About me

   Tuyetdong Phan-Yamada is a lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at California State University, Los Angeles. Her journey as an educator began in Vietnam, where she completed a pedagogy program in 1989 and worked as a middle school Physics and Math teacher. After immigrating to the United States in 1994, she pursued her passion for teaching once again, earning a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of California, Irvine in 2002, followed by a Single Subject Math Teaching Credential in 2004. She later completed her M.S. in Mathematics at CSU Los Angeles in Winter 2010.

Since 2004, Mrs. Phan-Yamada has taught a wide range of mathematics courses at high schools and colleges in the Los Angeles area. Her teaching experience spans Geometry, College Algebra, Trigonometry, Statistics, Math for Elementary Teachers, Math for Liberal Arts, Pre-Calculus, Calculus, Linear Algebra, and Discrete Mathematics. She is especially known for her use of GeoGebra, a dynamic software tool, to build interactive graphical illustrations, which she integrates into her lessons to enhance learning in Statistics, Trigonometry, and Calculus.

Tuyetdong has shared her work at conferences and in academic journals. Her paper, “Hypocycloids and Hypotrochoids,” was featured on the cover of the MathAMATYC Educator journal in September 2014. That same year, she expanded her classroom expertise to industry as a Summer Faculty Research Fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. Deeply passionate about math education, she believes in using mathematics to better understand the world and connect people across cultures. In recognition of her dedication to students, she received the Exceptional Levels of Service to Students Award at CSU Los Angeles in 2021.