Outreach

Current:

2023 Initiated Math Circles at West Philadelphia High School
-- design and organize math enrichment sessions for 9th-10th graders

2023 Center of Teaching and Learning certified.

2021-24 Master TA (UPenn Math department)
-- hold TA workshop sessions and observe first-time TAs

2023-24 Prison Teaching Initiative Course Coordinator or PTI (South Woods State Prison, NJ)
-- develop syllabi and teach Math015: Basic Mathematics to inmates.

2023 Summer Math Mentor (Center of Teaching and Learning, College of Liberal and Professional Sciences)
-- mentor and guide first-time summer instructors

Past:
2022 Participated in the CTL Inclusion and Equity course
-- a 5 week course in inclusive and equitable teaching

2022 Penn Graduate Community-based Research Mentorship or PGCERM (Netter Center)
-- building math-enrichment sessions called "math circles" for students from minority neighbourhoods

2022-23 Moelis Access Science Fellow or MAS (Netter Center)
-- assist math classrooms in high schools of West Philadelphia.

2021-23 Volunteer teacher at the Prison Teaching Initiative or PTI (South Woods State Prison, NJ)
-- teach Math015: Basic Mathematics and Math020: Beginning algebra to inmates

2021-23 Directed Reading Program organiser and participant or DRP (UPenn Math department)
-- organize undergraduate symposiums and a graduate-undergraduate mentorship program

2021-2023 Co-cordinator of the Gender Minorities in Math group at UPenn (link)

2019-2022 Co-cordinator and Mentor of the Directed Reading Program at UPenn

Awards:

2024 PTI Woodpile Award: given to a long-standing PTI volunteer who has made significant contributions to the
initiative during their tenure, leaving the 'woodpile' stacked higher than when they joined the program.

The bio: Marielle Ong began teaching mathematics with PTI in the Spring of 2021 at South Woods State Prison. In addition to being a long-standing volunteer, dedicating their time and energy to PTI, Marielle has also dedicated their curiosity, love of mathematics, empathy, and creativity to their students and the PTI program. For MATH015: Basic Mathematics, the first developmental math course in the RVCC curriculum, Marielle developed a series of mathematical puzzles to inject fun, levity, and friendly competition into what is otherwise known as a dry and tedious course. Their students describe them as ‘patient’, ‘funny’, and ‘an incredible teacher’, often requesting that Marielle teach their next math class and that we start paying them.

It’s not hard to see from my position why students value Marielle as an instructor. In the last year, I have had the immense privilege of witnessing Marielle go above and beyond for their students, creating additional practice materials in preparation for exams and championing for their students to ensure each student got the opportunity they deserved to make up a missed exam, all while thoughtfully leading their teaching teams.

In many ways, Marielle has been the beating heart of PTI at Penn, folding new grad students into the program and being a leader for the PTI community at Penn. We are thrilled for them as they move into a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto but will miss them dearly. I am incredibly grateful to have started my first year in this position with Marielle. They have reshaped my thinking on teaching developmental math and taught me that our partnership and collaboration with the wonderful folks at UPenn is sustained by the dedication of teachers like Marielle.

My personal growth in equity, diversity and inclusion in mathematics.

On Feburary 23rd 2020, a 25-year old black man, Ahmaud Arbery, was murdered while jogging around in his neighborhood. When the murder of George Floyd and the BLM protests came to light in June 2020, I was 25 years old at the time, isolating with my parents in the Australian countryside. Since the gyms were closed, I often took jogs around my neighbourhood, just like Ahmaud did. I grieved on my runs because while I used my runs to clear my mind, to enjoy nature, to seek a void (just as Haruki Murakami say), not many people, like Ahmaud, had the freedom to do the same.

From one runner to another, everyone deserves to enjoy their runs; to leave their business behind, to feel the road beneath their toes, to taste the air of freedom. This was the defining moment in my life that really questioned my purpose as a mathematician. Was I really doing anything to help?

It began with prison-teaching. Meeting incarcerated individuals and seeing them celebrate their victories in math changed my life. It changed the way I view people and their potential to become a completely different person. Many of my students have served their sentences for decades and they have decades more to go. I think about them everyday. I understand that due to their crimes, there is a reason why they were removed them from society. But the entire system is against them when it comes to opportunities for rehabilitation. I then decided to explore teaching in high schools, which is a much more chaotic environment. I can see why my incarcerated students said that they had trouble learning math in school. I learnt a startling statistic that the whitest school districts receive about $2,234/student more than the diverse schools. That is a straight-up monetary price on race.

I think we mathematicians often dabble in abstraction and the esoteric that is far-removed from society. Not to mention the petty politics that come with academia. The judgment, the expectations, the ladder-climbing, the egos. But with the current climate now, with the number of people dying in the streets, can we really afford to stay in our ivory tower? I think we have so many professional skills to offer, such as understanding complex stories, pinpointing gaps, observing patterns, thinking divergently. Are we not problem solvers? It is an enormous privilege that we have been allowed a flexible degree or career such as academia. It feels like common sense that we should be more community-minded and socially-responsible, that we should use our skills to solve problems in our society. Outreach is not as valued in the academic community but we need to be more well-rounded researchers.

Any attempts for outreach from university institutions can feel performative. It can be seen as a chance for applicants to check the boxes on their resumes when actually, these activities do not lead to any meaningful changes. This is the same with diversity statements and how easy it is to lie on them. Disillusion was a phase of my life I went through but in my view, it is up to us, the actual people executing outreach, to make it genuine, meaningful and non-performative. We call the shots. Not them.

As a mathematician, I pledge to seek equity, diversity and inclusion throughout my career, however short/long-lived that may be. I believe that mathematics is for everyone; that with enough effort, anyone can overcome their obstacles in math.