Monday, March 7, 2011

For my Friends at Argosy University

Hello everyone! I’m Larry Perez. I currently teach mathematics at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, CA. After spending some time in the US Navy’s submarine fleet I entered school at CSU Fullerton, CA to pursue a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering followed by an M.A. in Applied Mathematics. During my graduate studies I taught mathematics part-time at CSUF and found that I had a strong passion for teaching the subject which led me to seek the fulltime position I now hold at Saddleback College. I’m here at Argosy into my sixth year pursuing an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership. I am not sure if I will eventually look for an administrative position in the educational arena as I feel my talents would be best served in a community college classroom full of basic skills math students. My research interests are centered on these particular adult learners who are now turning to the community college system looking for opportunities for career advancement.

While at Argosy learning about leadership theory, I took some of the ideas for managing organizations and used them to help guide the development of a methodology that would be used to investigate poor success rates in basic skills math classrooms. Applying this methodology resulted in a free online supplemental instruction learning environment called Algebra2go designed to meet the needs of my challenged basic skills students. It is this online learning environment I hope to study giving me a current topic title of “ANALYSIS OF THE IMPACT OF A DEVELOPED ONLINE SUPPLEMENTAL INSTRUCTION TOOL ARRAY ON PRE-ALGEBRA STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND ATTITUDE”.