MAA AMC Young Women in Mathematics Share Their Stories

“It was a clerical error,” Jennifer Bowen recalled as the catalyst for her mathematical journey. As an undergraduate student studying mathematics at Boston College, Bowen had taken a part-time job grading papers for the math department. She had enjoyed the subject since ...

Shanise Walker looks back at her early education with gratitude, in which she saw herself reflected in the math teachers she encountered. As of 2018, women only made up 29% of all mathematics doctorate recipients, and members of underrepresented minority groups only made...

Jacqueline Jensen-Vallin’s MAA story began as something of an accident. As a recent Ph.D. graduate from the University of Oregon, Jensen-Vallin was accepted as a Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Project NExT fellow. “I have to admit,” she recalls. “I assumed tha...

“My grandpa would give me math puzzles as a kid. I didn’t know they were ‘math’ per se, just that they were fun puzzles. He’d work with me to solve them, not giving me the answer but helping me arrive at [it] on my own. I think this helped me understand how to break prob...

“Ask for help, because help will always be there for people who need it.” Kamuela Yong recalls this statement as the best advice he ever received. The idea has sustained him through challenges in his journey and has been passed along to many of Yong’s own students. Certa...

This year, Judith Covington heard that one of her fellow MAA Project NExT Red Dots had just announced his retirement. “I have clearly been teaching long enough to retire,” she says. “But I do not see that on my horizon.” In fact, when asked where she sees herself in ten ...

The summer after her junior year of college, Rebecca Swanson spent countless nights awake at the homeless shelter she helped run. The small staff meant that the student volunteers had to sleep in shifts so that one of them would always be available if anyone needed anyth...

Jessie Hamm never expected to be where she is today. Though she always knew she would attend college, she never saw herself going to graduate school, let alone earning her Ph.D. in mathematics. From a young age, Hamm had a passion for mathematics, but she lacked somethin...

Mathematical concepts are fascinating in their own right, but to Greg Coxson, the most interesting part of mathematics comes in its applications. Throughout his education, Coxson found himself constantly asking: where does mathematics show up in the world, and how can it...