Hi!

Welcome to the Math Support Center!

You are receiving this note because you are on the list of people to be a tutor in the Math Support Center (MSC). If not, please reply and tell me.

Regularly scheduled tutor hours will begin the second week of classes. Head Tutors this semester are Henrique (hcz5) and Cissy (yh383). They will be in touch with you later this week to find out about your schedule and preferences. They work together to devise a brilliant schedule which meets or exceeds the needs of everyone on campus and around the world

I will open the MSC the first week of classes and be the only person officially on duty. I want to be sure people know that the MSC is, and will be there for them. I invite you to stop in and say hi.

I look forward to working with you!

-Dick

P.S. Below is further information about the MSC for new and returning tutors. It is a draft intended in part to document how the MSC works and some history. I welcome any comments, additions, edits, or amendments, Please pass them back to me.

Firstly, I would like to acknowledge Harry Bowman (in the Cc; to this email). Harry is a member of the Ithaca community who has volunteered in the MSC for many years. His formal training includes Physics and Astronomy. I find his familiarity with topics in Mathematics, Linguistics, Languages, History and many other subjects to be awe inspiring. Thank you, Harry!

The current plan is to open the MSC to the public on the first day of classes. I will be the only person scheduled to be present in the Zoom meeting which is the MSC under current circumstances. The start of the semester typically involves little or no tutoring, but rather short interactions with people stopping by to learn what the MSC is about or say hello.

Some big-picture scheduling parameters will not be firmed up until the first week of classes. The plan is that Henrique and Cissy will be in touch with you during the first week of classes to find out aspects of your schedule and availability so a detailed tutor schedule can be posted on the MSC website for the second week of classes.

You have already received a few items I have forwarded to you. For practical purposes I consider you to be part of the teaching staff of the Math Department and I will continue to forward items I receive which may be of value to you in helping people who come in to the MSC as well as for your own planning.

For reference, the official MSC website can be accessed through:

http://www.math.cornell.edu/msc

That link redirects to a site on a Math Department wiki where I maintain the MSC website. That site includes a link to enable you to log in to cornell.zoom.us as well as a link to the MSC Zoom Meeting itself, along with a variety of other resources.

For convenience I have also created some quick, short links which may be useful in some circumstances:

* zoom.ref2.net -- redirects, complete with password, to the MSC Zoom meeting

* msc2.ref2.net -- redirects to the MSC "Coronavirus Response" page, first set up last spring, with Zoom links and such

* msc.ref2.net -- redirects to the MSC home page which uses a wiki INCLUDE to display much of the above page.

NerdyNOTE: my NetID is ref2 which features in the short links above. I registered the Domain ref2.net at the start of Fall term 2003, figuring it would be handy for any internet services I might want to set up, particularly those related to my job at Cornell. The domain has proven handy indeed.

Please feel free to stop by zoom.ref2.net to say hi during the first week of classes.

I look forward to seeing you,

-Dick

Appendix: Who am I? What is my relationship with Cornell? and What is the MSC?

For 40 years I have had a part-time faculty position with the Department of Mathematics at Cornell. During that time I have provided formal and informal support teaching courses; investigated technology for use in Department teaching efforts; and had the great privilege of working with and mentoring undergraduate students tutoring Mathematics in the Math Support Center (MSC). I also am sole proprietor of Microcomputer Power, which has published software for data analysis in Ecology since 1987. My doctorate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology had strong Mathematical and Statistical components. Microcomputer Power and my Cornell appointments over the years have complemented one another nicely.

The MSC (Math Support Center) provides primarily Math related assistance in all STEM subjects to members of the Cornell Community. In general, we try to be helpful in any way we can. Most of our tutors are undergraduates with an occasional volunteer faculty or community member. The MSC is a safe place to make the mistakes so essential to real learning. I have been involved in the MSC for decades serving as the "Grownup" in the room on the rare occasions when that role becomes explicitly important. As a member of the Department Faculty, I implicitly set a tone that the tutoring done in the MSC is more than a collection of undergraduate tutors. When issues arise with course structure, content, or the inevitable infelicities of technological courseware, I am in a position to approach more senior Faculty to alert them to problems. In the MSC we work together to help students and one another tackle challenging problems posed by our Faculty; to master the idiosyncrasies of on- line Math teaching software; to troubleshoot computer issues; to find a geometric approach when an analytic solution first presented itself and vice-versa; to model how to write solutions; to build and reinforce confidence in one another; and to find humor whenever and wherever possible. The ebb and flow of activity in the MSC also provides opportunities to get to know one another through more casual interactions.

In March of 2020 the MSC migrated from its home in a single large room in the Math Department Building, to a completely on-line presence using Zoom. We have managed to recreate many of the desirable features of the physical MSC in this virtual environment.