Jul 07, 2011 - Claremont, CA -

Twenty-five eighth-grade boys from North Long Beach began a new kind of summer school on Tuesday designed to shift their math skills into high gear.

The Claremont-Long Beach Math Collaborative is a free, four-week, residential summer math program at Harvey Mudd College that brings motivated African American male eighth graders to The Claremont Colleges to live, learn and take part in inspiring math explorations led by college faculty, graduate students and undergraduate math majors.

Intended to provide a model for locally focused partnerships nationwide, the Claremont-Long Beach Math Collaborative is a partnership between Claremont Graduate Univeristy (CGU), Harvey Mudd College and the Long Beach Unified School District. The program connects the best math minds with the students who need them the most. Led by world-class faculty and students from HMC and teachers from CGU's School of Educational Studies, daily sessions explore math concepts with an emphasis on relevance rather than on rote learning.

Program participants, selected from four North Long Beach middle schools, will enter Jordan High School in North Long Beach this fall. They will have the opportunity to return to HMC each summer during their high school years to further their math studies.

"You are going to be math stars. You are all going to be taking calculus by your senior year and getting A's and A-pluses," said HMC President Maria Klawe at the program's July 5 opening ceremony. "We are going to be working with you to make this dream happen. It'll be a ton of work and a ton of fun, but it'll happen."

The math program was conceived by Rev. Leon Wood, CGU director of the McNair Scholar Program, who approached Dr. Klawe and CGU President Deborah Freund with his idea and received immediate support. Wood's vision materialized with support from teachers and mentors from the Claremont Colleges, the Claremont University Consortium, the Long Beach Unified School District, and financial contributions from Long Beach philanthropist Roberta Jenkins, Honda and Wells Fargo.

"This program is here because I am convinced, we are all convinced, that our African American youth can become not just good mathematicians, but great mathematicians," Wood told the students and parents attending the ceremony. "It's not about proficiency. We are going to move past proficient—we are going to be outstanding. The greatest part of this program is these young men. You are our future and we want to develop our future."

HMC mathematics professors Darryl Yong, Talithia Williams and Dagan Karp helped develop the program's math curriculum to capture students' interest with relevant, everyday applications of math principles. Students from the Claremont Colleges will teach classes, serve as program resident advisors and engage the students in co-curricular activities.

"Math has been shown to be one of the real gatekeepers when it comes to academic success," said Dr. Margaret Grogan, dean of the School of Educational Studies at Claremont Graduate University. "The area is the most difficult to overcome, largely because our teachers are not trained. Very few elementary teachers actually have a degree in math."

The program is intended to promote social justice by providing educational opportunities, thus creating a new generation of leaders in math and the sciences.

Participating students will make their concluding presentations on the program's final day in front of parents, mentors, Claremont Colleges faculty and invited guests on August 3, 2011.