statistical concepts discussed during class."

That's especially important in a course like Statistics 101 with its academically diverse student enrollment.

"You have to know the background of your students. Many students enrolled in Statistics 101 may not have taken a mathematics course in at least three years," Froelich said. "You don't want to start discussing your materials at a level that is too high for the students but then again you don't want to start too low."

Along with fellow statistics professors Bob Stephenson and William Duckworth, Froelich secured a Miller Faculty Fellowship to create a new honors section of Statistics 101 with the hopes of engaging highly motivated freshmen in statistical discovery and problem solving.

That honors course has served as the foundation for a two-year, $75,000 National Science Foundation grant to further the study.

"We test out new ideas on how to get students to think like statisticians," Froelich says. "Most students can apply the methods necessary to do the work, but they can't think like a statistician yet.

"This type of curriculum development is very time consuming," she continued. "It takes a lot of effort to develop, test and analyze to see if it works."