Patricia D. Shure

Patricia D. Shure is an American mathematics educator. With Morton Brown and B. Alan Taylor, she is known for developing "Michigan calculus", a style of teaching calculus and combining cooperative real-world problem solving by the students with an instructional focus on conceptual understanding.^[1][2][3] She is a senior lecturer emerita of mathematics at the University of Michigan, where she taught from 1982 until her retirement in 2006.^[1]

Shure did both her undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Michigan, earning a bachelor's degree in 1958 and a master's degree in 1960. After working as a secondary school teacher for two decades, she returned to Michigan in 1982 as coordinator for mathematics and science in the Coalition for the Use of Learning Skills. She also became a lecturer in mathematics, and later a senior lecturer.^[1]

At Michigan, she played a key role not just in teaching mathematics, but in training the other instructors and graduate students there to be good teachers of mathematics.^[4] Her work on calculus reform began in 1992;^[1] it was based in part on the "Harvard calculus" project led by Andrew M. Gleason, and her instructor training materials have been widely used at other universities.^[4] With Gleason and others, she became the author of a widely used precalculus textbook, Functions Modeling Change: A Preparation for Calculus (Wiley, 2000; 5th ed., 2017).^[1][5] The program she initiated at Michigan continues in successful use there.^[2]

In 2001 the Association for Women in Mathematics gave Shure their Louise Hay Award for her contributions to mathematics education.^[4] In the same year she became the AWM/MAA Falconer Lecturer, speaking on "The Scholarship of Learning and Teaching: A Look Back and a Look Ahead".^[6]