Outreach & Mentoring

I was a co-coordinator of the REU Summers 2023 (with Daoji Huang and Pasha Pylyavskyy) and 2024 (with Vic Reiner). My duties included: creating an equitable rubric for student admissions, coordinating and participating in training for mentors an TAs, aiding administration, and arranging program activities.

In summer 2024 I lead a group of three undergraduates: Casey Appleton (UIUC), Zachary Medlin (Mercer), and Mario Tomba (Dartmouth) in studying free resolutions of skew Specht ideals.

In Summer 2023 I lead a group of five undergraduates: Erin Delargy (Binghamton), Rylie Harris (Wesleyan), Jiachen Kang (Michigan), Bryan Lu (Cornell), and Ramanuja Charyulu Telekicherla Kandalam (Minnesota) in studying S_n-equivariant Koszul algebras from the Boolean lattice.

In Summer 2022, I lead a group of three undergraduates: Hanson Hao (Stanford, now a PhD student a Berkeley), Yuyuan Luo (MIT), and Sterling Saint Rain (Purdue, now a PhD student at Berkeley) in their study of characterizing polarizations of strongly stable ideals. They also studied applications of their characterization to questions about shellable balls, componentwise linear "weakly rainbow" ideals, and smooth points on the Hilbert scheme. Their final report can be found HERE. 

• Fall 2023: (Cornell, Senior Thesis, remote) Bryan Lu, A branching rule for the 0-Hecke algebra

• 2022-2023: (Minnesota, Honors Thesis) Demetrios Case, Ideals Associated to Tropical Hyperplane Arrangements

• Spring 2022: (Minnesota, Senior Capstone) Cole Hengel, Domino Tilings

I mentor a "pen pal" incarcerated in Arizona on his journey to self-teach physics (and the required mathematics prerequisites) since April 2022. I also write learning modules for units in algebra and combinatorics that are designed for incarcerated students to self-teach and self-assess with limited contact with the outside.

MPM is a four day workshop for undergraduates at the University of Minnesota who come from underrepresented groups in mathematics. I ran a one-session mini-workshop on the Catalan numbers.

The mission of the Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP) is to provide courses leading to college degrees for people incarcerated in upstate New York State prisons; to help CPEP students build meaningful lives inside prison as well as prepare for successful re-entry into civic life; and to inform thought and action on social justice issues among past and present CPEP students, volunteers, and the wider public. 

All activities below took place at Five Points Correctional Facility in Romulus, NY.

• • Primary Instructor for Math 112 - Contemporary Mathematics, Fall 2019.

  • Teaching Assistant for Math 112 - Contemporary Mathematics, Fall 2018.

  • I ran a one hour workshop on graph coloring for all CPEP students at Five Points on October 25, 2019.

Alongside fellow graduate student Ellie Lauri, I co-founded the program "Women Mentoring Women in Mathematics" through Cornell's local chapter of the Association for Women in Mathematics. The program pairs interested underclasswomen with individual mentors who are either seniors or graduate students in mathematics, applied mathematics, operations research, or statistics. In addition to meeting in these pairs, we also host large group workshops approximately once a month. These workshops provide opportunities for group mentoring as well as personal and professional development activities. 

I am proud that the mentoring program continues to run at Cornell as of 2023.

We regularly ran social events, networking ``tea-times'' with female seminar speakers, and ``Spill the Tea'' events to discuss difficult subjects plaguing women and gender minorities in mathematics and related fields. For these reasons and more, our chapter won the Cook Award in Spring 2017 ``for improving the campus climate for women at Cornell University''.

Together with the rest of the AWM leadership during this time, I established a grant for early graduate students in the mathematics department who identified as women or gender minorities to attend conferences and begin networking with others early in their careers. I am proud that this program continues to run as of 2023: https://pi.math.cornell.edu/~awm/travelGrant.html

Encuentro Colombiano de Combinatoria (ECCO) is a combinatorics workshop held every other year in Colombia. The main objective of the school is to bring young mathematicians from the region into close contact with international researchers and leading experts in various fields of combinatorics and its applications. The aim is to promote mathematical research among young students in a motivating environment, and to consolidate a regional research network in combinatorics. 

Teaching Assistant,  Polynomial Optimization mini-course by Professor Rekha Thomas, June 2018, Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla

GRASSHOPR pairs Cornell graduate students with teachers in Tompkins, Tioga, and Seneca counties to teach 3-to 5-session mini-courses on topics related to the graduate student’s field or interests. Teachers and graduate students share the benefits of exchanging ideas as they develop a curriculum, while K-12 students experience new mentors in their classroom who are eager to share knowledge and excitement about their field of study. 

I designed and co-taught the mini-course "Graph Coloring" at Ithaca High School (with Avery St. Dizier) in April 2018.

• • Lesson plan

  • Lectures 1, 2, 3

  • Review from day 1, Review from day 2

I designed and taught the mini-course "Playing with Infinities" at Ithaca High School in April 2017.

• • Lesson plan

  • Lectures 1, 2, 3

Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) conferences are designed to introduce 5th-8th grade girls to careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). 

Cornell University

• • Activity Leader, April 2018. Designed and implemented "Probability" station in the Exploring Math: Patterns and Puzzles workshop. Worksheet

  • Activity Leader, April 2017. Designed and implemented "Permutation Groups" station in the Exploring Math: Patterns and Puzzles workshop.

  • Workshop Volunteer, April 2016. Helped run "Graph Coloring" station in the Exploring Math: Patterns and Puzzles workshop.

University of Wisconsin-Madison

• • Buddy, October 2014 & October 2013. Buddies are volunteers who serve as role models for a small group of conference participants as they guide them from one workshop to the next.

Cornell's Graduate Women in Science (GWIS) launched the FemSTEM Mentoring Program in Spring 2017. The goal is to match undergraduate mentees with graduate mentors for one-on-one and group mentoring, with the goal of empowering women and gender minorities in STEM, particularly those who fall along multiple axes of diversity.

Through this program, I mentored an undergraduate woman majoring in Operations Research in Spring 2017.

The Physics Learning Center offers a variety of services including small group study sessions (providing a supportive environment in which to learn physics), access to study materials, and extra exam review sessions. Study groups meet twice each week and are led by trained peer tutors and staff. As part of the program, Peer Mentor Tutors also meet for weekly meetings to discuss physics pedagogy.

• Peer Mentor Tutor for Physics 103 (General Physics I), Fall 2014

• Peer Mentor Tutor for Physics 104 (General Physics II), Spring 2015