080 – Franca Hoffmann: Global Maths Education

[00:00:00] David: Hi and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. I’m David Stern, a founding director of IDEMS, and it’s my privilege today to be here with a very good friend, Franca Hoffmann, who’s currently in the Applied Maths Department at Caltech. Hi Franca.

[00:00:23] Franca: Hi. Real pleasure to be here.

[00:00:25] David: It’s great, and we should actually say where here is. Here is actually in Nairobi in Kenya. We’ve just spent a week together in Kisumu at a very interesting workshop organised by the American Institute of Mathematics, which you organised, and this week we are at the African STACK Conference, which Mike Obiero has been the lead organiser on, and we’ve been supporting for many years.

And it’s great to have you here, it’s your first time at an African STACK Conference.

[00:00:55] Franca: That’s right. And it was also my first time authoring a STACK question yesterday.

[00:00:59] David: Absolutely. And that, of course, we might get into later. This is something which we’re going to be collaborating on going forward. But I think let’s start by going backward. I’d like to go back to where I think things like the, I think the AIM workshop really originated out of the cross pollination work. And so maybe you could mention the cross pollination workshop you’ve organised.

[00:01:24] Franca: The cross pollination workshop actually goes back even further if I may.

[00:01:28] David: Of course.

[00:01:28] Franca: Which came out of the Maths Camps that I got involved in. So I’ve been now involved in math and science education initiatives in Africa for more than 10 years. I Would say, when was it?

[00:01:40] David: You got started when you were so young, 10, 11.

[00:01:44] Franca: It’s fine, it’s fine. It was in the year 2011, in case you mean that. I had just finished my first year undergraduates. No, second year. I just had finished my second year undergraduates and I got involved in a maths camp in Ghana. And that has really changed my perspective on so many things, but especially noticing how sort of the ideas that I grew up with about Africa were very one sided.

And so when I spent these, I think it was, three weeks for the maths camp and in total I spent six weeks in Ghana. It has really made me question a lot of the sort of mental constructs that I had about other places in the world. And I wanted to come back to Africa. And I was looking for the right way to do that. And by the right way, a way that feels good where I feel that I invest my time in a way that I can really stand behind.

And so when I met the team in Kenya, actually Zach Mbasu was who started the Maths Camps here in Kenya. Now he is running INNODEMS, and working with IDEMS. That’s when I knew that I met the group of people that I want to work with and that I want to invest my time into these kind of initiatives, simply because everybody who was involved was really passionate about what they’re doing, and were in it for good reasons, I felt.

[00:03:07] David: Let’s be clear here. You’re not saying that your first experience in the Maths Camp wasn’t a good experience and wasn’t people who were well intentioned. But you are saying that there was somehow something different about what you experienced with the Maths Camps. And I should clarify, we’ve had an episode on the maths camps. We’ve also had an episode, Zach has been on…

[00:03:30] Franca: Oh, Zach has been interviewed, great!

[00:03:32] David: He was the first guest I had, I couldn’t resist. And so he was our first guest. And as you say, there has been something quite special about this team, the local team that’s built out of this, the ownership they have, that balance between the international collaborators with the local partners and how that’s been working.

[00:03:52] Franca: What I really like about it is that it’s a give and take and everybody learns. We talked about that as one of the key principles for the Maths Camp.

[00:03:59] David: Yeah.

[00:04:00] Franca: That everybody is being enriched at the same time as being able to contribute something unique from their end. And after the first math camp, we’re trying to figure out when it was, I think it was actually 2013 that I came to Kenya for the first time. And following that, I got involved in many other Maths Camps. I think I went to a different Maths Camp every year, sometimes I went even to two. I’ve been to, I think nearly every Maths Camp.

[00:04:28] David: So you have been to Ethiopia.

[00:04:29] Franca: I was in Ethiopia.

[00:04:30] David: Because you were actually the first person, first time when me and Danny weren’t in Ethiopia, I think that was you.

[00:04:36] Franca: Right, yeah.

[00:04:37] David: And I think in Tanzania, of course, which we didn’t do that often because it never really stuck .

[00:04:41] Franca: In Tanzania, it was the first time that Tanzania was hosting a camp as a country.

[00:04:45] David: Absolutely, I remember that.

[00:04:46] Franca: And so, running a camp for the first time in a place with a team that has not run a math camp yet is always an adventure and it’s a new experience and there’s lots of unexpected challenges. And I’m very grateful for these experiences actually, because I believe these are experiences that really make you grow in positive ways and, you don’t easily get this kind of responsibility in, yeah, at that age I was back then. So yeah, it was Ethiopia, it was Tanzania, Kenya multiple times, Ghana multiple times.

[00:05:18] David: Togo? Rwanda?

[00:05:19] Franca: Togo, I was there helping to set up the first camp. I wasn’t actually at the camp. Rwanda a bit similar. So when I was in Rwanda teaching for AIMS, I was teaching the problem solving and mathematics, mathematical problem solving.

[00:05:33] David: Yeah, which actually, of course I’ve taught in other AIMS centres.

[00:05:36] Franca: Right.

[00:05:37] David: Never taught in Rwanda.

[00:05:38] Franca: I was supposed to teach it in South Africa that year. But then they had to shift around lecturers and in the end they asked me if I can go and do it in Rwanda instead. Yeah, with Jessica, who was my tutor for that course, she has been very involved in Math Olympiads and Maths Camps. We organised some sessions to share with people in Rwanda about what the Maths Camps have been like, and so out of that formed, I think, the team that then started setting up the Maths Camp in Rwanda.

[00:06:02] David: And of course, Herine has been central to that.

[00:06:04] Franca: Yes. I hope she will also be on the podcast at some point.

[00:06:08] David: She has her own podcast series as well.

[00:06:11] Franca: But I think this just shows how many amazing people I’ve been able to connect with through these Maths Camps, and how many other initiatives have come out, and how something that is really, I mean, an extracurricular activity, if you wish, and you can think of it as just a one week event for some high school students, but the sort of community building behind and what members of that community can achieve with the support of that community is really quite impressive.

[00:06:37] David: This was actually, right from the start, this was part of the vision, it was never just about the students, it was also about the team who deliver it and that experience that they got. Which is exactly why you finding that group through the math camps then enabled you to do much more. And so we should get to the cross pollination.

[00:06:56] Franca: Yes, sorry.

[00:06:57] David: Where I was planning to start.

[00:06:58] Franca: I just wanted to say that the math camps is really what has opened me the door to get involved in all these other things and really build a career around being a full-time researcher in mathematics, as well as being on a serious level involved in research capacity building and mathematical sciences in Africa.

And so now to get to the cross pollination, this is one of the initiatives I would say that came out of the discussions that we had with people surrounding the Maths Camps. So the cross pollination in mathematics education, the first edition we set up in 2019 in Ghana, and then we had a follow on in 2022 in Rwanda. And I would say we have an active group where we’re sharing opportunities and updates.

[00:07:42] David: And learning.

[00:07:43] Franca: And learning, yes. It’s really this sharing across continents and seeing the joint…

[00:07:48] David: Do you mean across continent or across the African continent?

[00:07:52] Franca: Of course, the African continent.

[00:07:53] David: That’s really where the learning is happening.

[00:07:55] Franca: Yes, it was quite remarkable to see the different people that came together there. Across academic levels, so we have people from like the work on the high school level, even on the primary school level, on the university level, in extracurricular mathematics, and that work in very different settings in their own country, but each of them taking key leadership positions in one way or another for improving math education.

And so it was very powerful, I think, to draw out the commonalities and also different challenges that people face and how members of that community can support each other. And also we have talked a lot about how to turn challenges into opportunities. And so how to turn them into opportunities, I think it’s really important to share mental templates for that and to support each other.

And so a lot of the people that were involved in these cross pollination events are now also involved in the two workshops or the workshop and the conference that we’re now having here in Kenya.

[00:08:54] David: There was quite an overlap. I realised that as we were at the AIM workshop that there were so many people who had this stature, but it had grown because they’d grown with their events, and they were now able to enter into the workshop that AIM organised last week, or that you organised with AIM last week.

So it’s worth just mentioning, what was that about? How did that come about?

[00:09:17] Franca: Yeah, I mean, it was just really amazing that we were able to have this event in Kenya, really.

[00:09:22] David: It wasn’t originally planned to be in Kenya.

[00:09:23] Franca: No, it was planned to be at Caltech. So I joined Caltech in December 2022 as new faculty there. So I had been before at Caltech as a postdoc for three years, or I should say instructor, it’s called an instructorship. So that was 2017 to 2020. Can I digress for a little bit?

[00:09:41] David: Go for it. This is what it’s all about.

[00:09:43] Franca: I just wanted to say that as a mathematician, you don’t usually get any training explicitly in how to actually teach or how to educate. And so once you get to the stage that you become a professor or you become an instructor yourself, and suddenly you’re in front of a class of students, you’re just expected to know how to teach.

And most mathematicians have never seriously thought about pedagogy or mathematics education. And I felt that I had a very different angle thanks to the maths camps and thanks to all these different projects that I’d been involved in in Africa. Even though the setting was very different, of course, the students that I’d been teaching as part of the maths camps, they were much younger than university students, but they also came from very diverse backgrounds.

Some of them came from very remote areas, had never touched a computer before, and some of them went to private schools and wrote their own apps and everything in between. And so then coming to Caltech and teaching PhD students from all across campus, from all the different engineering disciplines, from chemistry, physics, applied math, computer science.

You really had to think how to address everybody’s needs in the way of teaching. And so I think the experience of the maths camps have really helped me in that. And especially that the maths camps, we had also a lot of math teachers and high school teachers and just to see them take an idea, a content idea, and turn that into a lesson including different pedagogical concepts, I just found so amazing to see that. That’s a different skill set somehow, and I think I’ve been very fortunate to be able to carry that on into my career as a researcher.

[00:11:27] David: Let’s just come onto that for a second, because that interest in education is something which is playing out now in your role in Caltech. And I think, as you say, you’re attributing this to your experience in your contributions to Africa, but it’s also what those experience have given you.

And that balance between these two is often, I think, overlooked. But it really is this element that you have contributed a huge amount to many different capacity building initiatives across the continent in different ways. You’re rather well respected. But I loved the fact that today when you were presenting, many people were exposed for the first time to the reality of your world.

You presented about Caltech, and as you put it this couldn’t be further away than the realities you’ve been working in here. And so I think that’s just worth mentioning a bit how, being exposed to those extremely different realities is part of your strength.

[00:12:31] Franca: Yes, I guess I’ve now ended up in this very fortunate position to be able to be a bridge builder. And just to put some numbers to what you were just saying, Caltech is known to have one of the best student faculty ratios in the United States, with about one to one. We have 300 professors and 800 postdocs, and last year the enrollment at Caltech for undergraduates was 1023, and that includes all years and all subjects. So it’s actually less than one to one student faculty ratio.

Whereas here, as we have heard during this week and last week, a lot of professors have a thousand students in their class, a thousand five hundred students in their class, no teaching assistants and no internet where you can use technology during your session. Yeah, often very limited facilities.

But yeah, let me actually go back to when you asked me the question about the workshop last week how this ended up being in Kenya. So when I came back to Caltech as faculty, so between my postdoc and my faculty appointment at Caltech, I spent two years at the University of Bonn as a junior professor. But when I came back, I was reading…

[00:13:43] David: It’s your second appointment at AIMS. It’s worth mentioning AIMS.

[00:13:47] Franca: Ah, yes, okay. Jumping around in the story.

[00:13:50] David: Yeah, we are. It’s okay, the audience is pretty forgiving.

[00:13:53] Franca: Okay, that’s good to know. Yeah, I think I would have to say a bit more about that. So I’ve learned about AIMS thanks to the maths camps, actually, because AIMS has hosted several maths camps in Tanzania, in Ghana and in Rwanda.

And I also noticed that the students coming out of AIMS, the volunteers that we had for the maths camps really had a different approach in the way they thought about mathematics. So I was curious about what AIMS is. And so while I was familiar with some of the students and the facilities, I was never really part of AIMS as an organisation until 2020. And this was also, I would say in my life, a point where I was asking myself where I’m going in the future and what I actually want to do.

And at that point I had taken on more and more responsibility in these different initiatives in Africa. And I quite enjoyed doing that. And I really felt very motivated and enriched by all the work that we were doing there. And at the same time, I also wanted to do a research career in mathematics. And I felt that I was quite torn between these two because they felt incompatible.

So I struggled with this as a sort of personal process. And in the end I came to recognize, I think that what I really wanted to do is not give up either, but find a way of how to combine these two quite different realities or ways of existing, let’s say, in one profession. And so what was very important is that up to that point, everything I had been involved in was as a volunteer.

So I was doing this in my holidays and on the weekends and at night. And as I was taking on more and more responsibility, I realised that was definitely not sustainable. So either I had to cut back on what I was doing or I had to find a way of actually including these activities as part of my professional schedule.

[00:15:42] David: Let’s just be clear, when you said you were volunteering, you were the director of a UK charity, which was, as a volunteer position, that’s still one of your responsibilities.

[00:15:52] Franca: At some point I was, I think yeah, leading the volunteer recruitment across Europe for the different math camps.

[00:15:57] David: Yes. And so it was quite some serious responsibility, but as you say, it was volunteer responsibility.

[00:16:05] Franca: And so when I mentioned to some people that I was working with, including you, I think I mentioned this to you, about this sort of struggle. You put me in touch with Wilfred Ndifo from AIMS. And then he said you should definitely apply to this position that we have open right now which was the research chair in data science. And so, I was very clear that I was not in a position where I wanted to look into taking on such a job full time, but that I would be very excited to take it on part time, if I can combine it with a full time research position.

And AIMS was very flexible about that. And so when I went on the job market for faculty positions I had already, applied and received an offer from AIMS. And so I was then in interviews, let’s say with universities in the US and Europe, mentioning that I had this offer from AIMS and how this can be combined, which was a very unusual question to ask to many organisations. And it was very interesting to see how they were brainstorming also and trying to be creative on how things can be combined.

But yeah, I’m very happy with the current setup. So while I was at University of Bonn, I had a 20 percent affiliation with AIMS as research chair in data science for two years. And then when I transitioned to Caltech, I could keep my 20 percent affiliation, but then transitioning into an advisory position.

[00:17:24] David: Which you have now done.

[00:17:26] Franca: Yes. And the research chair position as such is obviously designed to run full time, be there and run a research group, which is not something that I could do with the 20 percent and being mainly remote. We shifted the focus of the position to research capacity building and AIMS then approached me and said, what we really want you to do in that role is to set up a doctoral training centre. And yeah, this is a whole story.

[00:17:54] David: That’s a different story. That would be another episode. I think we have a chance to tell the story of the doctoral training school.

[00:18:00] Franca: But one thing I want to say is that, who would have thought that when I was an undergraduate getting involved in these math camps, that would lead me in the end to an experience like that, running a Pan African doctoral training program at such a young age. Who has the opportunity to just having become faculty to set up a doctoral training program and really reimagine how PhD education or PhD research can be done or can be envisioned and can be set up? That was really just fantastic.

[00:18:32] David: And let’s be clear here. So why was it that you got offered the position? Because they’d actually had that position, I know a bit about it, they’d had that position open for ages. They hadn’t been able to fill it. And part of what you brought was that amazing network that you have, where, it wasn’t just you doing the doctoral training school, but you brought a whole network of people with you to actually make it a reality.

That was why I believe that Wilfrid and AIMS in general were so lucky and keen to have you. Because that was something which was not obvious and most mathematicians don’t network like you.

[00:19:13] Franca: When they approached me and asked me, this is what we want you to do, I first wanted to take a step back from that proposition because I said I haven’t even supervised a PhD student myself. How on earth would I be qualified to do something like that? But then, and something that came out of our discussions actually, it is true that while I personally did not have the experience, I knew the people that had the experience. And so then by setting up an advisory board with carefully chosen members and a management board, and making sure that these people are closely involved in the process, I was able to draw on a diversity of experiences that I think have really served the program well, in the way that we were trying to really set up a, I would say, a new model for how a PhD program can be run at an institution that doesn’t even have permanent faculty members.

[00:20:01] David: And you, of course, ignored all of my really revolutionary ideas about PhD, which was absolutely correct, but still, it hurts.

[00:20:08] Franca: I was trying to be reasonable.

[00:20:10] David: And you are. And this is why they’d give you the job and they wouldn’t give it to me. Absolutely correct.

[00:20:16] Franca: But I’m also really happy actually that I was able to set it up, but then transition into an advisory role because I think it would not have been something that I would have been able to do long term, with a 20 percent commitment and a full time research career. And my goal was really to push it to a stage where I would be able to pull out and transition into less of a leadership position so that this program can be taken up by the academic community in Africa, really. Yeah, it’s growing now, and I’m excited to see in which directions it’s evolving.

[00:20:47] David: Absolutely. And we should transition back.

[00:20:50] Franca: I know what you’re saying, why the American Institute of Mathematics ended up organising a workshop in Kisumu.

[00:20:56] David: Yes.

[00:20:56] Franca: Alright so when I came back to Caltech, 2022, I was trying to see how I can bridge sort of the work I’d been involved in Africa with what I was doing at Caltech. So I when I applied for my first NSF grants, there’s an educational component as well that is required. And I was really trying to think how can I possibly propose something that bridges between the math education that I’ve been involved in in Africa and Caltech, or the U. S. in general, I should say.

And so, I wrote on the ground this idea of proposing a workshop with AIM. So AIM, the American Institute of Mathematics, is one of the six NSF funded institutes in the U. S. It has a very curious story because it was a passion project of the founder of Fry’s, the electronics shop, it’s household equipment, I think. So they were based in the company headquarters in Silicon Valley for many years. And then when Fry’s went bankrupt, during COVID, they were looking for a new home. And so AIM, moved to Caltech. I’m very happy about this.

[00:22:00] David: We won’t mention at all any sort of nudging that you did along the way.

[00:22:09] Franca: I told the leadership that would be a fantastic idea if they would move to Caltech. Yeah, but I think that the mathematics community at Caltech is very supportive of their coming in general. And so that’s really great that we have them. And so when I then met some of the AIM staff when they had arrived on campus and I mentioned that I had written sort of an idea for an AIM workshop in the proposal to NSF and they said the deadline is very soon. You should apply. And so we put together this workshop proposal on open source mathematics education curriculum and assessment tools.

Usually these workshops are run at AIM, so in this case at Caltech. And then, after we submitted the proposal I got a call from members of the board of directors of AIM saying like, ‘oh, we would like to discuss your proposal with you’. At this stage I didn’t know whether they wanted to accept it or not, but they were saying like, ‘oh, you have quite a lot of participants from Africa on the list. It’s more than we usually permit to fund as foreign participants. So why don’t we just do it in Africa?’ And I thought that was just a fantastic suggestion.

So they actually, they said, we would be happy to fly our AIM staff over and you pick a location anywhere in Africa. And we will make it work as if it was held at AIM. And yeah, the reasoning I absolutely stand behind, they were saying that, it’s much harder for African participants to obtain visas and cover the travel to get to the U S rather than the other way around.

And so what that meant in the end is I think we had a very strong representation from the African community that is involved in educational technologies across the continent. And we had American math education researchers and mathematicians, math educators, and also developers of math education technologies that came.

And there were really some beautiful new connections that were made. It was just fantastic to see how people that are very used to maybe the U. S. and the European environment were exposed for the first time to the realities here, the different kind of challenges, but also the amazing work that is going on, that the lecturers are doing, that the STACK team here in Kenya is doing in actually turning challenges into opportunities.

[00:24:24] David: And the people internationally aren’t hearing about because actually the barriers to communicate these are actually often too high.

[00:24:31] Franca: Absolutely.

[00:24:31] David: I’m conscious we should wrap up fairly soon, but we can’t wrap up without mentioning what’s happening this week.

[00:24:37] Franca: All right, so this week we have the second African STACK Conference.

[00:24:41] David: Yes. And you’re here because you are now looking to use STACK in Caltech.

[00:24:47] Franca: Yeah, so this is quite exciting because I’ve been exposed to STACK, as we said, through these different initiatives. I heard about it at these cross pollination meetings where Mike Obiero was presenting the STACK work in Kenya and then also in other countries.

And now I’m taking over one of the core courses at Caltech for the undergraduates there. That’s a requirement for a lot of different options at Caltech. And yeah, I was thinking how can I redesign the course and ask the question of does it still serve the current needs? And I believe that STACK can be very useful too in doing that. And of course, STACK plays a very different role in the Caltech environment than it plays here. But I think it was really nice to have these two very different worlds represented at the STACK conferences. We can see how STACK can come in different ways. And I’m also excited about, having STACK be used at a US institution for the first time, at a US university.

[00:25:42] David: I must admit I cannot believe it will be the first time, but it’s the first time we’re aware of.

[00:25:47] Franca: Yes, I looked about it. I think there have been some universities using STACK in textbooks for high school students.

[00:25:53] David: A physics textbook, I believe.

[00:25:55] Franca: In Chicago, if I remember. And there might be others that we’re not aware of, but at least, I personally don’t know of any University that has used STACK in undergraduate education.

[00:26:05] David: And this is partly because there are other systems which have been very popular in the U. S.

[00:26:09] Franca: Right.

[00:26:10] David: Which play a similar role. But STACK is very powerful. And this is, I think, part of the thing where, it is really at the forefront of what’s possible, which is where it can, I believe, really serve Caltech’s needs as well as it can serve the needs within the African context, which is so exciting.

I guess we should wrap up here. It’s a shame, I could keep talking to you for hours and I’m sure we will have other opportunities, maybe not sitting face to face as we are now, so we might have to have a virtual recording as a next episode, but this has been great fun.

Do you have any last thoughts you’d like to share?

[00:26:43] Franca: I’m just excited to see where things are going from here. And especially these workshops that we’re having this week and last week. I think that we will see the impact of these events a few years down the line. And while it’s probably not clear right now what exactly will come out of it, although there’s a few things that are already happening.

[00:27:01] David: Concrete, yeah. It’s really amazing.

[00:27:02] Franca: Like new analysis programs, math education research studies that are being planned on a big scale in collaboration between US institutions and African institutions. But yeah, I think we will probably look back in a few years and be able to trace back how a lot of things have started at these meetings. And it’s just such a privilege to be in a position to enable some of these connections to happen.

[00:27:24] David: Let me just be clear on that. If we look back at the cross pollination, we can see the things which have come out of that. But this is different. Somehow you’ve brought a wider group of people together. And because of the history with the cross pollination, the people from Kenya, from Ghana, from Tanzania and elsewhere, Rwanda, who came together for this and who were part of this meeting with AIM, they were impressive. And that’s helped to build these collaborations with partners internationally.

And so the timing just seems to have… It’s exciting. I’m keen to see what’s going to happen.

[00:27:59] Franca: And also, it was the first event of the American Institute of Mathematics in Africa. They are very keen to support future events. Now people in Africa know that might be an opportunity, so they’re planning to prepare proposals, so there might be follow on events and so on. So, lots of opportunities to look forward to.

[00:28:16] David: Amazing. Thank you. This has been fun. And we will speak again soon, I hope. We’ll be together all week, but maybe another episode.

[00:28:26] Franca: Thanks, David.