About Philip's Work
Philip Uri Treisman is an innovator in the teaching of mathematics and an advocate for systemic change in the national educational policy.
He works to improve mathematics instruction in high schools and colleges, especially for ethnic minority students. His research and its applications have led to a dramatic increase in the retention and graduation ratios of minority students. Treisman started the Mathematics Workshop Program at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1978, which reduced to as little as four percent the failure rate in calculus of participating minority students. Adaptations of the workshop have been successfully used at institutions across the country. He directed an equally influential attempt to alter the freshman-year program in calculus and precalculus, and is working to assemble a consortium of two hundred institutions of higher education to encourage greater representation of minority students in math, science, and related fields.
Biography
Treisman is a professor of mathematics and executive director of the Charles A. Dana Center for Mathematics and Science Education at the University of Texas, Austin.
Treisman received a B.S. (1969) from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an M.A. (1983) and Ph.D. (1985) from the University of California, Berkeley.
Recent News
Philip Uri Treisman is professor of mathematics and of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and he continues to direct the Charles A. Dana Center. He is actively engaged in the leadership of organizations and professional societies working to strengthen K–14 education and to ensure that it provides reliable and efficient pathways to social and economic upward mobility for low-income students.
Updated July 2015