Faces and Places

FACES AND PLACES

Student becomes the teacher

NICK WEAVER ’17 RETURNS TO MESSIAH AS MATH LECTURER

Nick Weaver ’17, deep down, always knew he loved teaching mathematics. When he was in middle school, he spent a portion of a family Christmas event teaching his younger cousin how to do multiplication with her toys. Later, as a student at Messiah, he would find himself trying to teach his parents about his studies.

Weaver, senior lecturer of mathematics, is the newest edition to Messiah’s department of mathematics. One of his favorite aspects of teaching at Messiah is really getting to know his students. “In the first 5 weeks of teaching, I’ve been most impressed by the curiosity, sincerity, and generally positive attitudes of the students taking my courses. I get to interact with students from different departments and mathematical backgrounds, so it is really cool to see them push themselves to work hard and try new things in a discipline that is often seen as challenging,” he said.

Before starting a career within the Messiah community, he spent the last five years working and attending school in downtown Denver, Colorado. After graduating from Messiah in 2017, he landed at the University of Colorado Denver, joining the applied mathematics Ph.D. program, and worked several positions within the department.

As a teaching assistant (TA), he taught classes like calculus 1, intro to statistics, and college algebra. Later as a TA coach, he helped train first- and second-year TAs. He credits this job as a pivotal experience in finding his career in teaching.

“I fell in love with teaching and thinking of different ways to make my lessons engaging and accessible to a broad audience,” he said.

Moving to a research assistant position, he served as the lead statistician of a few collaborative projects with the university’s medical center. Weaver also has made intentional steps toward understanding the importance of inclusive excellence practices in STEM. One way that he implements inclusive practices in his classrooms is through math autobiographies. In the first two weeks of the semester, he has each student write about their past experiences with math— identifying examples where they struggled and succeeded.

“The activity is designed to let students share who they are so that I can mold the course in a way that is welcoming and inclusive to everyone in the class,” he said. “After including the autobiographies into my courses, I’ve found that I know my students a lot better, and they have a better understanding of who I am. Most importantly, I gain a much better understanding of how I can serve students who often feel dejected when trying to engage mathematics.”

Weaver hopes to bring this type of environment to his classrooms at Messiah. “I want to create a classroom environment where all students feel like they can belong and be themselves. Mathematics classrooms are notorious for being the opposite of that, so one of my goals is to help change student perspectives on mathematics,” he said.

Similarly, very few students want to talk about math all the time inside and outside of class. So, Weaver has also tried to be intentional about having nonmath related conversations with his students to help build a better sense of community. He said, “I’m fortunate to be in a department with faculty members who demonstrate how to create and maintain meaningful connections with their students that I can mimic with my own students. Sports, board games, niche hobbies, and faith are all topics I love to talk about with my students to make them feel at home in our class.”

His Messiah education not only prepared him for his graduate studies, he says, but also his ability to reconcile science with his understanding of faith. “I was pushed to develop my whole self while at Messiah, and that has helped me to better engage the communities I’ve been a part of since graduating,” he said.

He says that while he enjoyed Colorado, there’s something soothing about returning to what feels like home at Messiah. “Although I am still getting used to that sense of nostalgia I feel any time I walk into a building or classroom,” he said. — Molly McKim ’23

“I want to create a classroom environment where all students feel like they can belong and be themselves. Mathematics classrooms are notorious for being the opposite of that, so one of my goals is to help change student perspectives on mathematics.”

— Nick Weaver, senior lecturer of mathematics