Derek Bruff

Assistant Director,
Center for Teaching,
Vanderbilt University

Senior Lecturer, Department of Mathematics, Vanderbilt University

Curriculum Vitae

 
Office: Calhoun Hall 116 (Aerial View)
Address: VU Station B #351537
Nashville, TN 37235
Phone: 615-322-7290
Fax: 615-343-8111
Email: derek.bruff [at] vanderbilt.edu

Biographical Sketch

Derek Bruff is an assistant director at the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching and a senior lecturer in the Vanderbilt Department of Mathematics. Through individual consultations, workshops, orientations, and other programming, he helps faculty and teaching assistants develop and refine their teaching skills, deepen their understanding of the teaching and learning process, and take a more scholarly approach to their teaching. In his own mathematics teaching, he emphasizes conceptual understanding of computational techniques, uses technology to increase student engagement during class, and investigates how students in his particular teaching context best learn. His research interests include effective uses of classroom response systems ("clickers"), the role of pre-class reading assignments in mathematics courses, the role of teaching in the academic hiring process, and, in his home discipline of mathematics, adapting traditional wavelet methods to nonuniform settings.

Prior to his current position at Vanderbilt, Derek was a faculty preceptor in the Harvard University Department of Mathematics, teaching several courses and coordinating multi-section calculus courses. During that time he was also a Mathematical Association of America Project NExT (New Experiences in Teaching) Fellow. Derek earned a Ph.D. in mathematics at Vanderbilt University in 2003, where he received the Department of Mathematics B.F. Bryant Prize for Excellence in Teaching. He earned a B.S. in mathematics and computer science at Furman University in 1998, where he was a Goldwater Scholar and received Furman's Bradshaw-Feaster Medal for General Excellence.

Current Activities

Below are some of the projects with which I'm involved in my capacity as an assistant director at the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching (CFT) and senior lecturer in the Vanderbilt Department of Mathematics.

  • CFT Teaching Certificate Program

    The Teaching Certificate Program, co-sponsored by the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching and Graduate School, is designed to help graduate students, professional students, and post-doctoral fellows develop and refine their teaching skills through three cycles of teaching activities, each consisting of inquiry, experimentation, and reflection phases. As coordinator of the program, I am responsible for program logistics (including electronic portfolio management), publicity, strategic planning, and assessment. I also lead "in-take interviews" for new participants, helping them decide how to get the most out of program, and I facilitate a "scholarship of teaching and learning" working group for participants in the last third of the program.

  • CFT Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Working Group

    I lead the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Working Group for the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching's Teaching Certificate program. The members of this group design and implement projects investigating student learning, doing so in a scholarly manner--with explicit questions for inquiry, a focus on evidence of student learning, and an intent to go public in some fashion with the results.

  • CFT Teaching Workshops and Conversations on Teaching

    The CFT offers more than a dozen workshops groups on a variety of teaching topics each semester. I regularly facilitate some of these sessions. Below are some workshops I have facilitated recently.

    • "Grading in Quantitative Disciplines," a Teaching Workshop, September 25, 2007

    • "Assessing Conceptual Understanding through Concept Inventories and Concept Maps," a Conversation on Teaching, October 2, 2007

    • "Assessing Critical Thinking through Rubrics," a Conversation on Teaching, October 16, 2007

  • CFT Graduate Teaching Fellows

    The CFT employs four "graduate teaching fellows" during the academic year who work half-time for the Center, consulting with graduate student teaching assistants regarding their teaching, facilitating teaching workshops and conversations on teaching, and engaging in a variety of other projects for the Center. I supervise these graduate teaching fellows, helping them manage their workload, providing them with training and resources, and acting as a liaison between them and the full-time Center staff.

  • CFT Podcast

    My CFT colleague Michael Risen and I are producing the CFT's new podcast, part of the CFT's efforts to cultivate dialogue about university teaching and learning among faculty, students, and staff. The first few episodes feature interviews with Vanderbilt faculty members who share their experiences teaching with instructional technologies in innovative and effective ways.

  • Mathematics Teaching

    I teach Math 216, Introduction to Probability and Statistics for Engineers, each spring. For more information, see a recent syllabus.

  • Vanderbilt Visions: An Extended Orientation for First-Year Students

    Each first-year student at Vanderbilt is assigned to a 17-student section of Vanderbilt Visions, an extended orientation program for first-years. Each section meets for an hour per week throughout most of the academic year and is led by a two "VUceptors," one a faculty member and the other a student. I am one of these VUceptors, responsible for assisting my first-years in their academic, social, cognitive, and ethical acculuration to Vanderbilt.

Research

  • Classroom Response Systems

    Classroom response systems, or "clickers," are instructional technologies that enable teachers to rapidly collect and analyze students’ responses to multiple-choice questions.   I am interested in investigating the types of questions and actvities that take advantage of these technologies to productively transform the way instructors use class time. [More Information]

  • The Role of Teaching in the Faculty Hiring Process in Mathematics

    I have recently conducted a survey examining the role of teaching in the academic hiring process in mathematics, with a particular focus on searches for tenure-track assistant professors.  I'm interested in how academic search committees in mathematics collect and evaluate information about candidates' teaching experiences, skills, and philosophies." [More Information]

  • Pre-Class Reading Assignments

    In the mathematics courses I teach, I regularly have the students read their textbook and answer several open-ended questions about the reading via an online quiz each night before. I am interested in studying what undergraduate mathematics students are likely to learn by reading their textbooks before class and how these pre-class reading quizzes can help them learn more from their textbooks. [More Information]

  • Wavelets in Nonuniform Settings

    My mathematics research involves generalizing traditional wavelet theory and techniques to construct wavelet bases on nonuniform knot sequences. [More Information]

Teaching Resources - General

  • Classroom Response Systems

    I have found that classroom response systems (also called student or audience response systems or "clickers") can be an effective tool for promoting active student engagement during a lecture as well as teaching in ways that respond directly to student learning needs. Follow the link above for a resource page on CRSs I have written for the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching. See also the accompanying bibliography of research on the effectiveness of CRSs.

  • Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

    The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is a way of approaching one's teaching in a more scholarly manner than is typical--with explicit questions for inquiry, a focus on evidence of student learning, and an intent to go public in some fashion with our results. This guide to SoTL, written for the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching, features an essay on the nature of this kinds of scholarship, links to examples of SoTL projects, resources for conducting SoTL work, and a bibliography of key SoTL articles and books.

  • Resources for Graduate Education

    Enhancing graduate education has been the focus of a number of national research and action initiatives in recent years. See the link above for a guide to some of the national projects written for the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching. Department chairs, directors of graduate studies, graduate faculty, graduate deans, and others interested in the quality of graduate education are likely to find it useful. It also mentions some Vanderbilt resources for graduate education.

  • Other Teaching Guides

    There are a number of teaching guides available on the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching's web site. These guides cover a variety of teaching issues. Following is a list of the ones I have had a substantial part in writing, other than the CRS, SoTL, and graduate education guides mentioned above.

  • Center for Teaching Newsletter: Fall 2002, Spring 2003

    Part of my responsibilities as the graduate assistant at the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching during 2002-03 included writing and editing the Center's newsletter, Teaching Forum. The fall 2002 issue focused on using technology to engage student learning, and the spring 2003 issue's theme was "Teaching from the Outside In."

Teaching Resources - Mathematics

  • Reading Mathematics Textbooks

    This link leads to an annotated list of references on the subject of encouraging and teaching students to read mathematics textbooks. See also this list of tips for reading your textbook that I assembled for a workshop on study tips for calculus students at Harvard.

  • Mathematica Activities for Teaching Calculus

    These Mathematica-based computer labs take advantage of Mathematica's computation, graphing, and animation abilities to help students develop intuition and conceptual understanding.

  • Excel Worksheets for Teaching Probability

    These Excel worksheets use Excel's random number generator to perform Monte Carlo procedures illustrating the frequency interpretation of probability.

  • Pre-Calculus Review Textbook Chapter

    The text From Here to Infinity: A Foundation for Calculus was used circa 2002 in the Vanderbilt University Department of Mathematics for algebra and trigonometry review during first-semester calculus courses. In addition to editing the TeX files used to typeset the book, I wrote Chapter 4: Polynomials and Factoring.

Resources for Students

  • Getting the Most out of Office Hours

    This handout is written for students, particularly college freshmen, to orient them to the role and importance of office hours in undergraduate education. I prepared it as part of my work in the Harvard Mathematics Warm-Up Series in 2004.

  • Tips for Reading Your Math Textbook

    This handout is written for students to help them read and learn from their mathematics textbooks. I prepared it for a workshop on study tips for calculus students at Harvard.

Talks

  • Mathematics Talks for Undergraduates

    I have presented several mathematics talks for general undergraduate audiences. Venues for these talks include the Vanderbilt Undergraduate Seminar in Mathematics, the Furman University Department of Mathematics Colloquium, and the Harvard Math Table.

  • Workshops on Teaching for Faculty and Graduate Students

    I have designed and facilitated several talks and workshops for faculty and graduate students on topics of teaching and learning and professional development for the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard Department of Mathematics, Vanderbilt Center for Teaching, and Vanderbilt Department of Mathematics.

Page maintained by Derek Bruff (derek.bruff [at] vanderbilt.edu).

Last updated November 18, 2007.

This page has had visitors since June 5, 2005.