Video of 2024 Scrapheap Showdown: Catch My Drift!

 Check out the last post for the details of the Scrapheap Showdown. 2024.

Here is the video produced by Somerville EdTV, Joseph Constantine and videoed by Bill Trudell.

Scrapheap Showdown: Catch My Drift

by Erica Dakin Voolich

On October 20, 17 high school students on six teams gathered in the Breed Memorial Hall at Tufts University to compete in the Somerville Math Fund’s 18th annual Scrapheap Showdown, Catch My Drift.

The students had the challenge to build a wind powdered craft to sail across the floor.  When they arrived the wind tunnel was built with seven 8ft  banquet tables, two end to end on each side and 3 across the top at the narrowed backend was a powerful fan.  They needed to build a wind craft to put into the tunnel and when the fan turned on the craft needed to travel at least across the finish line made from tape on the floor 16 feet from the fan. There were bonus points  if their craft was able to go beyond the finish line at the end of the tables to other floor markers.

The usual pile of interesting “junk” was in the scrapheap in the middle of the room with some extra stuff to possible choose for wheels.  They built and tested bases and tested out whether they rolled easily before building sails — all out of a variety of materials.  

The students worked for two and a half hours and then it was time to test their crafts against each other using the wind tunnel. The first round was without any weight and successive rounds carried rolls of pennies, first 1 and then 3, 6, 8, 10 and finally 11 rolls.  The first time a team didn’t reach the finish line, they were given a chance in the next round to continue with more weight before being eliminated.  

We started with six teams and four survived the first two rounds of competition. Two teams got bonus points for going well beyond the finish line in the early rounds.  We continued to add weight and there was cheering for each of the crafts and encouragement to get across that finish line in their voyages.  We kept putting more weight on each of the wind crafts. One team, the Highland Hijackers (4th), was eliminated after 8 rolls of pennies.  We were left with 3 teams to decide who came in first, second and third for the prizes.  Ten rolls of pennies, one team, Bob the Builders, crossed the finish line and the other two had their first time not crossing so they could participate in the next round with 11 rolls. With 11 rolls, no team crossed the finish line completely, two almost made it. Bob the Builder was first place almost crossing, Calculus Crusaders was second, almost crossing, and third, not crossing the line was Nacho Average Team. 

First place was “Bob the Builder” (Serena Wong, Bhavroop Kaur and Rafael Ronen). 

Second was Calculus Crusaders - The Return” (Liam Beretsky-Jewell, Darragh Keane and Emmanuel Mateo).  

Third Place was Nacho Average Team (Julian Barney, Chris Montiel and Sebestien Ungár).  

Fourth was “Highland Hijackers” (Ali El-Saus, Nitish, Rayan Afif Chaouch).

The teams chose their prizes in the order they finished.  The prizes donated were three sets of two tickets to the RedSox (donated by Sam Voolich) for a game in April 2025, three $50 gift cards donated by Charlie’s Kitchen, and three $50 gift cards donated by Dragon Pizza.

The other participating teams were Momo Monsters (Ahon Shakir, Pranjal Acharya, Manreet Kaur) 

and “Gatsby Party (Yuvraj Rattan, Zail Khan).

Designers and refiners of the challenge were members of the Somerville Math Fund Board: Fred Bernardin, Sanford Bogage, Adam Foster, Richard Graf, Dan Oshima, Chase Orsello, Jesse Stern, Erica Voolich, Susan Weiss.  Amy Weiss designed the teeshirt and Monica Fernandes designed the sponsor flyer; and Susan and Sanford designed the student recruiting and registration materials, and Sanford managed registration for this event.  Rogers Foam donated foam of various shapes and sizes to our scrapheap.

Michael Morgan and Patricia Murphy-Sheehy (Head of Math Department) at Somerville High helped with suggestions and distribution help of registration materials.  The math teachers at Somerville High School, recruited student teams.  Bill Trudell videoed the event for Somerville Cable EdTV Channel 15.  And here is  the video of the event uploaded to YouTube produced by Joe Constantine by EdTV for Somerville.

Again Tufts University was our wonderful host donating their gym space for a Sunday event.  Last year was our second year back after a three year COVID hiatus. This was our 18th Scrapheap Showdown and Tufts has been our host for all of these events.  

Thanks to our generous sponsors, this activity was both a fund raiser for a scholarship and three teacher grants, provided prizes for the students and allowed the students to participate without paying any registration fee as students did in the past.  We offered different levels of sponsorship for the event.  

Thanks to all of our wonderful donors whose donations will make one scholarship available next spring and three teacher grants in January.

Gold Level (one year of a college scholarship)East Cambridge Savings Bank, Jasper J. Lawson, PhD. & Associates, Julie Schneider, and Tufts University.

Silver Level (one teacher grant)Mr. & Mrs. Donald F. McGoldrick, Winter Hill Bank and a long term anonymous sponsor.

Bronze Level  (supporting Somerville Math Fund work):Charlie’s Kitchen, A Member of the Somerville High School Faculty, Midé Technology Corp, a couple of long term anonymous sponsors, and Sam Voolich.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville.  On January 7th, we will be looking for teacher grant applications; and in April, we will be looking for scholarship applications.   For more information or to volunteer or to make a donation, call 617-666-0666, e-mail mathfund@gmail.com, or go to www.somervillemathematicsfund.org.

The link for this post is https://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2024/10/scrapheap-showdown-catch-my-drift.html

Scrapheap Showdown is Coming -- time to get your team together!

 Scrapheap Showdown is Coming ... time to get your teams together.  Get two more friends and register your team.  Choose a crazy name for the team and then all come on October 20th to Breed Memorial Hall on Tufts University at 51 Winthrop St Medford -- a new location this year!

After two years off for the Pandemic, Scrapheap Showdown came back last year.  Here is the video of  2022's Scrapheap Showdown, Good Vibrations.    and here is 2023's Scrapheap Showdown Marble Mayhem, 

The Somerville Math Fund's annual high school engineering challenge is coming on Sunday October 20th.  It will be held at Breed Memorial Hall, at 51 Winthrop St on Tufts University in Medford.  Sign-in is at noon.  

But you must register before online here before October 6th. --ADD new link

Teams of three will arrive to discover what will be their challenge to build this year.  If you're interested in seeing some of the previous years' projects.

To compete you must be a high school student living in Somerville MA. Click here to register.  Somerville high school students are encouraged to register and participate.

Start organizing your team NOW, the registration is due on October 6th.

In the past, the teams not only came up with creative names for their teams, but they also came up with interesting creative solutions to the annual challenges.  We always have great prizes.

Go forth and form your teams of three!

Scrapheap Showdown is Coming ... time to get your teams together.  Get two more friends and register your team.  Choose a crazy name for the team and then all come on October 20th to Tufts U Breed Memorial Hall, 51 Winthrop Street Medford.

Good Luck!

The link to this post is https://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2024/09/scrapheap-showdown-is-coming-time-to.html

Outstanding Students win Somerville Math Fund Scholarships

Pictured above: Galen Carter, Max Barish, Rowan Ferguson, Tessel Van Schaaik, Lucca Valdes, Harrison Mayer, Erica Voolich, Cecelia Crounse, Yasmin Nazhar, Devasya Nepal, Noah Brown, Lillian MacArthur, Lily Thompson, Dashiell Brenner

By Erica Dakin Voolich

The Somerville Mathematics Fund is pleased to announce the winners of their renewable mathematics scholarships for 2024.  The Math Fund was founded to celebrate and encourage math achievement and these students deserve to be celebrated for their work in math and science while in high school. Thanks to the generosity of many individuals and a few organizations, this year we were able to award a record 13 scholarships, totaling $78,000 over four years.

We definitely want to celebrate our scholarship winners for their achievements while meeting the challenges of going to high school, some of it was during a pandemic. CONGRATULATIONS.  

The winners are attending a variety of schools next fall.  Max Barish will attend Purdue U; Dashiell Brenner, Carlton College; Noah Brown, U of Chicago; Galen Carter, Boston U; Cecelia Crounse U of Vermont; Rowan Ferguson and Harrison Mayer, UMass Amherst; Lillian MacArthur, Harvard U; Yasmin Nazhar, MIT; Devasya Nepal, Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Lilly Thompson and Tessel Van Schaaik, Tufts U; and Lucca Valdes, Cornell U.A bit of explanation about the scholarship names.  

Some scholarships are supported by many donations, some large, some small — but together there is $6000 for each student.  For those students who participated in Scrapheap Showdown this year, we had some of our sponsors who each sponsored one year of a scholarship.  We have some named annual scholarships, two memorial scholarships are for founders of the Somerville Math Fund.  Two of our named scholarships are given by one of our first scholarship winners back in 2001 in the name of his favorite famous mathematician.  One is given in memory of a mother who distinguished herself in WW2 as a nurse and saved for her children’s education. And, finally, one is given in memory of a beloved Wheelock College Professor of Math and Math Education.

Their annual scholarships of $1500 are renewable for up to a total of four years as long as they maintain a B average and take mathematics or courses which use mathematics.  

The six memorial scholarships this year are for  Dr. Alice T  Schafer, Lt. Catherine M. Landers, S. Ramanujan, Dr. Rika Spungin, and Michael Voolich.  

Lillian MacArthur

One of the scholarships was given in the memory of an outstanding woman mathematician, Dr. Alice T. Schafer. Lillian MacArthur was awarded the Alice T. Schafer Memorial Scholarship. Lillian was busy with college math classes and along with math enrichment programs (MIT Primes, MathlLy, and FaBraC) learning advanced topics and presenting papers and talks on what she learned or she proved. She loved the problem solving challenges and sharing her fractal loves with her friends.

Dr. Schafer (1915 - 2009) was orphaned as an infant and raised by two aunts.  When she went to college at the University of Richmond of Virginia, women students weren’t allowed in the library and she was discouraged from majoring in mathematics.  She won prizes, earned a PhD, taught at colleges (including Wellesley) and among the things she is known for is helping start the Association for Women in Mathematics (1971).  

Less known about Dr. Schafer was her role helping to start the Somerville Mathematics Fund in 2000 -- attending all of the planning meetings and contributing to their work as long as she was able.  She is remembered for her passion and work to insure mathematical opportunities for women. Lillian loved teaching what she learned in about Fractals to her friends.   Sierpinski’s Triangles opened a whole new world to her friends.

Since Dr. Schafer was committed to the education and supporting women in mathematics, Lillian’s major in Math at Harvard U is a wonderful way to honor Dr. Alice Schafer's memory of encouraging women in the maths and sciences.

Tessel Van Schaaik

The Lt. Catherine M. Landers Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Tessel Van Schaaik.  Tessel has an interest in microbiology. She spent a summer in an internship working on a project at DragonflyTX. 

She wants to research topics that have previously been disregarded as “women’s issues” such as the relationship between the microbiome and migraines.  She is interested in solving problems that will help her own generation along with the youth in the future.

When Lt. Landers (1920 - 2012) wanted to go to nursing school (graduating in 1942), her grandmother opened a cedar chest were she had been saving one dollar bills one at a time to help pay for her granddaughter’s education.  Lt Landers won a Bronze Star for her service during WW2, where she ran a field hospital outside Paris; she was about to be shipped to the far East when WW2 ended and so she boarded a transport ship for the USA instead.   Jay Landers and Jasper Lawson donated a scholarship in her memory, honoring her commitment to education.  Tessel’s interest in studying Microbiology at Tufts U is a wonderful way to honor Lt. Landers' commitment to education.

Lily Thompson and Yasmin Nazhar 

Our two scholarships in the memory of S. Ramanujan, are a gift from the Jha Family and were awarded to Yasmin Nazhar who is planning on attending MIT and Lily Thompson who is planning on attending Tufts University.  

Each has been a member of the Somerville High School Math Club, that has organized math meets and group problem solving of puzzles and activities for middle school students and participated in math contests.  

Lily has been very aware of the need to protect the environment for years, and in fact she invented a solar car in middle school. In high school she was a member of the Green Club.  She was active with the Math Honor Society where they worked together solving complex equations.  Lily plans on majoring in Environmental Engineering at Tufts U

Yasmin took advantage of every opportunity to learn higher level math through dual enrollment at Bunker Hill, after exhausting those opportunities she took Analysis at Tufts.  After participating as a student in Middle School, she jointed the high school students running the Calculus Project, preparing students to be ready for calculus.  She also was part of the Robotics Club.  Yasmin plans on majoring in Nuclear Engineering at MIT.

Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887 - 1920) was a mostly self-taught brilliant Indian mathematician who sadly died young.  He discovered his love of mathematics while in high school when he found a book that listed 4000 mathematical theorems without information on they were discovered or developed. So he continued his math work, often on a slate, only recording his concluding theorem on paper when finished, without the details of how he came to the conclusion.  With his humble beginnings and no formal mathematical training, the story of his life and how he finally connected with the well-known mathematicians of his day is detailed the book and movie, The Man Who Knew Infinity. That book inspired the Jha family who gave these scholarships in his honor. Ramanujan’s notebooks and papers have included both previously discovered and new mathematical theorems many in number theory.  These notebooks have continued to provide mathematicians with material to study and try to figure out how Ramanujan discovered these theorems and to see if they were provable.  S. Ramanujan was self taught before he finally connected with the mathematicians in England and worked at the University of Cambridge with the leading mathematicians of  the day.  

The sponsor of this scholarship was inspired by S. Ramanujan as a high school student more than twenty-five years ago. Lily’s and Yasmin’s love of math can help the world of applying math to environmental and nuclear engineering is a way to honor S. Ramanujan’s memory. 

Rowan Ferguson

The Michael Voolich Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Rowan Ferguson who is interested in becoming a high school math teacher.

Michael Voolich (1943 - 2019) was a person who was interested in how everything worked, if Renaissance man was a job offering, Michael would have applied. He learned by asking questions and then he loved telling everyone what he had learned and how seemingly disparate things were related.  He had a career than included teaching many different subjects in local schools, none of which was math. But, he married a math teacher.  So, when the Somerville Math Fund was being discussed and organized in his living room, of course he joined the founding board.  

He liked to do things for people and of course for the math fund.  His telephone calls and trips to Table Talk Pie Company each year for city-wide Pi Night celebration were a highlight each year. He especially loved helping find things for others to donate for the Scrapheap Showdown each year and his marvelous multiple clamps will still be a necessary part of future Scrapheap challenges to come.  

Michael loved to be able to give and help others in the local community along with his extended family here and abroad. This scholarship was funded by the many people who donated in his memory to the Somerville Math Fund.  

Rowan loved math and found it easy to understand all the way through school.  He often helped family and friends in math who are now also taking honors classes in school. Seems like a perfect career fit for  Rowan who is planning on majoring in Education with a minor in Mathematics at UMass Amherst.Michael also loved explaining and teaching others anything that he had already learned — seems that Michael would have loved to have his scholarship winner doing likewise.

Galen Carter

The Scholarship in honor of  Dr. Rika Spungin was awarded to Galen Carter who is interested majoring in computer Science Engineering at Boston University.   During high school he completed many of the college level mathematics classes at Boston U.  He worked with a theoretical physicist at BU on a data analysis tool to computationally search for axioms that will be an open source tool available to other researchers.

Dr Rika Spungin (1928 - 2024 ) grew up in Rochester New York and graduated from the University of Rochester, Smith College and Boston University.  Originally she was a physical science and physics school teacher in Rhode Island and then she edited science school textbooks before going to back to school at Boston University.  She spent over thirty years as a Math and Math Education Professor at Wheelock College.  While working on her doctorate at Boston University she met and worked with the math curriculum development team led by Carol Greenes. The problem solving materials and workbooks they developed then and over the following years are still in use in schools.  When Erica Voolich was hired as an adjunct at Wheelock College, Rika was a wonderful mentor to her and helped her develop from a middle school math teacher into a successful college teacher of future school teachers.

Rika Spungin’s love of focusing on problem solving along with math skills which grew out of her decades of collaboration with the Boston University curriculum writing team.  This makes this scholarship in her memory for Galen Carter who is graduated from BU Academy and soon will be an incoming Boston University student, who spent time working on a collaboration on a physics lab tool, a good match. 

Devasya Nepal

For a number of years the Jasper Lawson PhD Associates have been a generous sponsor of events for the Somerville Math Fund.  This year they are  sponsoring a scholarship awarded to  Devasya Nepal.

Emerging from the at home classes from the pandemic, Devasya loved being in the physics class and actually connecting with the other students and the teacher — it was a chance to see math, which he loved, applied.  Similarly he loved being on the Robotics team.  He plans on majoring in Mechanical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. 

For years, we have held a high school engineering challenge in October that is both a hands-on problem solving event for the participants but also a fundraiser for scholarships.

The Scrapheap Showdown last October had three gold sponsors who each sponsored one year of a Somerville Math Fund Scholarship.  The other three years of these scholarships were made possible by many generous donors contributing to the Somerville Math Fund.  

Three of the donors who each paid for one year of three different student scholarship were Julie Schneider, the Bickoff family of the Commercial Cleaning Co., and Tufts U.  The Somerville Math Fund Scholarship, generously sponsored by three sponsors of Scrapheap Showdown were awarded to Lucca Valdes, Noah Brown, and Dashiell Brenner.

Lucca Valdes

The scholarship whose first year was sponsored by Julie Schneider was awarded to Lucca Valdes.  Lucca plans on majoring in Molecular Biology at Cornell University.  Lucca participated in summer programs at Biogen and Northeastern U.  She was inspired by a Latina cancer researcher who she heard speak from Spain over Zoom.  She sees herself potentially as a woman in a lab doing cancer research that creates change.  She hopes to travel globally to understand how science affects people in different corners of the globe and hopes to inspire other young girls who as also as infatuated by science as she is just as that other woman had inspired her.

Noah Brown

The scholarship whose first year was sponsored by the Bickoff family of the Commercial Cleaning Company was awarded to Noah Brown.  Noah plans on majoring in Physics at the University of Chicago.

Noah fell in love with problem solving in science class in middle school where is teacher challenged the class to “prove an explanation” for something wrong.  His dream is to someday to build fusion reactors in an effort to provide infinite clean and renewable energy to the world.  Ironically, Noah has chosen to study at the U of Chicago where, on 2 December 1942, the world’s first human-made self-sustaining artificial nuclear chain reaction occurred in Chicago Pile -1.  Hummmm, interesting.

Dashiell Brenner

The scholarship whose first year was sponsored by Tufts University was awarded to Dashiell Brenner.  Dashiell plans on majoring in Math at Carleton College.  He and his brother had a science project analyzing pre- and post-COVID standardized test scores including percentage of low-income households, political makeup, racial makeup, school size, and district size.  He loved the idea of applying statistics as a way to research the real world.  While in high school he enjoyed taking college level math classes.  He not only enjoyed the lectures, but he also loved the challenge of working through problem sets — “each problem required deep and critical thinking, resembling puzzles and riddles that took abstract thought and multiple angles of attack to solve.” This has inspired his passion for math and his desire to major in it .

The Somerville Mathematics Fund receives donations from many people — many small, medium and larger donations that together make a difference.  If you sent $5, $50, $500 or $5000, for example, you contributed to fund even more scholarships to be awarded.  When we have $6,000 donated, we can give another scholarship.  And last in our list, but definitely not least in any way, are three more scholarships that were made up of gifts many donors.  If you donated, thank you.  Pat yourself on the back.

From the generosity of many comes each of these three whole scholarships which were awarded to Max Barish, Cecelia Crounse and Harrison Mayer.

Max Barish, Cecelia Crounse, Harrison Mayer

A Somerville Mathematics Fund Scholarship was awarded to Max Barish who is planning on majoring in Engineering at Purdue University.  Max sees climate change as one of the most significant challenges facing society.  He wants to major in civil engineering so he can learn how to build and develop sustainable energy infrastructures in urban areas to help battle climate change.

A Somerville Mathematics Fund Scholarship was awarded to Cecelia Crounse who is planning on majoring in Computer Science at University of Vermont.  Cecelia describes herself as loving astronomy all her life and having a knack for computer programming.  She started the Astronomy Club at Somerville High School. She hopes to use computer science later to help make astronomical discoveries.

A Somerville Mathematics Fund Scholarship was awarded to Harrison Mayer who is planning on majoring in Business Management at the UMass Amherst Honor College.  He participated in a Suffolk University summer program on “Becoming Entrepreneurial: Toolkits, Mindset and Thought Processes.”  He wants to work in developing a business that exhibits environmentally friendly business practices, especially around high-waste products.

——-

The Somerville Mathematics Fund was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage achievement in mathematics in the city of Somerville, Massachusetts. It May 2011, it was recognized as the outstanding Dollars for Scholars Chapter in New England.  Since its founding in 2000, it has awarded $709,000 in four-year mathematics scholarships to one hundred forty-three outstanding Somerville students.  

If you would like to make a contribution, you can do so on PayPal, mail a check to 244 Summer St Somerville MA 02143, or go to www.somervillemathematicsfund.org.  

The link to this page is https://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2024/06/outstanding-students-win-somerville.html

Math Meet, Pi, Pizza, and finally Pies —A Great Renewed way to Celebrate a Transcendental Number

 by Erica Voolich

Thursday, March 14 was Pi Day (3.14).  What better excuse is there to have a celebration of math with middle schoolers than π?     On Monday before Pi Day, about 100 students, teachers, and high school Math Club members celebrated π  at Somerville High School by eating pizza while spending an afternoon taking a math contest and then estimating, creating, answering questions, and ending with Table Talk pies for everyone.

Creating a Pi Button: 
How many digits of Pi are here?

The Somerville High School Math Club led by Michael Morgan organized the event.  Instead of the usual math contest between Somerville’s middle schools’ math teams for the month of March, they invited the schools to come and have students take a math contest related to pi and circles written by the high schoolers and do some of the pi night activities the Somerville Math Fund has organized in the pre-pandemic past.  While the eight graders took the contest the seventh did the Pi activities and then the groups switched.

While enjoying pizza donated by the Bickoff family of the Commercial Cleaning Service, the students from the students from the Healey School, the East Somerville Community School,  and the West Somerville Neighborhood school went around to a variety of pi math activities set up in the Lower Cafeteria at the High School.  

These activities included: predicting bicycle wheel roll distance after one and a half revolutions, a guessing contest, π button design, π facts quiz, finding your birthday in π, drawing a cardioid or nephroid (curves from lines), and predicting circumferences in mm by feel of objects in mystery boxes.

Creating a cardiod while 
wearing a Pi Shirt... what does it say?

Even though the Somerville Math Fund sponsored math night event was canceled by the pandemic for three years, last year there were Somerville High School Math Club members who commented about remembering doing some of these events when they went over to either the Healey (2019) or the East Somerville (2018) for the Pi Family math night.  So last year the Math Club organized the Pi day celebration and repeated the event this year at the high school for the middle school students.

Scott Weaver (East), Wil Jacques (Healey) brought students and helped Erica Voolich (Somerville Mathematics Fund) organize the activities for the event.  Also bringing students were Alyssa Mackey from West.

Feeling the circles in the mystery box
 and estimating the circumference
in millimeters.

In addition, Scott Weaver at the East Somerville Community School organized a day of math/pi activities in all of his classes on Pi Day. All the East middle school students enjoyed Table Talk Pies to fuel their exploration of Pi and circles. 

Estimating the amount of candy
in each jar.

Table Talk Pies of Worcester generously supplied small pies for all who came that afternoon.  Table Talk has generously supported this Somerville Math Fund event for twenty years (2 years off for Covid). When planning the first SMF π Night in 2003; the Math Fund called the Table Talk Pi Company and explained what π day was and Table Talk generously donated large pies for prizes and small pies for everyone.  Twenty-one years later, Table Talk Pies is not only still donating to the Somerville Pi night celebration, but also to many more celebrations.   This year Table Talk donated about 73,000 pies to schools and organizations celebrating pi day.

A big thank you to all the Math Club volunteers and donors who made this fun, educational event possible.  It takes a community to celebrate π day!

The Somerville Mathematics Fund, was founded in 2000 with the mission to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville, MA.  They will award renewable college mathematics scholarships in May and in January they awarded K-12 Teacher Grants.  For more information, to make a donation, or to volunteer, visit www.somervillemathematicsfund.org or mathfund@gmail.com or call 617-666-0666.

The Link for this page is: https://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2024/03/math-meet-pi-pizza-and-finally-pies.html

Looking for a a Great Idea on How to Teach Math? These Teachers Do

By Erica Voolich

      Many teachers have great ideas on how to make their classrooms a better place for their students to learn math.  The teachers’ ideas frequently outrun the budget schools have for supplies and their own ability to subsidize their classroom.  The Somerville Mathematics Fund tries to fill this need through the generosity of their donors with grants up to $500.  

     East Cambridge Savings Bank, Jeremy Gale, Will Kuhlman, Jasper Lawson PhD Associates, Mr & Mrs Donald McGoldrick, Spring Hill Dental, and Winter Hill Bank each sponsored a teacher's grant.  The rest of the grants were funded thanks to the Morris S & Florence Bender Foundation.  Thank you to our annual donors who make these grants possible.

The following teachers won grants to encourage and support mathematics achievement in the classrooms of Somerville.

The Math Fund wants to thank the Morris S & Florence Bender Foundation for generously underwriting the following teacher grants:

• Matthew Burch, Argenziano School (Math Instructional Coach K-2), Math Instructional Materials.

• Johanna Cooney, Brown School (1st), Math Enrichment & STEM materials.

• Katherine Adelaide Downs, Healey School (K), Number Sense Materials.

• Julie Gallardo, Healey School (3rd SEI-1), Math Workshop and Intervention Materials.

• Julie Jones & Lauren McGlashing, Capuano School  (K), Math Night for Capuano and Winter Hill Community Innovation School Schools.

• Diana Garity, Argenziano School (2 SEI Newcomers), Geometry Materials.

• Anna Perham, Healey School (3rd), Math Materials.

• Charlotte Ross, Argenziano School (Math Interventionist), Math Manipulatives.

• Sabrina Soriano, Healey School (5th Math), Math Manipulatives.

• Katie Starbuck, Healey School & East Somerville Community School (Math Coach), Math Manipulatives

The Math Fund wants to thank each of the following for generously underwriting a teacher grant:

East Cambridge Savings Bank:

• Diana Quintanilla, East Somerville Community School (K), Math Manipulatives.

Jeremy Gale:

•Swetha Kalluri, Winter Hill Community Innovation School (Math Interventionist, 2-8), Math Games and Puzzles.

William Kuhlman:

• Nicole Alimena, Healey School (5th, SEI-1), Math Station Manipulatives.

• Marie Clevering, Healey School (4th), Math Games & Creation Supplies.

Jasper Lawson, PhD Associates:

• Laura Peters, Somerville High School (STEAM & Robotics), Girls Who Code Club for Middle School

Mr & Mrs. Donald McGoldrick:

• Andrea Palmer, Winter Hill Community Innovation School (K-8 Math Coach), Math Game Centers.

Spring Hill Dental: 

Filomena Arruda. East Somerville Community School (Pre-K), STEM materials.

Winter Hill Bank:

• Mary Beth Morgan, Winter Hill Community Innovation School (K), Math Games for the Winter Hill and Capuano Schools to share.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage achievement in mathematics in the city of Somerville, Massachusetts.  Over twenty-three years, the Somerville Math Fund has awarded $154,614 in teacher grants supporting three hundred ninety teachers’ projects in the city of Somerville along with emergency grants to East Somerville teachers after the devastating school fire.

On March 26th, the fund will be seeking applications from students who reside in Somerville for college mathematics scholarships.  Over twenty-three years, the Somerville Math Fund has awarded a total of $631,000 in four-year mathematics scholarships to one hundred thirty students.  Links to the scholarship application form is available at  www.somervillemathematicsfund.org   For more information, to volunteer or to make a tax-deductible contribution, please contact Erica Voolich (617-666-0666 or mathfund@gmail.com).