Ruth Cossey Mills College

Ruth Cossey, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Mid-Career Mathematics and Science Teacher Credential program at Mills College has ten years experience teaching pre-service teacher candidates in Oakland CA.  She has also taught mathematics in urban public schools for nine years.  She served as a senior Mathematics Educator with EQUALS and FAMILY MATH at the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley for ten years. Dr. Cossey has for the past two years been Principal Investigator and Director of Algebra: What Works? (AWW), funded by the University of California. Central to Cossey’s work has been the importance of classroom mathematical discourse to deepening students’ understandings and abilities to communicate those understandings. An extended sample of her skill as a mathematics educator has been captured in the 2001 “Learning Math: Patterns, Functions and Algebra” 10 two and one-half hour video taped professional development course in mathematics produced by Annenberg/ CPB Channel with the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.