By Erica Dakin Voolich
The Somerville Mathematics Fund is pleased to announce the winners of their renewable mathematics scholarships for 2026. 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 11 scholarships, totaling $66,000 over four years.
We definitely want to celebrate our scholarship winners for their achievements while meeting the challenges of going to high school. CONGRATULATIONS.
The winners are attending a variety of schools next fall.
Alexis Bowie will attend Syracuse U; Alden Carter, U Chicago; Torin Cotter-White, U Washington Seattle; Jess Kearns, U Mass Amherst; Tenzin Khando, U Mass Lowell; Celine Mannion, NYU; Sage Milbury and Kian Nhuck, MIT; Sylvester Miratrix, Reed College; and Anarghya Rajbanshi and Silas Wickenden, Tufts University.
In Back: Erica Voolich, Tenzin Khando, Sage Milbury, Silas Wickenden, Jessica Kearns. In Front: Alexis Bowie, Anarchy Rajbanshi, Torin Corrin-White, Kian Nhuch
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 whose grandmother saved for her children’s 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. So, in total this scholarship is for $6,000 each.
The five memorial scholarships this year are for Dr. Alice T Schafer, Lt. Catherine M. Landers, S. Ramanujan, and Michael Voolich.
One of the scholarships was given in the memory of an outstanding woman mathematician, Dr. Alice T. Schafer. Sage Milbury was awarded the Alice T. Schafer Memorial Scholarship.
Sage wrote of early influences were from seeing their’s mother’s jewelry and sculptures inspired by Mobius and Sierpinski.
Sage also wrote of their growing up exploring Somerville as her “perfectly designed play space.” Now, after working on the SHS Robot and with Groundwork Somerville and the Somerville Mobility Division on street redesign for placement of trees and bike lanes, they realized the spaces need to be designed for people. They want to get a degree in civil engineering and then in Urban planning and to return to Somerville to design outdoor spaces for everyone. They want to use their skills to "design gorgeous cities, with pedestrian safe turning radii and strong bridges and other infrastructure.”
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.
Since Dr. Schafer was committed to the education and supporting women in mathematics, Sage’s major in Civil Engineering at MIT is a wonderful way to honor Dr. Alice Schafer's memory of encouraging women in the math and sciences.
The Lt. Catherine M. Landers Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Jessica Kearns.
Jess participated in the MIT Cascade STEM Saturday program for high school students. She was fascinated enough by what she learned about blood to continue her research into various genetics topics. She wrote that her desire to study microbiology because she wants to attempt to control the uncontrollable through a lens of understanding science and what we can’t see with the human eye… fascination for understanding viruses and they gain control of our bodies… and making a difference in someone’s life.” From her love of math, comes the challenge to herself to solve problems in various areas.
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 and Jasper donated a scholarship in her memory, honoring her commitment to education. Jess’s majoring Microbiology and Public Health at U Mass Amherst is a wonderful way to honor Lt. Landers commitment to education.
Our two scholarships in the memory of S. Ramanujan, are a gift from the Jha Family and were awarded to
Kian Nhuch who is planning studying Material Science & Engineering at MIT and Anarghya Rajbanshi who is planning on Studying Architectural or Civil Engineering at Tufts University..
Both Kian and Anarchya were members of the Math Club.
Kian loved math growing up. He took advantage of out of school opportunities including MIT’s OpenCourseWare. He was inspired by his PreCalculus teacher, Ms Pilch who challenged him with problem solving. He spent a summer in the Northeastern University Young Scholars Program researching and presenting results as an engineer solving real world environmental problems.
Anarchya sees math as more than just numbers and formulas but an approach to complex problems and to break them into manageable parts with persistence. She is interested in being a designer as an architect or civil engineer designing the environments where people live and work in lasting designs.
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. Kian’s studying Material Science and Engineering at MIT and Anarghya’s Studying Architectural or Civil Engineering at Tufts is a way to honor S. Ramanujan’s memory.
There is a P.S. to last year’s Ramanujan Scholars.
Alice Hunter won this scholarship last year and decided to take a gap year.
So, she his joining this year’s group of Somerville Math Fund winners starting in college at the University of Bath to study architecture.
Last year we had 13 winners, 12 in college along with all the others using their 4 year scholarship ahead of them. This year we have 11 winners, 12 in college.
The Michael Voolich Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Silas Wickenden who is interested in majoring in Computer Science at Tufts University.
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 included things as diverse as industrial arts and American History. 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 people who donated in his memory to the Somerville Math Fund.
Silas sees data science as a tool to help access other disciplines like anthropology, political science or medicine. It provides flexibility in the analysis of a problem and the “click” leading to a solution.
Silas used Design Lab as a facilitator for Critical Participation over four years and for the Somerville High School Robotics team figuring out their design of their robot this year
As a former winning Industrial Arts Teacher — now called Career and Technical Education (CTE) — and CAD teacher Micheal would have loved knowing that Silas was using his computer skills to research and develop the Robot that their Somerville High school team built and entered in the local, regional and even the national competitions this year.
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. https://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2024/10/scrapheap-showdown-catch-my-drift.html
The Scrapheap Showdown last October had two 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.
Two of the donors who each paid for one year of two different student scholarship were East Somerville Community Bank and Tufts U. The Somerville Math Fund Scholarship, generously sponsored by four sponsors of Scrapheap Showdown were awarded to Alden Carter and Sylvester Miratrix
For a number of years, East Cambridge Savings Bank has sponsored events for the Somerville Math Fund. This year they are sponsoring the first year of a scholarship awarded to Alden Carter who is planning on majoring in Computer Science at U of Chicago.
Alden enrolled in the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth and also took advantage of numerous college math classes while in high school. As part of a software internship at BU SAIL, he used math to build pricing calculations for biology tests and problem solving skills to break complex logic into clean codeable steps. He looks forward to continuing working Game design and improving different aspects such as procedural animations more complex AI enemies, and pathfinding algorithms as he majors in Computer Science at the University of Chicago.
For a number of years Tufts University has sponsored the first year of a scholarship. This year it was awarded to Sylvester Miratrix who is planning on going to Reed College and will decide on a major once there. There was a lot of math discussion at home growing up. Sylvester was a member of the Math Club through out high school and found that friends would ask them for help in math, they enjoyed this and discovered their skills there. That probably helped in their role as a SAT bootcamp tutor. They are interested in cryptography. They wonder if there is a career in math or possibly a math adjacent career ahead.
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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 a total of $6,000 donated, we can give another scholarship. And last in our list, but definitely not least in any way, are four 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 four whole scholarships which were awarded to Alexis Bowie, Torin Cotter-White, Tenzin C Khando, and Celine Mannion.
A Somerville Mathematics Fund Scholarship was awarded to Alexis Bowie (Syracuse University, Statistics) who is planning on majoring in Statistics at Syracuse University.
Alexis is well rounded, involved in many diverse activities in high school. In addition to the Math team, she is interning in the City of Somerville’s statistics department where she had a chance to gain a deeper understanding of how the data and numbers were used to develop policies and regulations. She wants to understand the complexities of the world.
“The structure and pattern of equations and theorems provide me with a way to understand the abstract concretely, and math allow me to quantity my big ideas. I am dedicated to ensuring that everyone receives an equal opportunity for success, that a Black child for Anniston, AL has the same shot at life as a white child from Boston, MA. Often, when I discuss this goal with people, I am told it’s a vague and theoretical, but I can use statistics and economics as instruments to show how and why these children don’t have the same chance at success, and how things could change so that they could. Concretizing the day to day events that impact a child’s life such as inflation’s impact on grocery store prices, and how those higher prices affect a family’s ability to feed their children is possible.”
A Somerville Mathematics Fund Scholarship was awarded to Torin Cotter-White who is planning on majoring in Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington Seattle.
In addition to taking AP Environmental Science in school, Torin was involved in a variety of activities while in high school. It included the Mayor’s Youth Climate team and the Climate Club teaching 5th grade lessons about the environment and change so his choice of major of Environmental Engineering is not a surprise. He said this is the only thing he wanted to pursue as a career. He has always enjoyed math and sees the critical thinking of real world problem solving will be involved in his major.
A Somerville Mathematics Fund Scholarship was awarded to Tenzin C Khando who is planning on majoring in Biology at U Mass Lowell.
Tenzin is a school leader in her class at Prospect Hill Academy. She sees math as teaching her to think critically and to look for multiple ways to approach a solution to a problem and possibly multiple solutions. Her science teacher sees her as having the mathematical reasoning, scientific curiosity and perseverance to thrive in a rigorous academic environment.
A Somerville Mathematics Fund Scholarship was awarded to Celine Mannion who is planning on majoring in Psychology at NYU.
Celine had a wide variety of coaching activities in school from gymnastics to Calculus Project Mentor and co-leading a club called Sports and Statistics. She recognized how education can redefine what is possible not just for one person but for generations. With the Calculus Project she worked with younger students with underrepresented backgrounds in math. She worked to move them from “I’m not math person” to “I can do this” — this happen when someone believes in you. Years ago she was one of the mentees in the Calculus Project where she recognized she could understand and enjoy math. She went from Mentee to Mentor. Celine says she “wants to understand how identity, environment, and access, shape how we learn and see ourselves. I want to work to expand access to mentorship and education for girls of color so they can see themselves as capable, powerful and worthy of belonging in every space.”
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 $853,000 in four-year mathematics scholarships to one hundred sixty-eight outstanding Somerville students.
If you would like to make a contribution, you can do so on Zeffy or PayPal, mail a check to 244 Summer St Somerville MA 02143, or go to www.somervillemathematicsfund.org for the links.
