Phong Dang won the William Randolph Hearst California State University Trustees’ Award. Photo by Kate McIntyre - Mustang Daily.

Phong Dang is not unlike many Cal Poly students in that he doesn’t like to talk in class. But with a 3.779 GPA, it’s not because he doesn’t know the answer.

Dang, 24, was the 2009 California Polytechnic State University recipient of the William Randolph Hearst California State University (CSU) Trustees’ Award for Outstanding Achievement. The award and a $3,000 scholarship is given to one student from each CSU campus. Applicants must have a minimum GPA of 3.0; demonstrate financial need, commitment to community service and ability to overcome adversity; and be enrolled full-time for the 2009-10 academic year.

Dang is a finance senior and economics minor from the Orfalea College of Business.

“My family wanted me to study to be a pharmacist, but I just love business,” he said. “I think I like to do business because I want to have the knowledge and education to take risks and get good results.”

His grandfather sponsored Dang, his dad and two brothers, Phu, 22, and Phuc, 20, to come to the U.S. from Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam in 2005. His mom couldn’t come for family and business reasons, but they hope to bring her here in the next two years. His dad sends money to her from Houston, Texas, where he and Dang’s brothers have lived since 2006.

Phu Dang said he admires his brother for wanting to help people.

“When he grows up, maybe he wants to be a rich man. Rich in money and rich in love also. He wants to have much money to help himself, his family and the poor people,” Phu said in an e-mail.

Dang may not talk much or be social, Phu said, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know anything. The three brothers studied math in Vietnam, so they have an advantage over other students, he said, but they still study hard because there is more to learn. Dang said he studies more than 40 hours a week.

“The things that members of my family want him to do is he try to study by his best, try to become a successful person, and the one who can bring happiness to family and everybody surround him,” Phu said.

Mathematics professor John Martin taught Phong in a precalculus class when he began studying at Santa Rosa Junior College in fall 2005. Though it has been a few years and he’s had hundreds of students since then, he remembers Dang because his English wasn’t good, but his math was excellent, Martin said.

Dang was very quiet in class, not answering or asking questions, he said. And unlike other students who attend office hours hoping to pry answers from their professors, Dang came to Martin to have words clarified. It was unusual, Martin said, because he wanted to do the work himself.

“He was a very quiet student,” he said. “But I could tell as soon as I saw the work that he understood the mathematics.”

Dang finished second in Martin’s class, which the professor said is a remarkable achievement for someone with a language barrier. Martin even tried to convince him to get a mathematics degree and said he’d love to Dang come back to the junior college.

“He was hardworking, dependable, all those things faculty love in students,” he said.

In 2008, Dang was admitted to University of California, San Diego and UC Santa Barbara but chose Cal Poly for its finance major, small class sizes and the friendly small-town community vibe. He plans to head to the East Coast to get his master’s and then he wants to work for a financial firm.

While he currently plans to return to work in Vietnam in about 10 years, he said his family thinks he’ll stay here.

“Nothing is perfect, 100 percent sure. I think I will go back, but not for sure,” he said.

Benita Yannine Robledo-Espinoza was the 2008 Cal Poly recipient. According to her profile on the CSU Trustees’ Award Web site, she was raised by her single mother, an immigrant who worked as a waitress to support her three children. When her mother’s business failed, her family stayed at a homeless shelter throughout her eighth-grade school year. Robledo-Espinoza made honor-roll throughout her academic career and was the first of her family to attend college. Like Dang, she studied business and planned to work for an accounting firm after graduation.

Even with a high GPA, an award and a $3,000 scholarship, Dang doesn’t boast about his accomplishments.

“I think I’m just lucky because there are other students who are better than me, smarter than me,” Dang said.

In the math world, Allan Rossman is the teaching equivalent of Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps or Michelle Kwan — a gold medalist.

He will receive the Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award in January. Rossman is one of three mathematicians in the country to receive the award, which is presented by the top mathematical organization in the country, the Mathematical Association of America.

“Allan is competing against statisticians and a plethora of mathematicians and it is incredibly rare that a statistician would get an award from the American Mathematical Association,” statistics department chair Robert Smidt said. “It is exceedingly unique and a high honor.”

Rossman’s colleague, professor Beth Chance, nominated him. The judging is based on several guidelines: being successful and effective in their teaching, influencing beyond their own institutions and generating excitement and curiosity about mathematics in their students.

Students are used to writing down equations and memorizing them, but Rossman’s students do not get anything handed to them. They must figure out formulas, definitions and how things work through a series of questions they are given through activities that use real world data.

Rossman’s activity-based approach is a different teaching style that is not always easy for students to grasp at first, Chance said.

“It is hard to be innovative and to try things in the classroom because students sometimes get uncomfortable when things are new, and Rossman does challenge them to think and to not just repeat back what he says, and so sometimes students don’t like that,” she said.

Many of his students don’t necessarily see it that way. Scott Cairney, a mathematics senior, like some others in his class, said that he enjoys being challenged in class to think.

“I like the fact that he doesn’t spend too much time just sitting there busting out formulas, he really uses them, and then he tries to pick stuff that is fairly interesting, as articles are concerned,” he said.

Rossman said he strives to generate excitement in his students about mathematics.

“The best feeling is when you assign a problem in class and a student really gets intrigued by it and invests a lot of time and effort to try and figure it out, and comes in to me with questions about it,” Rossman said.

Students who may not be mathematically inclined have no need to fear with Rossman’s teaching, economics sophomore Gregory Kramer said.

“He always walks around the classroom, especially when we are doing our assignments on our own, and he is always offering help to anyone who looks like they may be struggling,” he said.

In Rossman’s classes, students are not just crunching numbers but understanding the concepts through application, Chance said.

“Rossman is really committed in the classroom, and pulls off his activity-based approach by letting the students figure it out for themselves,” she said.

Outside of the classrooms of Cal Poly, Rossman has been a major influence among the statistical and mathematical worlds. His published materials are being used across the country, and he puts on workshops and presentations to spread his unique teaching style.

“I hope the ideas that Chance and I have are impacting other teachers of statistics around the country and getting them excited about teaching statistics and helping their students,” Rossman said.

Rossman and Chance have worked together on two textbooks, “Workshop Statistics” and “Investigating Statistical Concepts, Applications, and Methods.” These books are designed with a series of questions that lead students to develop their own thoughts, and creates a classroom environment that nurtures active discussion.

As part of his award, Rossman is allowed to give a 20-minute address about his teaching philosophy. His speech titled “Asking Good Questions” is based on the notion that interesting questions will make students learn and retain information more easily.

“To be honest the biggest perk this award does for me is to give me the chance to give a talk to a big audience, where I can try to convince them that my ideas about teaching are good ideas, and maybe I will convince some of them to adopt some of my ideas,” Rossman said.