Mathematician Works to Make Math
Less Intimidating, More Fun

This week on WOL AM, Tasha Inniss, Clare Boothe Luce Professor of Mathematics at Trinity College in Washington, D.C., spoke to a radio audience of African American children and their families about making mathematics fun to learn.

"I wanted to help eliminate all of the intimidation about math, because anyone can do math," said Inniss during an interview on a radio program called Delta SEE Connection. "It's all in how it's taught.... I think that if students see how math is related to the real world, they'll get excited about it."

To produce Delta SEE Connection, a weekly radio program, AAAS has joined forces with the nation's largest African American sorority, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and the Delta Research and Educational Foundation (DREF).

"This initiative is opening for us a whole new medium for providing a window into the world of science for the African American community," says Shirley Malcom, director of the AAAS Directorate for Education and Human Resources and a commentator on the show. "In their stories, the scientists explain the importance of science in their lives, but also in the lives of everyday Americans."

WOL, 1450 AM, the Radio One station in Washington, DC, with the largest African American audience in the area, has become the first station to broadcast the interviews compiled for the project known as Delta SEE, for "Science and Everyday Experiences." The program can be heard every Saturday, from 5 to 6 p.m., through 18 October. In the coming weeks, the series will be distributed to Radio One stations nationwide, as well as to other radio stations in African American markets and to radio stations operated on the campuses of historically-black colleges and universities.

Listen to a clip from the most recent radio program, which was broadcast on Saturday, 12 July, from 5 to 6 p.m., or listen to the entire program in MP3 format (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4) or RealAudio (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4).

See also all past Delta SEE radio programs.

14 July 2003