Outstanding Students win Somerville Math Fund Scholarships

Erica Voolich congratulates (back) Samuel Saron, Desmond Feldman, Benjamin Novik, Nicolas Ragusa, (front) Saja El-Saudi, Lizbeth Figueroa, Mekhribon Otajonova, Mei Mei Collins on winning Somerville Math Fund renewable scholarships for outstanding work in math & science.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund is pleased to announce the winners of their renewable mathematics scholarships for 2018.  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 8 scholarships, totaling $32,000 over four years.

Mei Mei Collins will attend Harvard College; Saja EL-Saudi and Mekhribon Otajonova, U Mass Boston; Desmond Feldman, Ithaca College; Lizbeth Figueroa, Boston College; Benjamin Novick, U Mass Amherst Commonwealth Honors College; Nicolas Ragusa and Samuel Saron, Tufts University.

Their scholarships of $1000 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.

One of the scholarships was given in the memory of an outstanding woman mathematician, Dr. Alice T Schafer.

Erica Voolich congratulates Mei Mei Collins
on winning the Dr. Alice T Schafer Scholarship
 from the Somerville Math Fund for outstanding work in math & science.

Mei Mei Collins won the Alice T Schafer Scholarship.  Mei Mei is planning to study environmental engineering.  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 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. Since Dr. Schafer was committed to the education and supporting women in mathematics, Mei Mei’s interest in studying environmental engineering is a wonderful way to honor Dr. Alice Schafer's memory.

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 it's founding in 2000, it has awarded $324,000 in mathematics scholarships to outstanding Somerville students.  Next fall, The Somerville Mathematics Fund will be seeking applications from teachers who teach in the city of Somerville who would like funding for classroom mathematics activities.  In October, the Math Fund will also be seeking high school students to compete in the annual Scrapheap Showdown.  For more  information, to volunteer, or to make a tax-deductible contribution, please contact Erica Voolich (617-666-0666 or mathfund@gmail.com) or go to www.somervillemathematicsfund.org.

Somerville Mathematics Fund Scholarship Winners

Press Release

9 June 2010

The Somerville Mathematics Fund, an Affiliate of Dollars for Scholars

contact: Erica Voolich, voolich@gmail.com 

The Somerville Mathematics Fund Recognizes Outstanding Mathematics Students from Three High Schools

The Somerville Mathematics Fund is pleased to announce the winners of their renewable college mathematics scholarships.  The selection committee was impressed with the quality of this year’s applicants and pleased with the generosity of our donors who made it possible to give a record six scholarships.  At the Somerville High School’s award night Erica Voolich, president of The Somerville Mathematics Fund, commented on the outstanding achievements of Deepika Bhargo, Paulo Filipe Dourado, Nelson Moreira and Theodor Rich.  Then at Buckingham, Brown and Nichols, Voolich recognized the outstanding work of Kathleen Oshima, followed a couple days later she went to Chapel Hill - Chauncy Hall to recognize the outstanding work of Robert Merrell.  All are planning on pursuing mathematics or a mathematics-related major in college.  Each scholarship is renewable for up to four years based on performance.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund, an affiliate of the national scholarship organization Dollars for Scholars, was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage achievement in mathematics in the city of Somerville, Massachusetts. Since it's founding, it has awarded $138,000 in mathematics scholarships to outstanding Somerville students.  Next fall, The Somerville Mathematics Fund will be seeking applications from teachers who teach in the city of Somerville who would like funding for classroom mathematics activities.  In October, the Math Fund will also be seeking high school students to compete in the sixth Scrapheap Showdown and will be celebrating their 10th anniversary.  For more  information, to volunteer, or to make a tax-deductible contribution, please contact Erica Voolich (voolich@gmail.com) or go to www.somervillemathematicsfund.org.

Scrapheap Showdown, Marble Mazes meet Rube Goldberg!

Erica Dakin Voolich

On Sunday, October 25, twelve teams of Somerville Students gathered in “The Cage” at Cousens Gym at Tufts to participate in this year’s annual Scrapheap Showdown sponsored by The Somerville Mathematics Fund. This year’s problem involved building a marble maze to get from one corner of a banquet table to the opposite corner of a 2nd table two feet away.

Instead of just building a ramp from table corner to table corner, students had loop-the loops, spirals, cup elevators, triggers... all sorts of interesting Rube-Goldber-like obstacles.

As a member of the Somerville Mathematics Fund board, I was involved in the designing, testing and adjusting of the problem. We got to actually build our own solution, as we do each year, to know that it is possible and to figure out the scoring system. When the kids started working on the problem, their solutions were totally different, unique, creative and exciting.

Take a minute to look at the pictures of each of the teams hard at work on their projects and read all about the A-Mazing event in the Somerville Journal. Prior to the event, the Tufts online newsletter wrote about the upcoming event.

This year’s teams were:

Rubber Duckies

• Paulo Filipe Dourado

• Nelson Moreira

• Matthew Bedell

AMS Alliance

• Matthew Correia

• Sergio Resendes

• Adam Hughes

Freaks in Control

• Sabrina Ozit

• Lola Yu

The Coopers

• Michael Shamshak

• David Cooper

• Kayla Landry

You have to Spend Money to Make Money

• Nat Dempkowski

• Yongkang Yu

• Nathan Long

The Bird is the Word

• Danny Huang

• Nicholas Cruz

•Michael Conte

Bp(as)^2

• Bipul Pyakuryal

• Aakash Sharma

• Avtar Singh

The Devastators

• Mohammad Sheikh

• Timur Addul Talil

• Anandpreet Singh

De Villens

• Deepika Bhargo

• Aaron Nevin

• Tara Costiner

P.M. Norm

• Norman Li

• Pristine Mei

• Michele Mei

The Stern Halloran Man

•Christopher Halloran

• Jacky Man

• Jesse Stern

Asian Avengers V2

• David Huang

• Raymond Li

• Joshua Ren

Somerville Mathematics Fund offers scholarships

The Somerville Mathematics Fund, an affiliate of Dollars for Scholars, offers renewable mathematics scholarships for outstanding high school seniors and to college students who lived in Somerville MA while attending high school. The applications should be postmarked by 11 April 2009.
To get an application, go to The Somerville Mathematics Fund web site or e-mail voolich@aol.com.