Allison Mok

CalTeach Science & Math, 2013
School of Education

June 1, 2012

Cal Teach Math Major/Single Subject Credential Candidate Looks Forward to Summer Work with Breakthrough Collaborative

Allison Mok is an undergraduate student studying Mathematics along with the Single Subject Teaching Certification in Mathematics. She is a member of the 2013 Cal Teach cohort, and will complete her student teaching during the 2012-2013 academic year. She is also a committed member of the Chinese Association UC Irvine Dragon Boat team (CADB). Near the end of her freshman year, Allison was a Noyce Scholar intern for the Discovery Science Center, where she worked as a Science Education Specialist as well as a Marketing Off-Site Representative.

During her second year at UC Irvine, Allison was in a summer research position for the UCI Interdisciplinary Computation and Applied Mathematics program (iCAMP).

This program provided a wonderful opportunity for me to learn about digital image processing in computational applied mathematics, receive early research experience, and to explore what it was like to work as a professional in computation applied math.

Allison continued her research regarding “cell clustering using shape context” well into the school year. She has spoken about her research at the Southern California Nevada Section Fall Meeting in Cal State Long Beach, as well as at the Pacific Coast Undergraduate Math Conference in Cal Poly Pomona. She is also planning to speak at the Nineteenth Annual UCI Undergraduate Research Symposium.

From this experience, I realized not only the power of research, but also how much there was to discover from research itself. Research was no longer a simple two-syllable term, but rather an opening to a world of unlimited ideas and possibilities.

Now in her third year at UC Irvine, Allison has been accepted into the Breakthrough Collaborative program, which has been ranked by the Princeton Review as one of the Top 10 Internships. She will be teaching motivated middle school students in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Breakthrough recruits and rigorously trains high school and college students to become Breakthrough teachers with intent on building a career as educators. With over 33 sites across the U.S. and in Hong Kong, Breakthrough prepares over 700 student teachers and 5,400 college-bound students annually.

I’m really enthusiastic yet a slight bit nervous about undertaking this upcoming Breakthrough program. I look forward to discovering the true beauty in education since I will be teaching 8th grade algebra and potentially doing some public speaking.

In addition to her coursework and extracurricular activities, Allison recently has joined Professor Elizabeth van Es’s research project concerning pre-service and in-service teacher thinking and practice.

I have learned that research is not easy, since it consists of many turns and side paths leading up to that one overall goal. However, I have always been drawn to research because of how intricate it can be.

With all her prior experience, Allison hopes to positively contribute to the project and learn more about the thought processes of pre-service and in-service teachers.

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