David Austin
Professor of Mathematics
Grand Valley State University
austind at gvsu dot edu
Curriculum Vitae
Open textbooks
I am invested in making sure that high-quality educational resources are accessible to all students. Here are a few things that I'm involved in.
I am the author of Understanding Linear Algebra, an open-access linear algebra textbook written in PreTeXt and endorsed by the Open Textbook Initiative. The Mathematical Association of America recognized Understanding Linear Algebra with the 2025 Daniel Solow Author's Award at MathFest 2025.
You should also check out Active Calculus, the amazing open-access calculus text from Matt Boelkins, now in its 2nd edition.
I currently serve as the Director of the Open Textbook Initiative, sponsored by the American Institute of Mathematics, with a mission to promote the use of open-access mathematics textbooks.
The Mathematical Community Working to Create Better (And Free!) Textbooks, a paper I recently wrote for the American Mathematical Monthly.
PreFigure for accessible mathematical diagrams
PreFigure is an authoring system for creating accessible mathematical diagrams for including in scholarly documents. From a single description of a diagram, PreFigure can create an SVG suitable for posting on a web page, with included annotations enabling a screen reader to effectively navigate the diagram, a PDF for including in a printed document, and a tactile diagram to be embossed and included with a braille document.
Thanks to Jason Siefken, getting started with PreFigure is as easy as a trip to the PreFigure Playground.
PreFigure is very much inspired by PreTeXt and is tightly integrated with PreTeXt. For example, it is possible to write PreFigure diagram descriptions inside a PreTeXt document and have the resulting diagrams included in the PreTeXt output.
Visit the PreFigure home page for more information. Here are a few more references:
A recent talk with Alexei Kolesnikov at the Tactile Reading Conference 2025 in Amersterdam.
Authoring Web-accessible Mathematical Diagrams, a paper co-authored with Volker Sorge. This paper was awarded the prize for Best Communication Paper at the Web4All 2023 Conference, sponsored by the Association of Computing Machinery.
Authoring Web-accessible Mathematical Diagrams, our video submission to the Accessibility Challenge at the Web4All 2023 conference.
A recent post on Matt Boelkins' Active Calculus blog gives some more details.
Indigenous Mathematicians
I belong to the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and encourage you to explore these Profiles of Indigenous Mathematicians.
As an Indigenous mathematician, I am working to build connections and provide mathematical opportunities for Indigenous students that respect Indigenous culture.
PIC Math and GVSU's applied math capstone
As an outgrowth of the MAA's PIC Math program, I helped developed MTH 498, the math department's applied math capstone course. We have developed a number of wonderful partnerships with local businesses, governments, and non-profits. One partnership has been with the City of Grand Rapids, Michigan making use of their open data portal GRData.
Here are some student projects I have supervised:
- Understanding Impacts of Development on the Cost of Living, an exploration of Area Median Income (AMI), housing affordability, and the role of development in the displacement of People of Color in some Grand Rapids' neighborhoods.
- Grand Rapids Lead Abatement, recommendations to the City for making effective use of a $4.2M grant to provide assistance to homeowners for lead abatement in West Side neighborhoods.
- Grand Rapids 311 Call Center, an analysis of calls to the Grand Rapid Customer Service Department aiming to improve equity in access to City services. Ongoing.
- Parking Revenue in Downtown Grand Rapids, an analysis of the impact that COVID-19 has had on parking revenue and projections for future revenue. Ongoing.
AMS Feature Column
The American Mathematical Society's Feature Column is a monthly column written for a general audience and published by the AMS Public Awareness Office. I wrote on a variety of topics for the Feature Column from 2005 to 2022.