Participants in the Secondary School Teacher Program can optionally sign up for 6 quarter credits of Math 497 (Special Topics in Mathematics for Teachers).
Note: 6 quarter credits = 4 semester credits since there are 3 quarters in an academic year.
(UW course catalog listing is:
http://www.washington.edu/students/crscat/math.html#math497. Ignore the link to Prof. Monk for the PCMI course.)
There will be application forms available early during the PCMI summer session. For summer 2009, the total cost is $210. The application forms will be due the end of the second week, so teachers in HSTP should come to PCMI ready to decide whether to enroll or not.
The UW accepts checks or credit card payment. There is a space for a credit card number on the application form.
The work for the credit is full participation in the regular work of the PCMI Secondary School Teacher Program for 3 weeks. The course has no letter or numerical grade. The grade is either CREDIT or NO CREDIT.
Regretfully, no later additions are possible; the credit must be applied for early during PCMI and that is the only chance to sign up. For some teachers, this is a very good deal, since the price is rather low and the credit is for ‘ work being done anyway. However, other teachers may not need credit or may find that they cannot use the credit at their home institutions. For them it is clearly not such a good deal. The most difficult cases are teachers who are not sure whether they will need it in the future or not. In this case it is a judgement call or even a gamble as to whether to sign up or not.
This is a little difficult to answer, since the term "graduate credit" is not uniform across institutions, and certainly course numbering is not. Also, what courses are accepted for credit can vary from department to department.
The answer for UW students is "yes." Courses at the UW are numbered from 100-level to 500-level. Courses at the 400-level are at the lower end of graduate courses or upper end of undergraduate courses. One can receive a Master's Degree in Mathematics at the UW only taking 400-level courses. Graduate Students in the UW College of Education can apply Math courses at the 300-level as math content courses for graduate programs (though this is not true for math degrees). (For Math Masters requirements, see http://www.math.washington.edu/Grads/Programs/ms-reqts.html). However, only some, not all of the courses can be graded Credit/No Credit, as Math 497 is.
Can this Math 497 credit be used as graduate credit at your local institution? This is really beyond our control, since whether or not an institution accepts credit from another university is up to that institution. Also, an important consideration may be the un-graded nature of the course. In the end, a teacher ˆ will have to arrange or negotiate acceptance of the credit at the local institution. However, a teacher can make the following points and assemble the following data.
This document is an attempt to answer all the questions that have come up about this credit. The instructor of record, and the contact person is James King (king@math.washington.edu).