Faculty Profiles – Mathematics/Statistics

Veronica Berrocal

Associate Professor

Department of Statistics, Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science, UC Irvine

Veronica Berrocal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics at UC Irvine (UCI). She joined UCI in Fall 2019, after having spent 9 years as faculty in the Department of Biostatistics at University of Michigan. Veronica earned her Ph.D. in Statistics at University of Washington in 2007, and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Research Triangle Park area for 3 years, performing research first for a year at the US EPA as a National Research Council postdoctoral associate, and then for two years at Duke University/SAMSI. Veronica’s research interests are in spatial/spatio-temporal statistics, statistical methods for environmental epidemiology and environmental exposure assessment, with a particular focus on air pollution, climate, weather, and more recently the built environment, in particular as they relate to human health. Veronica is quite active in the environmental and Bayesian statistical community having served as elected officer for several statistical professional organizations. She is currently a member of the US EPA FIFRA Scientific Advisor Panel. [FIFRA=Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act]

Revising An Upper-Level Undergraduate Statistics Course Using Specifications Grading
In this presentation, we will discuss the process that we underwent to redesign an upper-level undergraduate statistics course (STATS 120C) while holding as guiding principles sustainability and manageability for a first-time implementation of specification grading. Some of the topics we will discuss include: development and settling on a grade bundle, balancing lectures with administering assessments and re-takes, handling tokens, and ensuring transparency and students’ agency.

Christopher Davis

Associate Professor of Teaching

Department of Mathematics, School of Physical Sciences, UC Irvine

Christopher Davis is an Associate Professor of Teaching in the Mathematics Department at the University of California, Irvine. Chris has been at UC Irvine since 2009, except for 2013-15 when he was a postdoc at the University of Copenhagen. Chris’s mathematical background is in Number Theory and Algebra, but recently much of his teaching has been related to computers (especially Matlab, Mathematica, and Python).

Canvas Tips for Specifications Grading
Specifications grading often makes the grading of individual questions easier, but because of the makeup opportunities, specifications grading can make the overall grading system more complex. I will describe how specifications grading is used in my intro programming course Math 10, and I will describe the workflow I use in Canvas to implement specifications grading for that class.

Berit Givens

Department Chair

Department of Mathematics & Statistics, College of Science, Cal Poly Pomona 

Berit Givens is Professor and Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Cal Poly Pomona. She earned a PhD in logic and set-theoretic topology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She enjoys exploring many different areas of mathematics, and she has published papers in logic, combinatorics, semigroups, Poisson geometry, and the mathematics of fiber arts. Berit is lucky to have had the opportunity to teach a wide range of courses for mathematics majors. She is a passionate educator who is always excited to add more teaching tools to her toolbox.

Building a Reasonable List of Outcomes to Assess: A Case Study
One of the most challenging aspects of designing a course using any type of standards-based grading is to select a reasonable list of outcomes to assess. In my own first experiment with this type of grading for a course in Combinatorics, I started with 78 learning outcomes. In this talk, I will go through a couple of examples showing how I was able to refine my original list of 78 outcomes to a new list of 17 outcomes that was feasible while still capturing the main ideas of the course.

Karina Novoa

Lecturer

Department of Mathematics & Statistics, College of Science, Cal Poly Pomona

An Overview (with Examples) of Implementing SBG in an Introductory Statistics Course
For instructors new to standards-based grading, an overview of the grading system with specific examples can make getting started more clear. In this talk, Karina will break down how she implemented a standards-based grading system in an introductory statistics course. We will start by looking at the breakdown of course grades, then take one course standard and view samples of assignments and assessments for that standard, discuss what mastery means for those assignments/assessments and how it is communicated to students. Additionally, we will look at a simple way for students to track their progress in the course.