The Somerville Math Fund was pleased to be able to award four year renewable scholarships to these outstanding math and science students. Pictured are Galen Carter, Max Barish, Rowan Ferguson, Tessel Van Schaaik, Lucca Valdes, Harrison Mayer, Erica Voolich (president SMF), Cecelia Crounse, Yasmin Nazhar, Devasya Nepal, Noah Brown, Lillian MacArthur, Lily Thompson, Dashill 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.

Due to a COVID-19 outbreak, we were unable to personally award the scholarships at the awards night for four years.  Last year it felt so wonderful to be back personally handing out the scholarships and meeting the winners in person again like we used to do.

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 Perdue 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 and 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.