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DMEG Awardees

 

Announcing the 2023 DMEG Recipients 

  • Project Title: An FDU Math Circle to Extend the Radius of Outreach
  • Project Director: Mark Farag
  • Project Summary: The Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) Math Circle is a weekly online exploration of topics in Number Theory and Abstract Algebra by talented and motivated high school students with guidance from a member of the FDU faculty. In exploring these abstract mathematical topics, students learn how to formulate conjectures from well-considered examples, and they gain experience with formulating proofs for or finding counterexamples to those conjectures. Students thereby increase their understanding of what abstract Mathematics is and how it is done. Both organically through the Math Circle sessions and by interactions with guest mathematicians, students are also encouraged to consider the possibility of pursuing Mathematics as a college major and a career path.
  • Project Title: Stark County Summer Math Academy 2023
  • Project Director: Aloysius Kasturiarachi
  • Project Summary: The Stark County Summer 2023 Math Academy is a collaboration between Kent State University at Stark and Stark County high schools. The proposed program is a continuation of the successful inaugural Stark County Summer Math Academy 2022 which was funded by a DMEG grant in 2021. The 1-week summer 2023 academy will provide talented and motivated high school students the opportunity to choose from one of three academies: Advanced Calculus, Data Science, and Explorations in Pure Mathematics. Topics in the Advanced Calculus Academy will include techniques of proof-writing, differential geometry, and 3D printing. The Data Science Academy will focus on introductory coding and modeling of fast changing data. The Explorations in Pure Math Academy will delve into topics in number theory, linear algebra, graph theory, and probability. The purpose of the academy is to attract students from diverse mathematical backgrounds, while being mindful of students from underrepresented minorities, and build their confidence in mathematics. Our overall vision is to be a community of change agents whose collective commitment is to increase diversity and engagement in our discipline with outcomes that align with a growth mindset. Participants will be instructed by three Kent State University faculty members and one Stark County math teacher. Students will be able to explore a variety of topics within their chosen academy through enrichment activities, collaborative work, and a final project.
  • Project Title: Oglethorpe University Summer Camp in Mathematics: The Mathematics of Secret Messages
  • Project Director: Mary Garner
  • Project Summary: The Oglethorpe University Summer Camp in Mathematics: The Mathematics of Secret Messages is for middle school students who are seeking an opportunity to enrich their knowledge of mathematics. The focus of the camp is cryptography. Participants will explore substitution ciphers, public key encryption, and error-correcting codes. In every session of the camp the emphasis will be on engaging the students in activities that require them to code and decode secret messages, thereby experiencing applications of prime numbers, factoring, modular arithmetic, inverse functions, and matrices.
  • Project Title: Renewal: SMS Math Circles
  • Project Director: Asia Matthews
  • Project Summary: In a continued collaboration between Quest University and St. Margaret's School (both in BC, Canada), we are developing and implementing math workshops and camps for middle-school and high-school students. This will be a year-long mathematics enrichment program for students in grades 5-8 (middle school) and 9-12 (high school) in the 2023-2024 school year. The primary goal of this program is to guide students through the creative side of mathematics. We hope that by exposing female students to female mathematicians and math-related career options, they will feel encouraged to pursue mathematics at the next level. On an affective level, we want students to develop a strong growth mindset and to experience joy when doing mathematics. We will support these students by developing a sense of togetherness and community amongst one another, with their teachers and mentors, and within their families.
  • Project Title: TexPREP 2023 (at Texas Tech)
  • Project Director: Jim Brown
  • Project Summary: TexPREP-Lubbock (Texas Pre-Freshman Engineering Program) is a summer program for sixth through eleventh grade students at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. TexPREP offers a creative and challenging program where students develop lifelong learning skills that enhance their individual success and workforce readiness. They gain the intellectual skills needed to succeed in high school courses, college programs, and careers in engineering, mathematics, and science. They also learn the personal and social skills needed to work cooperatively with others. The classes encourage creativity, curiosity, and a sense of wonder.
  • Project Title: Math Research Experience for Lowcountry High School Students and Teachers
  • Project Director: Breeanne Swart
  • Project Summary: Lowcountry high school students and teachers will join faculty from The Citadel for a week-long camp to solve open problems from The Fibonacci Quarterly and MAA publications. The participants will experience the research process from start to finish including finding open problems, exploring and solving the problems, presenting the results orally, and submitting a written solution to a publication. Daily presentations will provide participants with the opportunity to practice oral presentations skills with a final presentation to parents, teachers, and friends. Throughout the following academic year, participants will have the opportunity to continue to explore problems. The experience will culminate in written and oral presentations at the South Carolina Junior Academy of Sciences annual meeting in March or April.
  • Project Title: Juneau High School Math Club
  • Project Director: Andrzej Piotrowski
  • Project Summary: This project will support weekly meetings of the Math Club for Juneau area high school students (Enigma) with involvement of faculty from the University of Alaska Southeast (UAS). These weekly meetings will focus on preparation for the MAA American Mathematics Competitions. Additionally, funding will support at least one day-long event at UAS where high school students, undergraduate students, teachers, and faculty will work in teams to solve interesting mathematical puzzles.
  • Project Title: The 13th Math Day at the University of Guam
  • Project Director: Hideo Nagahashi
  • Project Summary: The University of Guam, Division of Mathematics and Computer Science organizes Math Day, the annual one day event for high school and middle school students. Math Day cosists of two parts, Quiz Competition and Lecture. In the Quiz Competition, teams from individual schools are asked to solve math problems and trivia questions in front of a live audience present at the event. Teams compete in one of the three categories, Basic Algebra, Pre-Calculus, and Calculus. The second part will be a lecture given by a guest speaker invited from off island. Math Day started in 2008, and has been quite successful encouraging students to study more mathematics continuously.
  • Project Title: Excellence in Math and Coding Chargers (E=MC2)
  • Project Director: Yevgeniya Rivers
  • Project Summary: The Excellence in Math and Coding Chargers (E=MC2) program gives students in grades 7 – 10 an opportunity to learn and apply college-level math in a collaborative and welcoming environment. Embedding topics such as number theory, graph theory, geometry, and statistics into a multi-week project will give students a chance to demonstrate what they have learned to themselves, their peers, and caregivers. Through project-based learning, students will also enhance their oral and written communication skills. Activities and discussions around affective skills such as mindset and self-advocacy will complement their academic experience. Through the facilitation and mentorship of a diverse group of faculty and a TA, the program will help students visualize themselves as future mathematicians.
  • Project Title: Summer Honors Program Mathematical Connections Class
  • Project Director: Audrey Malagon
  • Project Summary: The Summer Honors Program is a two-week accelerated summer school sponsored by Educational Service Unit #11 in Phelps County, Nebraska. This program is designed to expose high ability learners to advanced topics that go beyond the standard curriculum in most rural high schools, guided by instructors who have demonstrated excellence in teaching. Small classes of 10-12 students focus on one subject for the entire two week program, engaged in hands-on active learning and small and large group projects based on student interest and instructor expertise. Evening activities focus on leadership development and community building with like-minded peers. The mathematics class has studied topics including infinity, the mathematics of decisions, probability, and the structure of number systems. At the conclusion of the program, students present some of their work to the community. This grant will support the mathematics class in Summer 2023 to study cryptology guided by Dr. Audrey Malagon from Virginia Wesleyan University.
  • Project Title: Morgantown Math Circle
  • Project Director: Fang Yang
  • Project Summary: Morgantown Math Circle (MMC) is an after-school mathematical enrichment program for students from 4-8th grades. MMC will establish partnerships with secondary and middle school math teachers to work together to improve the performance of the students in math and science and at national math competitions such as MATHCOUNTS and to inspire students’ interests and passions in STEM. In addition, the Math Festival at the end of the school year will be hosted to recognize students’ hard work and celebrate their achievements. We will also host a one-week summer camp of various activities including math games for the participants of MMC and students from other areas of WV in the summer of 2024.

 

MAA Dolciani Mathematics Enrichment Grants (DMEG) program supports projects designed to develop mathematical enrichment programs for students who show promise or interest in middle school or high school. The goal of the program is to interest students who are ready for more challenge in the study of mathematics and encourage them to further their mathematical studies. If you're interested in holding a DMEG program like these, learn more here.

Read About Previous Awardees

 

2022          2021          2020          2019          2018

 

2022

  • Project Title: Summer Camp in Board Games and Mathematics
  • Project Director: Sue Generazzo
  • Project Summary: Over the last 20 years, there has been a renaissance in board game design resulting in the publication of several complex, systems-based board games, often referred to as Euro-style games. These games are highly strategic and engaging, and underlying many of them is a mathematical structure designed to simulate the characteristics of the desired system. This summer camp in math and board games will introduce high school students to a variety of mathematical concepts, and more generally to the art of mathematical creation, by getting them to analyze and model a select set of Euro-style games. Through a desire to understand who wins and who loses, students will be led to create their own mathematical structures as well as to study and apply existing concepts from probability, graph theory, optimization, and the study of complex systems.
  • Project Title: An FDU Math Circle to Extend the Radius of Outreach
  • Project Director: Mark Farag
  • Project Summary: The Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) Math Circle is a weekly online exploration of topics in Number Theory and Abstract Algebra by talented and motivated high school students with guidance from a member of the FDU faculty. In exploring these abstract mathematical topics, students will learn how to formulate conjectures from well-considered examples, and they will gain experience with formulating proofs for or finding counterexamples to those conjectures. Students will thereby increase their understanding of what abstract Mathematics is and how it is done. Both organically through the Math Circle sessions and by interactions with guest mathematicians, students will also be encouraged to consider the possibility of pursuing Mathematics as a college major and a career path.
  • Project Title: FGCU Mathletes for Brigh and Talented Middle School Students
  • Project Director: Menaka Navaratna
  • Project Summary: Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) Mathletes Circle is a non-profit year-round enrichment program for bright and talented middle school students organized by the Department of Mathematics at FGCU in partnership with Immokalee Middle School. The Mathletes Circle consists of Mathletes Summer Camp, Saturday Mathletes Day sessions during regular semesters and AMC-8 Competitions. The ultimate objective of this program is to strengthen middle school students’ interest in mathematics and provide early experience and exposure to STEM related careers with mathematical foundations.
  • Project Title: BCAMSC High School Math Research
  • Project Director: John Golden
  • Project Summary: Battle Creek Are Math and Science Center is a magnet high school, at which Dr. Kelly DeRango, one of the mathematics teachers, has started a bimonthly math seminar and a new mathematics research class. This grant would provide support for consultation to support high school researchers, speakers for the seminar, and materials to expand opportunities for learners.
  • Project Title: Promoting Success in Mathematical Enrichment Through Graduate Teaching Assistant and Undergraduate Pre-Service Teacher Training
  • Project Director: Melinda Lanius
  • Project Summary: At Auburn University, the COVID-19 pandemic put outreach on hold. Much of the institutional memory concerning outreach was lost due to students graduating and faculty retiring. In the Department of Mathematics & Statistics we need a big jolt to get our outreach engine back up and running. Our project builds a foundation for continuing outreach success by (1) building an outreach closet/library with classroom sets of math manipulatives and activity lesson plans, (2) providing robust outreach training and activity development opportunities to graduate students and undergraduate pre-service teachers, and (3) running our activities at a variety of outreach events in Spring and Summer 2023.
  • Project Title: SMS Math Camps
  • Project Director: Saloni Dholakia
  • Project Summary:In a collaboration between Quest University and St. Margaret's School (both in BC, Canada), we will develop and implement math workshops and camps for middle-school and high-school students. This will be a year-long mathematics enrichment program for students in grades 5-8 (middle school) and 9-12 (high school) in the 2022-2023 school year. The primary goal of this program is to guide students through the creative side of mathematics. We hope that by exposing female students to female mathematicians and math-related career options, they will feel encouraged to pursue mathematics at the next level. On an affective level, we want students to develop a strong growth mindset and to experience joy when doing mathematics. We will support these students by developing a sense of togetherness and community amongst one another, with their teachers and mentors, and within their families.
  • Project Title: Social Justice - Based Math Activities for Middle and High School Students
  • Project Director: Kristin Frank
  • Project Summary: This project extends the work of a 2020 DMEG and will provide math enrichment experiences for middle and high school students throughout greater Baltimore, Maryland. These enrichment experiences will be designed by Towson University faculty in partnership with undergraduate preservice teachers. This structure provides opportunities for mentoring between Towson University faculty and students as well as mentoring between university students and school students. Through this project, students at various academic levels will develop an awareness of authentic mathematic applications and thus raise awareness of career opportunities in mathematics.
  • Project Title: Data Science for Decision Makers at the High School Level
  • Project Director: Brice Merlin Nguelifack
  • Project Summary: We will offer a high school level data science course through after school activities and/or through a summer camp. The main goal of this proposal is the incorporation of more STEM courses with an emphasis on critical thinking, communication, creativity and problem-solving. A high school level data science curriculum with a project based units that develop an understanding of data analysis, sampling, correlation/causation, bias and uncertainty, probability modeling with data, making and evaluating data based arguments and the ;power of data in today society.
  • Project Title: Iowa Junior Academy of Math
  • Project Director: Mohammad Farajzadeh Tehrani
  • Project Summary: We plan to create an academy for promoting math enrichment activities in Iowa, selecting and training gifted/enthusiastic middle/high school students, exposing them to mathematics research and applications, and further guiding them to pursue mathematics professionally in the future.
  • Project Title: OMPR Math Summer Camp
  • Project Director: Luis Caceres
  • Project Summary: OMPR SUMMER CAMP caters exclusively to Puerto Rico Middle and High School students, in both public and private schools, and is exclusively merit based, with a very rigorous selection process (4 math Olympiads filters). OMPR SUMMER CAMP is a five days’ camp. The main objective of this summer camp is to offer courses and activities that provide enthusiasm in learning math, introduces important concepts, practices strategies for problem solving and develops abilities of those who may become leaders in the next mathematical and scientific generation.
  • Project Title: Summer Oshkosh Mathematics Academy
  • Project Director: Eric Kuennen
  • Project Summary: This project will fund a summer math camp program at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh for talented middle school students. The Summer Oshkosh Mathematics Academy is for students entering grades 6-8 and features student exploration and a creative problem-solving approach to mathematics. Camp participants will see aspects of mathematics and topics that are not typically part of the middle grades curriculum. Our activities will help middle schoolers develop mathematical habits of mind by actually doing mathematics, that is, investigating, experimenting, posing questions, modeling problems, conjecturing, justifying solutions and critiquing the reasoning of others. Our aim is to challenge students while exploring the beauty of mathematics, and provide opportunities to for them to experience mathematics as a creative art, which we hope will encourage them to further their mathematical studies in high school, college, and beyond.
  • Project Title: Morgantown Math Circle
  • Project Director: Fang Yang
  • Project Summary: Morgantown Math Circle (MMC) is an after-school mathematical enrichment program mainly for students from 4-8th grades with extension to 9-12th grades. MMC will establish partnerships with secondary and middle school math teachers to work together to improve the performance of the students in math and science and at the national math competitions such as MATHCOUNTS and to inspire students’ interests and passions in STEM. In addition, the Math Festival at the end of the school year will be hosted to recognize students’ hard work and celebrate their achievements. We will also host a one-week summer camp of various activities including math games for the participants of MMC and students from other areas of WV in the summer of 2023.

 

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2021

  • Project Title: Ithaca H.S. Math Seminar
  • Project Director: Mary Ann Huntley
  • Project Summary: The Math Seminar at Ithaca High School provides advanced mathematics instruction for students who have exhausted the high-school mathematics curriculum. Over the course of an academic year, three graduate students introduce topics related to their research interests and then guide students in the development of their own end-of-term research projects. While by no means new research, the projects enable high-school students to explore topics of interest, and to share their findings in the form of an oral presentation. The purpose of the seminar, which meets every other day at the high school during school hours, is to introduce students to topics that they would typically not see until their junior or senior year in college and to encourage more high school students to major in mathematics when they go to college.
  • Project Title: Red Rock Math Circle
  • Project Director: Jie Liu
  • Project Summary: Red Rock Math Circle(R^2MC) of Dixie State University (DSU) was initiated and funded by Dolciani Mathematics Enrichment Grants (DMEG) in 2018. The program started with middle school students who were invited to DSU campus for a year-long weekly after school Math Circle meeting. Students are presented with various math related topics by DSU faculties, local community members and guest speakers. Students also participate in Math Olympiads and AMC8 competitions. Starting 2020, the program extended to high school students participating in the AMC10/12 competition.
  • Project Title: STEM Day
  • Project Director: Nora Strasser
  • Project Summary: STEM day is an opportunity for high school students in the Wichita area to learn about mathematical concepts that are not usually part of the high school curriculum. Emphasis is on applications of mathematics to various STEM fields. Students will attend a full day of activities as well as one major STEM speaker. The activities will include fun and exciting applications of mathematics. Students will get to choose the sessions that they want to attend. Sessions have included learning about 3D printing, creating a dodecahedron using origami, an escape room scenario, scavenger hunt, and flight tests. All area high schools are invited to send not only an entire class but the teachers as well.
  • Project Title: Stark County Summer Math Academy
  • Project Director: Aloysius Kasturiarachi
  • Project Summary: The Stark County Summer Math Academy is a collaboration between Kent State University at Stark and Stark County high schools. The one-week summer 2022 academy will give motivated high school students the opportunity to choose from one of three academies: Advanced Calculus, Data Science, and Explorations in Pure Math. Topics in the Advanced Calculus Academy will include techniques of proof-writing, differential geometry, and 3D printing. The Data Science Academy will focus on introductory coding and modeling of data. The Explorations in Pure Math Academy will delve into topics in number theory, linear algebra, graph theory, and probability. Math enrichment and ACT preparation will be interwoven into each academy. The Stark County Summer Math Academy will allow students to take a deep dive into mathematics topics that interest them. The Academy will encourage exploration, creativity, and problem-solving on a level they cannot receive in a standard classroom setting. Instructors will seek ways to understand the talent of each student and work within the framework of a Growth Mind-Set, allowing them to learn from new challenges. Students and instructors alike will leave feeling inspired and transformed.
  • Project Title: Montana State University-Billings Math Circle: Encouraging the students of Billings Montana to engage with the Creativity & Playfulness of Mathematics
  • Project Director: Tien Chih
  • Project Summary: The MSU-Billings Math Circle is an after-school program for children grads 4-8. With the help of MSU-Billings students and faculty, these participants will explore the fun creative and collaborative sides of Mathematics. Through fun and interactive games and activities, they will explore some suprsingly deep and novel aspects of Mathematics!
  • Project Title: Mathapalooza
  • Project Director: Zdenka Guadarrama
  • Project Summary:

    Mathapalooza programming has evolved and expanded over the last ten years from a single day event, to multiple events, including Mathapalooza Field Trips at Rockhurst University and Kansas City Metro schools (to engage K-12 students in hands on mathematics activities in areas of mathematics they don’t usually see in school), Mathapalooza Career Jumping events (to introduce students to mathematical careers), Mathapalooza Days (which combine math activities with career jumping events), and Mathapalooza Professional Development (for teachers focusing on the teaching and learning of mathematics through inquiry). During the past year, and in response to the pandemic, Mathapalooza also developed a virtual presence including Mathapalooza virtual Field Trips for schools and Mathapalooza Meets for families.

    In 2022 Mathapalooza will celebrate its 10th birthday. To note the occasion, Mathapalooza will host a series of celebratory events highlighting each of its program components, with a Mathapalooza Day as part of KC Remake Learning Days 2022. The strengthening of Mathapalooza’s online presence, expansion to other locations, and the creation of activities that are widely accessible to the public will be part of this year’s developmental goals.

  • Project Title: Beyond the Classroom
  • Project Director: Claire Merriman
  • Project Summary: The Beyond the Classroom (BTC) Summer Camp was started in 2018 to give local high school girls the opportunity to build confidence in their math and programming abilities and to develop a deeper understanding of a variety of topics including mathematical and algorithmic reasoning. The program is open to students of all genders, and has expanded to include a camp for middle schoolers and monthly Saturday workshops.
  • Project Title: Junior Math Scholars
  • Project Director: Olga Sokratova
  • Project Summary: Junior Math Scholars at the University of Iowa is an enrichment program for 6th-8th graders. The students meet bi-weekly to learn topics in mathematics not covered in the school curriculum. The material features higher than normal level of difficulty to provide extra challenge to students. Special attention is given to writing proper explanations. The students are taught to articulate reasoning and use correct mathematical language. The homework is given regularly to reinforce new concepts. The homework will be graded, and feedback is given. In addition to classes the students meet in homework rewiew sessions. The goal of the program is developing problem-solving skills and long-lasting interest in mathematics.
  • Project Title: WVU Junior Math Club
  • Project Director: Casian Pantea
  • Project Summary: The West Virginia University (WVU) Junior Math Club is a series of weekly meetings centered around competition training and excursions into mathematical topics that complement the high school math curriculum, including algebraic identities, polynomials, inequalities, combinatorics, induction, number theory, euclidian geometry, probability, and functional equations. The program is open to students in grades 7-12, and is hosted at the WVU Department of Mathematics. The broad purpose of the WVU Junior Math Club is to engage talented students in the study of mathematics, sharpen their problem solving skills, and to foster a fun community of enthusiastic and gifted young individuals.

 

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2020

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 awardees were given the option to defer their funding until 2021. Those awardees are indicated with a *.

  • Project Title: Long Island Mathematics Competition
  • Project Director: Anil Venkatesh
  • Project Summary: Long Island Mathematics Competition will host a one-day math competition for high school students in the NYC and Long Island region. The competition is team based with content provided by Mathematical Puzzle Programs (MaPP), a volunteer-run non-profit that produces expertly designed math puzzles based on contemporary research in mathematics, yet written to be accessible to high school students. Student participants will work in teams to tackle puzzles in computational geometry, persistence homology, operations research, and other areas of mathematics that are underrepresented in the typical secondary curriculum. The event is designed to promote fun and teamwork, with mobile app integration that supports a campus scavenger hunt to track down clues and uncover bonus puzzles. It will be staffed by trained graduate and undergraduate student facilitators from the Adelphi Math Club. This project will establish or strengthen connections between the Adelphi Math Department and local high schools. By centrally involving the Adelphi Math Club in the event, it will help lay the groundwork for the establishment of a Math Circle.
  • Project Title: Why Do Engineers Need Math?
  • Project Director: Lucia Riderer
  • Project Summary: Check back in 2021 for more information about this project!
  • Project Title: FGCU Mathletes Circle for Bright and Talented Middle School Students
  • Project Directors: Tanya Huffman and Menaka Navaratna
  • Project Summary: Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) Mathletes Circle is a non-profit year-round enrichment program for bright and talented middle school students organized by the Department of Mathematics in partnership with Immokalee Middle School. The Mathletes Circle is a threefold program that consists of a Summer Camp, Saturday Mathletes Day sessions during regular semesters, and AMC-8 preparatory sessions. Considering the current health risks some or all these events may be conducted in the virtual format. The ultimate objective of this program is to strengthen middle school students’ interest in mathematics and provide early experience and exposure to STEM related careers with mathematical foundations. FGCU's College of Arts and Sciences and College of Engineering faculty devoted their time to develop program lessons and activities providing youth with an engaging curriculum that sparks curiosity and relates mathematics to other disciplines and real life problems.
  • Project Title: Integration of Vertical Mentoring into the Black River Public School Math Teams
  • Project Director: Stephanie Edwards
  • Project Summary: This collaboration between Hope College and Black River Public School (BRPS) seeks to have Hope College students mentor advanced BRPS high school and middle school students. The advanced BRPS students, in turn, mentor other BRPS students while actively participating in the BRPS math teams. The mentoring will occur weekly and the math teams will participate in regional, state, and national competitions. The Hope College students will work with the BRPS math teams on creativity and problem solving, serving as coaches to the group. The grant will be used to purchase materials for the mathlete training, funds for speakers geared toward advanced MS/HS students, funds for the Hope College mentors, as well as professional development funds for the PIs and BRPS teachers. The grant will also subsidize costs of participating in contests including registrations and transportation.
  • Project Title: A Mathematics and Statistics enrichment program
  • Project Directors: Ningning Wang and Yonghua Yan
  • Project Summary: This project is a collaboration among Jackson State University and Germantown Middle School (GMS) and Germantown Highschool School (GHS) Mathematics clubs to grow and expand mathematics and statistics enrichment activities for the students. The goals of the project will be achieved by engaging a diverse population of approximately total thirty (20 from GMS and 10 from GHS) 6th-12th graders for weekly meetings during the coming academic year, stimulating students' interest in learning mathematics and providing opportunities for training in mathematics beyond the school curriculum. The three scheduled activities are 1) Host AMC 8 competitions for the GMS students and AMC 10/12 competitions。 2) During the academic year, undergraduate students will assist GMS math club to teach and mentor their students. 3) Field trip to the JSU campus. The students will have an important opportunity to observe college life and discover the arts of mathematics and its related applications using advanced scientific and engineering tools.
  • Project Title: Montana State University-Billings Math Circle: Encouraging the students of Billings Montana to engage with the Creativity & Playfulness of Mathematics
  • Project Director: Tien Chih
  • Project Summary: The MSUB Math Circle is a student circle for Billings, Montana students grades 4 through 8. We are an afterschool outreach program where students work collaboratively to discover the adventurous and creative side of Mathematics. Sessions are facilitated by MSUB Mathematics professor Dr. Tien Chih and student volunteers from the MSUB Mathematics Department. In the 2020-2021 year, we will be facilitating sessions online, but we hope to be back to seeing our students in person again soon!
  • Project Title: Oglethorpe University Summer Math Camp
  • Project Directors: Mary Garner, Virginia Watson, Isa Sanchez
  • Project Summary: The Oglethorpe University Summer Camp in Mathematics is for high school students who are seeking an opportunity to enrich their knowledge of mathematics. The focus of the camp is games. Participants will explore mathematically rich games such as Set, Nim, Instant Insanity, Sprouts, Microrobots, and more. After they become familiar with a game and play the game with fellow campers, they’ll work together to analyze the game and devise a winning strategy. They’ll be encouraged to use problem-solving techniques such as working backward or starting with a simpler problem. We’ll collaboratively engage in discussions of the mathematics that can help analyze the game, including probability, binary arithmetic, and modular arithmetic. Each day a visiting mathematician will engage the students with a game of his or her choice, and Oglethorpe University undergraduate students will help the students with their analyses. There will be a series of tournaments during the week with prizes awarded on the last day of the camp.
  • Project Title: Mathapalooza on the Go
  • Project Director: Zdenka Guadarrama
  • Project Summary:

    Mathapalooza on the Go will take activities into schools and online classrooms in the Kansas City area giving our participants an opportunity to investigate mathematics concepts that are not usually part of a K-12 curriculum. Students will engage in hands-on mathematics activities to explore, discover and develop their own understanding of math. In this way, they will get to experience mathematics as an interactive and fun subject in their own classrooms either on-ground or on-line, and see mathematics as an exciting option for further study.

    Mathapalooza on the Go has two formats. One offers on-line activities and opportunities for students and teachers while keeping the hands on approach that is characteristic of our activities. The other offers on-line support for teachers and toy kit loans for classrooms to help include Mathapalooza activities as part of regular classes without exposing teachers or students to outside visitors during social distancing times.

    For inquiries, please contact: Zdenka.Guadarrama@rockhurst.edu

  • Project Title: Continuing and Expanding the Stevens Math Circle Initiative
  • Project Director: Jan Cannizzo
  • Project Summary: Since its founding in the fall of 2017, and with the support of a previous DMEG, the Stevens Math Circle Initiative has organized nearly 30 Math Circles at local schools. Our model entails hiring talented undergraduate and high school students to facilitate Math Circles using ready-to-use materials composed by us (professional mathematicians). It thereby seeks to overcome a key barrier to the creation of large numbers of Math Circles in the United States, namely the small ratio of mathematicians willing and able to run a Math Circle to students who would benefit from participating in one. With this renewal of our DMEG, we will continue the Stevens Math Circle Initiative and expand it to more public schools near Stevens Institute of Technology.
  • Project Title: STEM Model-Eliciting Activities for Middle School Students
  • Project Director: Diane Cheng
  • Project Summary: Parkville Middle & Center of Technology school is a Baltimore County Public School where only 18.7% of the students earned a “Proficient” rating on the statewide mathematics assessment in Academic Year 2018-2019. Parkville MS has a STEM enrichment club that met bi-weekly after-school in 2018-2019. Currently, this club does not have a university partnership and there were only approximately 7 active members each week in 2018-2019. Our vision is to grow the STEM club and increase participation by having university faculty and university students provide monthly workshops with originally designed Model-Eliciting Activities (MEA’s) in a virtual format for Parkville MS students. University students will gain educational research experience while they analyze the middle school students’ work and present their findings at Mathematical Association of America sessions at the 2022 MathFest conference. Teacher and student materials for these originally designed MEA’s will be made publicly available and published in professional journal articles and on Towson University’s mathematics department website. This project will benefit the middle school students, university students, and the mathematics and mathematics education communities at large.
  • Project Title: Northridge Middle School Math Club
  • Project Director: Shibin Dai
  • Project Summary: This project is to build a mathematics club in the Northridge Middle School (NMS), to provide enrichment activities that complement the regular mathematics curriculum for about 30 gifted and talented students in Grade 6-8. The PI will organize the math club with the help of NMS math teachers and parent volunteers, many of whom are professors at University of Alabama (UA). The math department of UA will recruit and pay undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics and engineering to serve as teaching assistants. There are two goals. (1) The first goal is to prepare middle school students for prestigious math competitions. The emphasis will be on AMC 8, the MATHCOUNTS school competitions, and the Perennial Math Competition. More advanced students will be encouraged and prepared to compete in AMC 10, and MATHCOUNTS chapter and state competitions. In addition, students will attend local math tournaments, at Muscle Shoals Middle School, Vestavia Hills High School, Hoover High School, and Pizitz Middle School. (2) The second goal is for students to explore careers that heavily rely on a STEM major at the university level. Since most parent volunteers are university professors, it is natural for them to introduce their research and the career path in their respective majors. In addition, students will have opportunities to visit the UA campus and experience the state-of-the-art technology such as Virtual Reality, automatic control, and robotics.
  • Project Title: Junior Math Scholars at the University of Iowa
  • Project Director: Olga Sokratova
  • Project Summary: The instructor and co-instructor will meet bi-weekly with students to teach topics in mathematics not covered by the school curriculum. The material will feature higher than normal level of difficulty to provide extra challenge to students. The particular topics will include problem solving strategies, number theory, divisibility tests, prime factorization, initiation to geometry, Pythagorean triples, counting, and probability. After discussing the new material as a class, the students will continue working on problems in small groups. Both the instructor and co-instructor will facilitate the group work. Special attention will be given to writing proper explanations. The students will be taught to articulate reasoning and use correct mathematical language.
  • Project Title: Puerto Rico Math Olympiads (OMPR): Summer Camp
  • Project Director: Luis Caceres
  • Project Summary:

    The main objective of this summer camp is to offer courses and activities that provide enthusiasm in learning math, introduces important concepts, practices strategies for problem solving and develops abilities of those who may become leaders in the next mathematical generation. On the other hand, in this camp, students are faced with challenging math problems; faculty and graduate students work as advisors for the students, providing tips when needed but encouraging the students to work on their own. The math topics covered in the camp include geometry, number theory, combinatorics, algebra and games and strategies.

    The proposed Camp will be the last activity of the annual activities of the Puerto Rico Math Olympiads Program (OMPR). OMPR SUMMER CAMP caters exclusively to Puerto Rico Middle and High School students, in both public and private schools, and is exclusively merit based, with a very rigorous selection process (4 math Olympiads filters). The selection process starts with more than 3000 students from all around the Island and only 25 students are selected for the Math Camp.

    Activities of OMPR are organized by professors of the Math Department of the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez. For more information you may visit the homepage: om.pr

  • Project Title: Roy High School Math Fair: Inspiring Students to Model with Mathematics
  • Project Director: Brynja Kohler
  • Project Summary: We propose to bring mathematics teachers and Utah State University (USU) math faculty together to provide an opportunity for students to create mathematical models. Students will meet weekly after school for 12 weeks to learn mathematical modeling practices. They will also work on individual or group projects. This work will culminate in a Math Fair, where students will be able to present their works and share what they have learned through the modeling process. This proposed enrichment activity will help students create and learn mathematics by exploring topics that are important to them.
  • Project Title: Polk County Math Circle
  • Project Director: Leanne Merrill
  • Project Summary: The Polk County Math Circle will increase mathematical creativity, persistence, and community in Polk County, Oregon by bringing together high school students, college students, and college faculty from Western Oregon University to work collaboratively on challenging mathematics tasks. Small teams of high school students will be paired with college student mentors for monthly mathematical discovery sessions, solving and expanding on a variety of rich and creative mathematical tasks that go beyond the typical high school curriculum. The program will culminate in a one-day Polk County Mathematics Festival, where high school students will engage with family and community members in mathematical inquiry and celebration.
  • Project Title: Worcester State Math Circle
  • Project Directors: Hansun To
  • Project Summary: We propose a continuation of the program Math Circle (Worcester State Math Academy Circle) for talented high school students from Worcester area, MA. We intend to meet in-person and through Zoom-calls for 3 hours on Saturday morning, from October to January, for a total of 10 sessions. We plan to recruit a group of 15-20 students from Burncoat High School, Claremont Academy, Worcester Technical High School and from local Homeschoolers who are interested in improving their problem-solving skills, while working on topics that are not part of the standard secondary mathematics curriculum. We will prepare the participants and administer the AMC 10/12 competitions in the end of January. These activities will be organized by mathematics faculty members Dr. To and Dr. Fung from Worcester State University, with the recruitment help from Superintendent of the Worcester Public School system and live recruiting sessions at the Burncoat, Claremont Academy, and Worcester Technical High schools. Our goal will be to specifically try to recruit women and students from under-represented groups (Hispanic, African American). In our first year, all of our participants were male, and most of them were Asian. Math circle sessions will be supported by two pre-service secondary teachers’ mathematics majors. The project will target communication of mathematics skills and proficiency in problem- solving. This project will support participants to strengthen their mathematical abilities and eventually contribute to the mathematics college community

 

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2019

  • Project Title: Expanding the Fresno Math Circle and other Enrichment activities
  • Project Directors: Maria Nogin
  • Project Summary: The FMC was established in 2015 with the mission to provide local children with a learning environment that fosters learning beautiful mathematical theories beyond the regular school curriculum. Currently, we have four groups with a total of over 70 participants in grades from 3 to 12, meeting bi-weekly. We also host the Math Kangaroo competition and prepare students for it. Last academic year, with the help of Dolciani grant, we set up a host site for the AMC 8/10/12 competitions, as well as started preparation sessions for them. Our vision is to grow the FMC and increase participation in the competitions we host. This project is a platform for our Central Valley students to actively collaborate with peers who share similar interests. We will also partner with current in-service teachers from area schools by inviting them to observe and assist in these enrichment activities and mentor our participants. The activities will be organized by the University faculty assisted by the credential students, who both serve as role models to the middle and high school students and obtain a valuable field experience in working with them on advanced mathematics. This project will benefit the student and teacher community molding each of them to become better mathematicians and educators.
  • Project Title:Midwest Sports Analytics Camp
  • Project Director: Russell Goodman
  • Project Summary:The Midwest Sports Analytics Camp expands Central College’s STEM initiatives by connecting with middle-to-high school students, helping prepare these students for the rigors of college. Campers will actively develop their quantitative skills through sports-related contexts by engaging in experimental data collection, problem-solving, and accessible, open-ended, complex projects. We plan to host between 12-18 campers, currently in grades 8-10, from middle/high schools in the rural surrounding community of Pella, IA, along with strategically-chosen schools in the Des Moines area since that metropolitan area is at most one hour away. The campers will spend four days on campus, engaged in one significant topic per day with the guiding objectives listed below. As a result, campers will discover that quantitative analytical problems are all around in the sports and everyday world. Further, these campers will have a head-start in acquiring the tools to solve such problems. Objectives: Active engagement in projects/activities that promote self-discovery and mathematical concepts in the everyday world and sports; encourage (continued) interest in studying mathematics, statistics, or data analysis in high school and college; exposure to career opportunities in mathematics, statistics, and data analysis; and student understanding that math is more than just calculations and that it is actually all around them
  • Project Title:Why Do Engineers Need Math?
  • Project Director: Lucia Riderer
  • Project Summary:“Why Do Engineers Need Math?” is a math enrichment program designed to raise middle school students’ awareness of the importance of mathematics in various engineering fields and increase their motivation to pursue math-related careers. The program is a joint effort between Citrus College and Glendora Unified School District. Twenty-four 6th grade students will work on mathematically heavy engineering activities under the facilitative leadership of college students. At the end of the four month program, the middle school students will create posters showcasing what they learned in the program and present those posters at a Symposium that will be open to the public.
  • Project Title: The Williams High School Mathematics Club
  • Project Director: James Beuerle
  • Project Summary:This project is a collaboration between the Williams High School (WHS) Mathematics Club and Elon University. The PIs seek to engage a diverse population of approximately 45 WHS students in three types of mathematical enrichment activities during the 2019-2020 AY for the purpose of inspiring said students to take more mathematics classes in their secondary and postsecondary careers. The three activities are: (1) preparing for and participating in two mathematics contests - the AMC 10/12 and the Elon University High School Math Contest; (2) researching, alongside Elon University undergraduate mathematics majors, unsolved problems in the area of statistics and disseminating results in the form of conference presentations and at least one submission for publication; (3) attending a monthly speaker series, hosted at Elon, where speakers from academia, business, industry, and government discuss aspects of their careers that have the potential to inspire students to pursue a STEM major at the university level. The collaboration between Elon University and WHS is natural. The two institutions are located approximately 4 miles apart. WHS is also well-suited for engaging participants from diverse ethnic backgrounds; currently 33% of students are African American, 26% are Hispanic, and 49% are female.
  • Project Title: Vertical Integration in Mathematics: Next Steps
  • Project Director: Laura McSweeney
  • Project Summary:The main goal of the "Vertical Integration in Mathematics" project is the intentional vertical integration of mathematics through mentoring and collaboration between the middle-schoolers at Fairfield Woods Middle School (FWMS), the FWMS Mathletes, Ms. Formato, and Fairfield University undergraduates and faculty. The core of the proposal will be the continued support and training of a team of 12 Mathletes, who will participate in the regional MathCounts competition in February. These students will be mentored by two to four Fairfield University undergraduates who will facilitate the Mathletes' training through activities designed to expose them to new math topics and challenging problems, but also introduce strategies that will help the Mathletes during the MathCounts competition. After the MathCounts competition, the Mathletes and undergraduates will engage in research projects and present their findings at a poster session at the end of the program. The Mathletes and undergraduates will also be involved in mentoring other middle schoolers who attend the FWMS Math Circle (math club).
  • Project Title:A Mathematics and Statistics Enrichment Program
  • Project Directors: Michael Gates
  • Project Summary: This project will collaborate with Germantown Middle School to grow and expand mathematics and statistics enrichment activities for students. It will be achieved by engaging a diverse population of approximately twenty 6th-8th graders for a year long weekly after school Math Club meeting in promoting students’ intrinsic motivation for encouragement in mathematics and opportunities of mathematical beyond school curriculum. Set up a host site for the AMC 8 /10/12 competitions, as well as teach students creative problem-solving skills and increase the students’ interest in mathematics. Each semester invite at three speakers from a mathematical industry to present the role mathematics plays in their occupation, to help build a talented mathematician and statistician pipeline, and to improve and accelerate students’ mathematical skills and understanding through this project. In addition, two fields trips to JSU campus where students will have unique opportunity to observe college life and learn mathematics concept using Python.
  • Project Title: Montana Math Circle
  • Project Director: Fenqjen Luo
  • Project Summary:Montana Math Circle will be able to provide students who show promise or interest in mathematics several opportunities to access enrichment activities, work in teams with like-minded peers, and become passionate about mathematics. Montana Math Circle will be formatted as a summer camp and after school enrichment program. In 2019-2020 academic year, Montana Math Circle will host a 6-day summer camp (3 days for grades 6-8 and 3 days for grades 8-10), 10 weekly semester sessions on the university campus, and sponsor a series of American Mathematics competitions (8, 10/12A, & 10/12B) and MATHCOUNTS. In addition, Montana Math Circe will provide synchronous online, interactive participation opportunities to those students who are from disadvantaged locations and cannot physically attend Montana Math Circe’s on campus summer camp or weekly sessions.
  • Project Title: Oglethorpe University Summer Camp in Mathematics
  • Project Director: Mary Garner
  • Project Summary: The Oglethorpe University Summer Camp in Mathematics is for high school students who are seeking an opportunity to enrich their knowledge of mathematics. It is a one-week nonresidential Summer Camp where students work in teams on a project with a mathematician, interact with local mathematicians who visit the camp, and engage in fun mathematics activities. At the end of the week, students will create posters describing their project and the work they completed, and then view and discuss the projects. The purpose of the camp is to provide the students an opportunity to work closely with mathematicians to explore mathematically rich problems in a collaborative, supportive environment. The participants will explore a variety of mathematical topics, with an emphasis on problem solving and mathematical thinking. They will also have the opportunity to focus on either the mathematics involved in judging the validity and reliability of statistics or the fairness of various voting methods.
  • Project Title: Mathapalooza Field Trips
  • Project Director: Zdenka Guadarrama
  • Project Summary: The Mathapalooza Room at Rockhurst is the perfect place for all ages to come and investigate mathematics concepts that are not usually part of a K-12 curriculum. Students engage in hands-on activities to explore, discover and develop their own understanding in a college environment. Experiencing mathematics as an interactive and fun subject can help students see mathematics as an exciting option for further study, and visualize themselves as future professionals in math-related careers. In order to meet the demand from local area schools to bring larger groups to the Mathapalooza Field Trip experience, with the aid of a Dolciani grant, we plan to create another Mathapalooza space at Rockhurst through a redesign of an existing classroom. This space would then be available for Mathapalooza field trips at regular times each week. This will allow us to significantly expand the impact of the Mathapalooza field trip experience.
  • Project Title: High Level Math on the High Plains (H^2)
  • Project Directors: George Williams
  • Project Summary: The proposed program consists of two after school year-long math clubs, which will meet weekly, with participants drawn from high-achieving math students from two West Texas middle schools. One school is in the Lubbock-Cooper Independent School District, a middle income suburban district, while the second school is in a low income urban area in Lubbock Independent School District. The participation of this second school will provide students of lower socioeconomic status and underrepresented populations the opportunity to participate in a high performance club. The program will target gifted, high-performing mathematics students and their teachers and expose them to mathematical problems that require deeper exploration and analysis than those provided in their regular classrooms. Furthermore, this program will also offer the teachers the opportunity to learn some higher level mathematics and active pedagogical strategies from college instructors.
  • Project Title: Puerto Rico Math Olympiads
  • Project Director: Luis Caceres
  • Project Summary: In Puerto Rico very few efforts have being made in order to meet the needs of academically talented students in mathematics. OMPR SUMMER CAMP is a five days’ camp. The objective of this summer camp is to offer courses and activities that provide enthusiasm in learning math, introduces important concepts, practices strategies for problem solving and develops abilities of those who may become leaders in the next mathematical generation. On the other hand, in this camp, students are faced with challenging math problems; faculty and graduate students work as advisors for the students, providing tips when needed but encouraging the students to work on their own. The math topics covered in the camp include geometry, number theory, combinatorics, algebra and games and strategies. The Camp will be the last activity of the annual activities of the Puerto Rico math Olympiads Program (OMPR). Annual activities of OMPR include several math Olympiads and sabbatical academies for the best students. We see the necessity of providing for the very best students a math Camp to expose them to high level math. OMPR SUMMER CAMP caters exclusively to Puerto Rico Middle and High School students, in both public and private schools, and is exclusively merit based, with a very rigorous selection process (4 math Olympiads filters). The selection process starts with more than 3000 students from all around the Island and only 20 students are selected for the Math Camp.
  • Project Title: Oshkosh Summer Math Academy
  • Project Directors: Eric Kuennen
  • Project Summary: This project is to start a new summer math camp at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh for talented middle school students. Our first Summer Oshkosh Math Academy (SOMA) will be a four-day program for 30 students entering grades 6-8 that will feature student exploration and a creative problem-solving approach to mathematics. Camp participants will see aspects of mathematics and topics that are not typically part of the middle grades curriculum. Our activities will help middle schoolers develop mathematical habits of mind by actually doing mathematics, that is, investigating, experimenting, posing questions, modeling problems, conjecturing, justifying solutions and critiquing the reasoning of others. Our aim is to challenge students while exploring the beauty of mathematics, and provide opportunities to for them to experience mathematics as a creative art, which we hope will encourage them to further their mathematical studies in high school, college, and beyond. We will feature two “mini-courses” taught by UW Oshkosh math professors that run the length of the four-day program, one on Non-Euclidean Geometries, and one on Probability and Expected Value. We will also have one-time sessions on a variety of topics including mathematical card tricks, a logic puzzle scavenger hunt, and informational session on careers in mathematics. We will end each day with time to explore and play in our Math Explore Center with a variety of mathematical demonstrations, puzzles, and games.
  • Project Title: South Cache Math Club: Inspiring Students to Reach Higher
  • Project Directors: Brynja Kohler
  • Project Summary: South Cache Middle School (SCMS) mathematics teachers, Utah State University (USU) math faculty and the Primed Minds organization have joined together (the Team) to organize a much-needed, weekly afterschool extracurricular math club for 7th and 8th graders at South Cache Middle School that will incorporate engaging new math curriculum from Primed Minds. SCMS mathematics teachers are particularly concerned with students’ mathematical identity following a district wide shift in school configuration. Following the curriculum shift, SCMS students’ mathematical identity has been shaped by self-selection into honors and non-honors track classes directly out of elementary school. This trajectory thus determines mathematical experiences for the students, from 7th grade going forward into high school with the district subsequently discontinuing honors classes at the Math 7 level and instead providing extension activities for students as they are ready. The current school culture places emphasis on remediation and students’ opportunity for extension activities has been limited, even though the way students interact during mathematics inquiry influences their current and future mathematical identity. The proposed extracurricular mathematics club will remedy this lack of mathematics interaction.
  • Project Title: Worcester State Math Academy
  • Project Directors: Hansun To
  • Project Summary: TWe propose the creation of a Saturday Math Circle (Worcester State Math Academy Circle ) for talented high school students from Worcester, MA. We intend to meet on Saturday mornings from November to February for a total of 10 sessions. We plan to recruit a group of 20-25 students from Doherty Memorial High School and Worcester Technical High School who are interested in improving their problem-solving skills while working on topics that are not part of the standard secondary mathematics curriculum. We will prepare the participants and administer the AMC 10 and AMC 12 competitions in February 2020. These activities will be organized by mathematics faculty members Dr. To and Dr. Fung from Worcester State University, with the recruitment help from secondary teachers Ms. Coderre and Ms. Labbay from Worcester Public School system. Sessions will be supported by two pre-service secondary teachers undergraduate mathematics majors. Once the competitions are done, we will concentrate on problemsolving sessions as an introduction to mathematical research. The project will target effective communication of mathematics and proficiency in problem-solving. This project will support participants to strengthen their mathematical abilities and eventually contribute to the mathematics college community.

 

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2018

  • Project Title: Expanding the Fresno Math Circle and other Enrichment activities
  • Project Directors: Maria Nogin
  • Project Summary: This proposal is to grow and enhance the Fresno Math Circle (FMC) and expand mathematics enrichment activities for middle and high school students. The FMC was established in 2015 with the mission to provide local children with a learning environment that fosters learning beautiful mathematical theories beyond the regular school curriculum. Currently, we have four groups with a total of 60 participants in grades from 4 to 12, meeting bi-weekly, and we will add a fresh batch of 3-4-graders next year. We also host the Math Kangaroo competition and prepare students for it. This academic year, with the help of Dolciani grant, we set up a host site for the AMC 8/10/12 competitions, as well as start preparation sessions for them. Our vision is to grow the FMC and increase participation in the competitions we host. This project is a platform for our Central Valley students to actively collaborate with peers who share similar interests. We will also partner with current in-service teachers from area schools by inviting them to observe and assist in these enrichment activities and mentor our participants. The activities will be organized by the University faculty assisted by the credential students, who both serve as role models to the middle and high school students and obtain a valuable field experience in working with them on advanced mathematics. This project will benefit the student and teacher community molding each of them to become better mathematicians and educators.
  • Project Title:Site-based Professional Development of Undergraduate and Graduate Students for Leading Math Circles
  • Project Director: Carolyn Narasimhan
  • Project Summary:For the past two years DePaul University has received grants from the Mathematical Association of America to collaborate with Math Circles of Chicago (MC2) in developing and implementing workshops for university math students who will go on to lead MC2 sessions. The workshops focus on introducing these students to activities, teaching techniques, and community building strategies that will make sessions accessible to a wide range of students. Surveys indicated that participants have found the workshops to be very effective in preparing them to plan engaging and motivating math circle sessions. There is also evidence that the workshops have had an impact on university students’ own practices as teaching assistants. Responding to this feedback, we propose this year to use Dolciani Mathematics Enrichment funds to support three workshops for seven undergraduate and graduate math students in the summer of 2018 to prepare them for leading new or expanded math circle sessions in 2018-2019. The innovation that we propose this year is to make the workshops “practicum based” by holding them at the site of the Math Circles summer camp. This will allow participants to observe how allow participants to observe how experienced leaders engage children in doing novel mathematics. DMEG funds will also pay for these students and two experienced Chicago Public School teachers to lead three sessions during the 2018-2019 school year.
  • Project Title:R^2MC(Red Rock Math Circle)
  • Project Director: Jie Liu
  • Project Summary:In this project, we plan to initiate a Math Circle in Math department of Dixie State University. We will invite up to twenty 6th-8th graders to DSU campus for a year-long weekly after school Math Circle meeting. During each meeting, students will work on various fun and challenging open ended math related problems. We will also prepare students for Math Olympiad Contests through practicing contests questions from previous years. The discussions will led by different math faculty members or math major students. DSU faculty members in different areas and other local community members will be invited to do a monthly math related presentation. Each semester we plan to invite at least one speaker from industry to present for the students. The purpose of those presentations is to show how important math is and how widely math is applied in different fields. We also plan to have a math related field trip each semester either to the surrounding state/national parks or local companies. This will provide opportunities for students to enjoy math in nature and math in real life.
  • Project Title: The Williams High School Mathematics Club
  • Project Director: Chad Awtrey
  • Project Summary:This project is a collaboration between the Williams High School (WHS) Mathematics Club and Elon University. The PIs seek to engage a diverse population of approximately 45 WHS students in three types of mathematical enrichment activities during the 2018-2019 AY for the purpose of inspiring said students to take more mathematics classes in their secondary and post-secondary careers. The three activities are: (1) preparing for and participating in two mathematics contests - the AMC 10/12 and the Elon University High School Math Contest; (2) researching, alongside Elon University undergraduate mathematics majors, unsolved problems in the area of abstract algebra and statistics and disseminating results in the form of conference presentations and at least one submission for publication; (3) attending a monthly speaker series, hosted at Elon, where speakers from academia, business, industry, and government discuss aspects of their careers that have the potential to inspire students to pursue a STEM major at the university level. The collaboration between Elon University and WHS is natural. The two institutions are located approximately 4 miles apart. Furthermore, PI Awtrey was the research mentor for PI French when she was an undergraduate mathematics major at Elon University. WHS is also well-suited for engaging participants from diverse ethnic backgrounds; currently 33% of students are African American, 26% are Hispanic, and 49% are female.
  • Project Title: Inspired by Math - A mathematics enrichment program in Emporia, Kansas
  • Project Director: Qiang Shi
  • Project Summary:Our program is a math enrichment program that attracts motivated and talented middle school students in Emporia and surrounding communities. This math enrichment program is a joint effort between Emporia State University (ESU) and Emporia Middle School (EMS). It consists of two components: a four-day summer camp at ESU and a weekly program in the fall and spring at EMS. In the summer camp, students will be introduced to the format of the AMC 8 contest and have opportunities to work on previous AMC 8 problems. In the second hour, a short math expository talk or a math project will follow. During the regular school year, students attending EMS will continue to work on their math skills during before- and after-school sessions. Students work on problem-solving and other hands-on projects. They also attend invited math talks held at ESU. The group also participates in AMC 8 in the fall and takes a field trip in the spring. Our program is the only year-long math enrichment program for middle school students in the Emporia area. The program has had positive impact on our students. We would like to continue this program with a new goal this year of improving participation of talented students from underrepresented groups.
  • Project Title: Vertical Integration in Mathematics
  • Project Directors: Janet Striuli
  • Project Summary:We propose the creation of a Fairfield Woods Middle School team of Mathletes of 15 students who will be immersed in a once a week after school program for six months. At the beginning, students will be working on hard math problems, then they will be training for a math competition, and after the competition (in early February) the students will work on research projects in mathematics or statistics. Students in the middle school will be mentored by undergraduate math majors, by Professors McSweeney and Striuli, faculty from Fairfield University, and Ms.~ Formato, the Mathematics resource specialist from Fairfield Woods Middle School. The project aims to a vertical interaction of math abilities and expertises.
  • Project Title:FGCU Mathletes Summer Camp for Bright and Talented Middle School Students
  • Project Directors: Tanya Huffman
  • Project Summary: FGCU Mathletes Summer camp is an annual week-long enrichment program for the middle school students organized by the Department of Mathematics at Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU). This non-profit camp is conducted for bright and talented middle school students interested in investigating concepts in mathematics that are not usually introduced at the middle school level. The ultimate objective of this program is to strengthen middle school students’ interest in mathematics and provide early experience and exposure to STEM related careers with mathematical foundation. Participants engage in instructional and hands-on sessions lead by FGCU professors from mathematics, computer science, chemistry, and engineering departments. Over 15 FGCU faculty from College of Arts and Sciences and College of Engineering devoted their time to develop program lessons and activities providing youth with engaging curriculum that sparks curiosity and relates mathematics to other disciplines and real-life problems. The program has had a tremendous success since it was first introduced in the summer of 2014, attracting a diverse group of middle school students from around Southwest Florida. The program is especially successful in recruiting females, minorities, and economically disadvantaged students. Gender diversity is evenly split for the program.
  • Project Title:Constructing Elliptic Curves of Prime Order over Finite Fields
  • Project Directors: Duc Huynh
  • Project Summary:The proposed project is a year-long program on constructing elliptic curves of prime order over finite fields. The program will consist of two parts: a week-long summer camp, and a Math Circle. The students will be learning elementary concepts from number theory such as prime numbers, modular arithmetic, and computing square roots; and they will be introduced to programming (Python) as well. By the end of the summer camp, the students will have learned how to explicitly construct elliptic curves with certain security requirements using the open-source math software Sage Math. Three research assistants from Georgia Southern University - Armstrong Campus will serve as mentors during the camp and throughout the year, providing the high school students with mathematical and programming guidance and support. The Math Circle is a continuation of the summer camp. The students will be given a series of projects, culminating with a much-improved version of the algorithm from the summer camp; they will also discover how to apply the algorithm to test for prime numbers. The main goal of the Math Circle is to keep the students interested in the topics and have them motivated to pursue post-secondary education strengthening their understanding.
  • Project Title: Kutztown University Mathematics Olympiad Initiative (KUMOI)
  • Project Directors: Wing Hong Tony Wong
  • Project Summary:There are numerous pre-college mathematics competitions, such as the American Mathematics Competitions, MATHCOUNTS, Mathematical Kangaroo in USA, and Math League. In order for students to fully benefit from participating in these competitions, a suitable amount of training in mathematical problem solving skills is necessary. Nevertheless, very few schools in the region provide such opportunities to their students. In this project, I plan to collaborate with mathematics teachers from five regional middle schools to start up math teams in their respective schools. I will organize workshops for the teachers and run a summer day camp for a selected group of 30 students in the summer. I will also teach some training sessions for the math teams in the fall and spring. I will provide enough materials and training to each school so that the math teams will become mature and sustainable.
  • Project Title: Montana State University-Billings Math Circle: Encouraging the students of Billings Montana to engage with the Creativity & Playfulness of Mathematics
  • Project Director:Tien Chih
  • Project Summary:The Montana State University-Billings Math Circle is an after school mathematical outreach program, geared for students grades 6 through 8, held at Montana State University-Billings. The purpose of the program is to engage students in the creative and exploratory sides of mathematics in a relaxed cooperative environment. Professors and students from MSUB guide students as they work together in collaborative groups to make their own discoveries. There have been two sessions so far, with ten students attending up to this point. To encourage participation across all cross-sections of our community, these sessions are held at no cost to the students. We wish to continue to grow the program and expand our attendance, making the Montana State University-Billings Math Circle a local fixture of our community.
  • Project Title: A STEAM Powered Math Circle
  • Project Director:Braxton Carrigan
  • Project Summary:We are proposing a math circle themed around mathematical art. We will hold sessions approximately twice per month (15 during the academic year). We expect 20 to 25 participants (high school students), 2 facilitators (SCSU students), and 2 senior people (SCSU faculty) at each meeting. During meetings the participants will engage in relatively traditional math circle activities as well as hands-on constructions of mathematical art. Examples of the mathematical art envisioned are: large scale constructions of platonic solids, modular origami, quadric surfaces with string models, minimal surfaces via soap films, and mixed media installations/sculpture. There are a variety of mathematical concepts that can be illustrated via mathematical art, for instance the construction of a regular icosahedron that we completed recently with Math Club students at SCSU involved Combinatorics (counting vertices, edges and faces in the solid and discovering Euler's formula), Topology (the structure was stiffened using three mutually perpendicular rectangles which are linked as Borromean rings), Geometry (using geometrical reasoning to deduce that those internal rectangles are golden), and Group Theory (the famous result that the symmetry group of the icosahedron is isomorphic to A_5 was discovered by our math club students with minimal prompting). We believe that the theme of mathematical art will encourage participants to expand their understanding and help them fall in love with Math!
  • Project Title:Math Cirlce and Math Olympiad Initiative
  • Project Director: Jan Cannizzo
  • Project Summary: We are organizing Math Circles—extracurricular activities for school children that are run by high school or college students (together with school teachers) and that are based on material that we create. Our efforts are based on the belief that there are many school children who would enjoy—and benefit from—mathematical enrichment but do not have access to it. Moreover, there are many enthusiastic high school and college students who would be happy to teach this kind of math, except that it is difficult (for reasons involving organization, effort, and expertise) to prepare and compose material. Our approach is therefore to negotiate with public schools willing to host Math Circles, find high school or college students interested in teaching extracurricular math, and create content for Math Circle meetings that is ready to use with limited preparation. Relatedly, we are organizing an annual event that celebrates mathematics, namely the Stevens Math Olympiad, a problem-solving competition open to any and all students in grades 3-12 free of charge. The Olympiad takes place in May and attracts 350-400 students.
  • Project Title: Mathematical Data Science for High School Students: A University Experience
  • Project Directors: Nicolas Christou
  • Project Summary: In this project, Dr. Nicolas Christou, a faculty member of the UCLA Department of Statistics, will partner with Mr. Robert Montgomery, a Mathematics high school teacher from Edward Roybal Learning Center (Los Angeles Unified School District) to provide 30 high school students with an experience in Data Science at UCLA. This project will also involve graduate students in Statistics as well as undergraduate students in Mathematics and Statistics as classroom facilitators and mentors. The project will fund three campus visits to UCLA where students will be exposed to the theory and applications of regression analysis. On each day, there will be a variety of activities, such as whole class instruction, small group exploration, and an opportunity to explore the university as a science major.
  • Project Title: Summer Illinois Math Camp
  • Project Director: Jennifer McNeilly
  • Project Summary:Summer Illinois Math (SIM) Camp is a free, week-long math day camp for middle and high school students hosted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Mathematics. Campers will see the creative, discovery driven side of mathematics. By showing them some of the ways mathematicians approach problems, SIM Camp hopes to encourage them to continue studying math beyond the high school level.
  • Project Title: Northern Colorado Math Circle for Middle School Students
  • Project Directors: Gulden Karakok
  • Project Summary: The mission of the Northern Colorado Math Circle for Middle School Students is to provide mathematical problem-solving enrichment activities for 5th through 8th grade students in the Greeley-Evans school district in Colorado. This program will continue to support the district’s students, as no such free mathematical problem-solving outreach activities are available for them. We successfully hosted our two summer workshops. Each one was 3 days on UNC campus with 52 participants in 2016 and 23 students in 2017. In addition, we had 16 monthly evening sessions thus far. We propose to host another 3-day summer workshop for 48 students in June 2018 and have 7 monthly evening sessions during 2018-2019 school year. Participating students in our circle sessions will engage in solving mathematical tasks that encourage mathematical discovery and emphasize problem-solving strategies. We will work on STEM tasks to focus on different areas of mathematics this summer. Again, we will have undergraduate preservice teachers and graduate students whom will support and mentor participating students. These mentors will gain experience in teaching problem-solving tasks. All activities will take place on UNC campus to expose students to a college campus and develop awareness of the college experience. Similar to previous camps, we will have visitors from STEM careers to expose students to opportunities.
  • Project Title: Cottonwood High School Sherlock Club
  • Project Directors: Kenan Ince
  • Project Summary: This project would provide mathematical enrichment activities for talented but at-risk 9th – 12th graders at Cottonwood High School in the Salt Lake City metro area. We intend to establish a group of 20 motivated students who meet twice a month throughout the school year to engage in a wide variety of mathematical activities. Participants will engage in problem-based mathematical activities led by a variety of Westminster College STEM professors, who will discuss applications of math in careers. Participants will also visit Westminster College for a day of math enrichment activities co-sponsored by Westminster’s math club, Lemma.

 

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