Rate My Professor Brian Katz

Brian Katz is an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at California State University, Long Beach, where he serves as the Single Subject Math Credential Advisor. He joined the faculty in 2020 after serving as an assistant professor at Augustana College. Katz holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin, completed in 2011 with a thesis titled Tropical Hurwitz Spaces advised by David Helm, and a B.A. in Honors Mathematics, Chemistry, and Music cum laude from Williams College in 2003. His academic career includes teaching positions at the University of Texas at Austin as assistant instructor and teaching assistant.

Katz specializes in mathematics education, with research interests in inquiry-based learning, epistemology, identity, authority, and justice, particularly in preparing teachers for student-centered classrooms. He has authored or co-authored key publications including the MAA textbook Distilling Ideas: An Introduction to Mathematical Thinking with Michael Starbird (2013), Critical stance within a community of inquiry in an advanced mathematics course for pre-service teachers (Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 2021), WikiTextbooks: Designing your course around a collaborative writing project (PRIMUS, 2014), and Why should that convince me?: Teaching Toulmin analysis across the curriculum (Primus, 2023). He has guest-edited special issues on teaching inquiry in PRIMUS (2017) and curated collections on assessment (2022). Katz holds leadership positions as Associate Director of MAA's Project NExT, Communications Editor for PRIMUS, former Chair of IBL SIGMAA and the MAA SoCal-NV Section, and member of the SIGMAA RUME executive board. He edits the inclusion/exclusion blog and received the 2025 MAA Southern California-Nevada Distinguished Teaching Award. In October 2025, he will present a plenary address titled Teaching Proof as a Way of Knowing at the section's 100th anniversary meeting.