Andie Burazin

Andie Burazin has a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Waterloo and a M.Sc. in Mathematics from McMaster University. At the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM), she has been providing mathematics support to undergraduate students at the Robert Gillespie Academic Skills Centre (RGASC) since 2016. As of July 2021, she will be an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream in ISUP.

Andie usually teaches first-year mathematics courses, together with other undergraduate mathematics courses, in the Department of Mathematical and Computational Sciences. This undergraduate teaching is very important, as it helps her to understand the needs of undergraduate students so that she can provide adequate support and resources for them.

At the RGASC, she runs mathematics drop-in sessions or booked appointments, teaches workshops and seminars for various disciplines (e.g., physics, MMI) where mathematics is needed as analytical tool and/or as a part of science literacy, and creates review sheets and handouts to assist students in understanding and learning mathematics. She was also a member of the UTM Foundational Numeracy Skills Working Group which recommends strategies for improving undergraduate students’ quantitative literacy. Andie is carrying through with recommendations by running the Numeracy Development Initiative (NDI) for the past two years, and by developing a numeracy course for incoming UTM students starting in the 2020-2021 academic year.

Her current research interests are in mathematical education, particularly focusing on the transition from high school to post-secondary education. Andie has co-written and edited several mathematics and statistics textbooks and has published and presented papers on various issues in the transition that are relevant for both teaching practice and textbook writing. She is working as a researcher on a SSHRC-funded Health Numeracy project, where the goal is to create a theoretical conceptualization of health numeracy, and then apply it to build online teaching modules to the benefit of health care professionals and students in health-related fields, and ultimately the general public. Also, she co-organized a numeracy workshop with the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, and is an advocate for the First-Year Maths and Stats in Canada community. She organized the 2020 Online Conference and continues hosting, since the Summer 2020 term, the Online Teaching Meeting Ups, which are important discussions especially in these interesting times.