Math conference begins today in Salt Lake

Thousands of great math minds and educators from all over the world are in Salt Lake City this week for a conference that kicks off today.

Experts from both Utah and abroad will deliver more than 740 presentations at the 2008 National Council of Teachers of Mathematics annual meeting and exposition held in the Salt Palace. Leaders said they will address areas that will help get more students interested in pursuing math fields, resulting in a "home-grown" work force.

"We need in the American culture to have more and more of our students to not only take an interest in the subject but value it," said Francis "Skip" Fennell, president of the NCTM. "We certainly need more people in math-intending careers, be they engineers, scientists or business professionals."

Conference-goers will be learning new concepts, strategies and techniques aimed at improving math classrooms.

"Recent international (math) comparisons show our students could do better in such comparisons, and not only do we want to raise the bar and be more competitive internationally, but we want to be more home-grown in terms of our own science and mathematics workforce," Fennell said.

Officials said that recent statistics have offered a rather gloomy picture of the future pool of math teachers — nearly a third will leave the profession within their first three years.

Leaders said retaining the next generation of math teachers is essential if the country is to fill the 280,000 teaching positions in math and science that are projected by 2015.

In addition, schools must deal with the annual 16.4-percent turnover rate among math teachers — the highest of all subject areas — according to Drexel University's Math Forum. Therefore, the conference also will offer sessions tailored to the specific needs of the new teachers.

New York Times best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell will deliver the keynote address of the event tonight.

In addition, more than 230 companies will be on hand to demonstrate the latest in curriculum and testing materials, student-centered manipulatives, and state-of-the-art technological advances.

NCTM's annual meeting is the largest gathering of math educators in the world and the organization represents around 100,000 math educators.

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