What do BYU, mathematics, and voyaging canoes have in common? Dr. Linda Furuto.
CPMS’s upcoming Honored Alumni Lecture will feature Dr. Furuto of the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Her lecture, entitled “Voyaging Around the World with Christ as My Navigator and Ethnomathematics as the Compass,” will be held on Thursday, October 5, 2017, at 11 a.m. in room 1170 of the Talmage Building.
Furuto is a professor of mathematics education at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. She received a bachelor’s degree from BYU, a master’s degree from Harvard University, and a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Furuto has worked with prestigious institutions in Hawaii, Boston, Tokyo, Fiji, and Vietnam, teaching courses in music, mathematics, and mathematics education. Furuto’s principal research area is ethnomathematics, which studies the intersection of mathematics, culture, ethnicity, and identity.
In addition to teaching, Furuto was recently engaged in the Mālama Honua Worldwide Voyage as education specialist and apprentice navigator on the traditional voyaging canoe Hōkūle‘a. This worldwide voyage—navigated using celestial navigation techniques such as the sun, moon, stars, currents, and wind—spanned over 42,000 nautical miles, 50 ports, and 20 countries in order to train a new generation of traditional navigators and to grow a global movement to mālama honua, or care for island earth.
The Honored Alumni Lecture is an annual event that showcases one of the many amazing CPMS alumni in a lecture series that highlights the alum’s accomplishments and life’s work.