Home Page

The Paul Pair Endowed Chair Award

Paul M. Pair, Sc.D.

The Maricopa Community Colleges Foundation

Recipients of the Paul Pair Endowed Chair Award

About Glendale Community College

Michael Holtfrerich's efforts to integrate technology into the mathematics classroom via multimedia, computer lab, and graphing calculators has earned him the committee's choice for the Paul Pair Endowed Chair Award.

A summary of Michael's background consists of both a B.S. and an M.S. in Mathematics from Northern Arizona University along with participation in many conferences and workshops. He also received the honor of being selected as one of only 26 professors in the country to participate in a week-long technology seminar at the Institute of Academic Technology at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.

The first step he took in using technology in the classroom was the writing of a lab manual for using the computer program Derive in a second-semester calculus class. He followed this with the incorporation of the graphing calculator into his algebra classes. Next he worked on using multimedia to teach factoring to arithmetic students. He is currently using the same basic approach to develop course materials to teach basic algebra to beginning algebra students. This is a new way of giving what is traditionally a very abstract subject a concrete base.

He has used his award funds to purchase software and to buy time, which he used to attend classes in order to broaden his knowledge spectrum and continue to lead in the integration of technology into the mathematics curriculum.