CSC math classmates meet for first time at commencement

That’s because Liz Crawford of Midwest, Wyo., Alethea “Aly” Trundy of Norfolk, Va., and Amy Winters of Scottsbluff earned all or nearly all of their credits from CSC online by working at computers in their homes at various times of the day and night. They had exchanged e-mails, but had never seen each other until it was time to graduate.

All three had earned associate of arts degrees from community colleges and wanted to major in math while pursuing a bachelor’s degree. Because Chadron State is one of the few colleges (maybe the only accredited one) in the nation to have its entire math curriculum online, they became a part of the CSC student body through their computers.

All completed approximately 60 hours of coursework in two years.

Trundy, who had never been to Nebraska until last weekend, took all of her classes from CSC online while living in three different locations. She began in the summer of 2004 soon after she had graduated from Honolulu Community College while she and her family were living in Hawaii. A few months later she moved with her two young sons to be near her parents in Massachusetts when her husband, Greg, who is in the Navy, was deployed to Afghanistan. When he returned about a year ago, the family relocated to the Norfolk, Va., area, where he remains in the military.

Crawford began her quest for a bachelor’s degree in January 2004 shortly before receiving her associate of arts degree from Casper College. She was on campus last fall while going through the professional semester, or block, so she could earn a bachelor of science in education degree and become certified to teach math. She student taught in Casper this past semester, but took all of her other courses from CSC online.

Winters also joined the growing list of online math majors at Chadron State in 2004 soon after graduating from Western Nebraska Community College in Scottsbluff, where she is the assistant coach of the Cougars’ volleyball team that has finished fourth at the National Junior College Tournament the past two years. She took several courses through CSC interactive television system and a couple of correspondence courses, but earned a bulk of her credits, particularly in math, online.

Each said that because of family responsibilities and the distances involved it would have been impossible for them to have earned their degrees any other way.

“It’s really cool to have this option,” said Winters. “I have an 11-year-old son and jobs in Scottsbluff. There’s no way I could have gotten a bachelor’s degree if the online classes hadn’t been available.”

Winters graduated with majors in both math and psychology. She was recognized as the outstanding senior in psychology during Ivy Day on Friday night. She also earned most of her psychology credits online.

She became interested in psychology while taking a Psychology of Education course that is required to become a teacher.

All three said that while they were not particularly strong all-around students in high school, each of them excelled in math.

Crawford said she tutored other students in math when she was a high school freshman. “I was a C student in a lot of my classes, but math came easy for me,” she said.

“I usually got A’s if I liked the teacher and B’s if I didn’t,” said Trundy. “But math was always my favorite. I knew I would major in math when I decided I wanted to become a teacher.”

Winters recalls earning 100 percent in algebra when she was an eighth-grader in Sidney. But she said taking the seven math classes online was not a snap.

“In order to complete a math major online, you’d better be good at math, be disciplined so you keep up with the courses and be willing to work your tail off,” said Winters. “But I proved it can be done.”

Winters definitely has been busy. Besides helping coach volleyball at WNCC, she is an aide and a tutor in math at Bluffs Middle School and has been battling breast cancer. She’s had eight chemotherapy and 34 radiation treatments the last 14 months. In addition, she was married to Scott Winters, a business teacher at WNCC, last August and then had a golf ball-sized, non-malignant tumor removed from her throat on April 13.

The mother of three and a substitute teacher that became nearly a full-time job at the Midwest Schools, Crawford said she did most of her work at the computer between 10 p.m. after the kids were in bed and 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. Besides the seven math classes that she took online from CSC, she also completed a history course and a Personal Health and Wellness course online.

“I did some multi-tasking,” the bubbly Crawford said with a grin. “I sometimes worked math problems while riding my exercise bike to fulfill the requirements for Personal Health and Wellness.”

Trundy said she spent several days on the computer looking for a college where she could obtain a bachelor’s degree in math online before she came across Chadron State’s Web Site that told about the program the CSC math faculty had designed.

“I found some others online, but they weren’t accredited,” Trundy said. “I’d already taken a couple of online courses from Honolulu Community College and knew I could do it that way. Once I signed up with Chadron State, I never took another course from another college and doubt that I ever will. Everybody was so helpful to me.”

Trundy’s major professor at CSC was Dr. Monty Fickel, who began putting math courses online in 1996 “because I knew they would be handy for place-bound students.”

Fickel noted that Trundy is an audio-learner who does best when someone explains things. Because of that, Fickel and Trundy often had long telephone conversations while she was still living in Hawaii.

“Sometimes when we talked, it would be quite a while after our regular campus hours,” Fickel said. “Eventually, Kara Vogt in the Human Relations Office called me and wondered if somebody had a key to my office and was using my phone to call Hawaii at night. When I explained to her I was helping a student, she told me that was all right. Once it clicked with Aly she did really well.”

Fickel added that some of Trundy’s work in Calculus III projects was so good that he is using it as a model for other CSC math majors. She completed 25 credit hours of math online during the past year.

Chadron State has 20 math courses online. While the college now has 12 complete majors online, math was the first to go entirely online. Dr. Charles Bare, Dr. Robert Stack and Mike Vogl joined Fickel in designing them so they could be accessed with a computer anywhere around the globe.

Chadron State’s on-campus math majors take “hybrid” courses. From two-thirds to 80 percent of their instruction originates in the classroom while they complete the remainder of their assignments online. Several of the classes require group projects that often include a mixture of on- and off-campus students. Fickel noted that while he was giving Crawford and Trundy a tour of the campus Friday morning, they visited Don Williamson’s differential equations course and all 10 of the students they met had worked with the pair on various projects during the past two years.

Fickel said the college has between 15 and 20 math majors who are doing all their work online just as Crawford, Trundy and Winters have done. In recent years, several teachers from throughout the United States have taken four or five courses online from CSC so they can be certified to teach math.

The latest evolution in technology to help CSC students who take math courses online is an “electronic whiteboard,” which records the work professors place on it in chalkboard fashion and makes it available to those working at their computer. In addition, an audio file of the professors’ lectures in some courses has recently become available over the computer.

“I’d print off Mr. Williamson’s notes and listen to his lectures,” Winters said. “It helped a ton.”

While Crawford is now certified to teach math and has a couple of job interviews lined up, Trundy and Winters are already making plans to use more of CSC’s online courses to gain teaching certification.

Because of a shortage of math teachers in Virginia, a Norfolk high school has already given Trundy a contract to teach this year with a provisional certificate. While teaching, she’ll continue to take courses in teacher education that will apply toward a teaching endorsement from CSC. She hopes to eventually earn a master’s degree in math education.

Winters said that while she is still considering becoming a certified math teacher, she may opt to go into psychology instead. “Right now, I’m leaning toward earning a master’s degree in counseling and eventually getting a doctorate in sports psychology,” she stated. She said she’s already applied to begin taking graduate work at CSC.

Last fall, Winters earned internship credit by combining a psychology course with a statistics course to survey the WNCC volleyball players in areas such as anxiety, goal-setting and self-esteem. This fall, she plans to take the program a step further and do what she calls “a sports imagery” analysis of the Cougars.

Fickel noted that having the math curriculum online has been a boost to a couple of Chadron State’s on-campus athletes. Both Loni Hughes and Leslie Mueller, sophomores on the CSC golf team, are math majors. While playing in five tournaments this spring, they missed several days of classes, but were able to keep up with their assignments by going online to obtain their assignments and retrieve the other information Fickel had posted.