About me¶
Rachelle DeCoste in the woods
Hi! I am Rachelle DeCoste. I am a math professor at Wheaton College in Norton, MA.
My background¶
I was born in southeastern Massachusetts and live here again! I was an undergraduate at Connecticut College in New London, CT where I majored in mathematics and minored in astronomy. My PhD in math was earned from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. After graduate school I taught at the United States Military Academy, West Point, NY. For the last 15 years I have taught at Wheaton.
Previous work¶
I’m new to making. When I told a friend I was taking this class and have little experience in fabrication she told me that’s not true because I make cookies all the time! This is true. I bake a lot of cookies. Mostly for my family and friends. Sometimes I share them with my students.
I taught Geometry in the Fall of 2021 and incorporated some fabrication into the course. That was my first real exerience using the Wheaton College Fab Lab. It was great fun and I am here to learn more so I can incorporate fabrication more fully into the Geometry class and other classes. Below is an image of the show that my class put on at the end of the semester.
Here are my versions of 2 projects we made: clocks with symmetry and pots for plants that we planed in the college greenhouse. Both were designed in OpenScad.
I am passionate about making STEM a more inclusive place. I’ve created several programs for women in Math and STEM. One was the Career Mentoring Workshop for Women finishing PhDs in math and the other was the Wheaton College Summit for Women in STEM. Lately I’ve been involved with the HHMI Inclusive Excellence STEM grant at Wheaton. Lately I’ve been thinking about fabrication as a gateway to STEM and want to continue to explore this idea using Wheaton’s Fab Lab.
CaMeW group photo from 2016
Group photo from our original STEM Summit in 2017
