Shawn RiceSome people work hard on an article for publication but never get them published. Others send their work to numerous publishers before they are accepted. Dr. Katie Acker, assistant professor of mathematics, fell into neither category-her very first article was published.
“I began developing the project in 1997. I refined it until I graduated in 2000. I wrote up the article in 2003,” Acker said, citing the delay was due to career changes. It took five months or so before I heard that I passed screening of the first draft.” After revisions, Acker’s article “Drug Levels and Difference Equations” was accepted for publishing in Mathematics Teacher.
The article was compiled from “raw date, looking at patterns, and looking at the amount of drugs in the body after multiple usages” Acker said. “Students were required to get the data on their own. They could call drug companies, research online, [or] speak with a pharmacist.” The data was collected over a number of semesters from students at a school where Acker was previously employed. She chose the topic hoping that it would catch the interests of the students while keeping in mind that the data they needed to collect would be easily accessible to them.
“I was nervous when writing the article,” Acker said. But those nerves did not hold her back; Acker looks forward to writing again. She is interested in “technology in the math classroom; not the graphing calculator, more like computers.” Acker thinks it is important for people to know the capabilities that computer programs, such as Excel, have to offer to the field of math. “I figure most people don’t use their graphing calculators after college, right?” Acker said.
However, Acker is interested in a lot more than just math and technology. Biking, cooking, reading, and science fiction are all passions of Acker’s. And although Acker is a big Star Wars fan she insists that she did not dress in costume to get tickets to the movie.
Acker has also been happily married for a year and a half and she and her husband David are the proud parents of three beagles. They live in the city now but hope someday to move to the suburbs so the dogs can have a nice big back yard.
Ackers article can be found in an upcoming issue of Mathematics Teacher.
Posted to the Web by Shawn Rice
