EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT

Civil rights leader to deliver lecture on math revolution

DATE: 12:30 p.m. Dec. 18, 2004

EVENT: Lecture on math literacy by Robert P. Moses, civil rights activist, MacArthur award recipient and founder of The Algebra Project, which helps boost the math performance of middle school students, especially minorities.

BACKGROUND: Noted for his difficult and dangerous work on voting rights in the 1960s, Moses continues to fight the legacy of slavery, now in the classroom. The Algebra Project, which he founded in 1982, the same year he won a MacArthur "genius grant, reaches about 10,000 students and 300 teachers in 10 states, boosting math performance through a five-step instructional method. It helps middle school students make the conceptual shift from arithmetic to algebra, as well as prepare them for eighth-grade algebra and a college preparatory math sequence in high school.

As a field secretary with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Moses organized sharecroppers, domestics and others in Mississippi to fight for their right to vote. In 1964, he coordinated Freedom Summer, which drew nearly 1,000 volunteers for a voting rights drive.

The following day (Dec. 19) Moses will speak at U-M’s Winter Commencement Exercises and receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

PLACE: Amphitheater at Rackham Graduate School, 915 E. Washington. Central Campus map: http://www.umich.edu/news/ccamp.html.

SPONSORS: Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, School of Education, and the Ann Arbor Public Schools.

Graduate Studies at (734) 647-2644 or ledumas@umich.edu.

jseguine@umich.edu

http://www.umich.edu/news/ccamp.htmlledumas@umich.edujseguine@umich.edu