Student Success Champion Profile - Jonathan Baker, Ph.D.

For 28 years, Dr. Jonathan Baker has worked to improve students’ engagement and success in math: first through his own classroom, then through mentorship and development of other faculty, and today through the leadership of Ohio State’s new Amgen STEM Learning Center.  

“Math is too often a conversation killer.” 

Jonathan began his career as an assistant professor in math, where he quickly found that “math is too often a conversation killer” that sparks anxiety for students. Jonathan learned how to turn the conversation in a more constructive direction, and to provide instruction that made math feel reasonable, approachable, and active. In his statistics classes, he incorporated projects that connected math to everyday life, such as discussing the latest polls or helping students research their own topic of interest. Jonathan also recognized that “students need to know that instructors care about them and their success, to round out the social-emotional component of learning,” and he focused on how to help “lightbulbs grow stronger in students as they learn and become more confident in math.” He was proud to see students get excited about statistics and begin to pursue their own research. Jonathan’s attentiveness, caring, and drive for quality teaching earned him several teaching awards throughout the years. 

When his math department at Columbus State Community College needed a new chair, Jonathan stepped in to fill the role, which allowed him to expand the improvement of math instruction beyond only his own classroom. In his seven years as chair, he provided in-depth and sustained professional development opportunities for over 150 instructors. In 2013, Jonathan moved to Ohio State’s department of Statistics, where in addition to teaching he coordinated the department’s largest course, helped part-time lecturers and graduate students improve their teaching practice, worked with Dr. David Graham and served as a faculty mentor to students in football, the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation program, and the Young Scholars Program. A few years later he layered on the role of associate director for instructional advancement at the university’s Institute for Teaching and Learning, where he helped implement a multi-level institution-wide approach to pedagogical development.  

In alignment with his love of football, Jonathan says he is now “in the fourth quarter of my career” as the director of Ohio State’s newly-established Amgen STEM Learning Center, which focuses on supporting the success of first- and second-year students in introductory STEM courses such as Calculus, Chemistry, and Physics. While the university already has excellent tutoring available for these courses, the physical footprint of existing tutoring spaces is small, and limits the number of students who can be served. The growing center, which is now just one year old, is adding more full- and part-time staff and is on track to hire over 100 student tutors this year. Jonathan sees the center as “a lump of clay that is quickly taking shape as it turns into an amazing campus resource.” In this new role, you can find him doing everything from completing small repairs, to helping a student, to meeting with a corporate partner. Jonathan explains that the center “serves as a gap filler between the instructor and the student,” providing services to both. STEM faculty and graduate student instructors can work with the center to get tailored feedback on their instruction, and students in a given STEM class can work with tutors who have already successfully completed the same class. Looking forward, Jonathan hopes the center’s many campus and corporate partners can also serve as a pipeline for STEM students’ future internships and careers. 

When asked about his advice for students, Jonathan says, “Start your homework the weekend before the due date! There are so many benefits of starting early.  If you run into issues or have questions, you have time to ask before the due date, so there’s less awkwardness about asking questions the night before it’s due. You can show you’ve begun the work, and can bring knowledge to your instructor or TA when working through your questions. It also gives time for the information to subconsciously sit in your brain and percolate.” Ultimately, starting early puts the power back into the student’s hands, which Jonathan feels is exactly where the power of learning should be. 

Photo 1: Jonathan in front of several posters about historical and current mathematicians from marginalized backgrounds.

Photo 2 (from left to right): Jonathan on the cover of the Columbus State Community College's winter catalog. Jonathan with Young Scholars Program students. Jonathan at an event with two students.