Inclusivity – Mathematical Association of America

Featured Resources

Can mathematics help us understand consciousness?

By Keith Devlin @KeithDevlin@fediscience.org, @profkeithdevlin.bsky.social This month’s post is a 22-minute video presentation, the first of two, with the second, concluding video being released in next month’s Devlin’s Angle. The videos summarize two lectures I gave at Southern Denmark University, in September 2023 and June 2026, respectively, during the course of a five-year Visiting Professorship I have,...

A Response to Aji Kang’s ‘What does it mean to ask “Who is Math”’

By Duxy Toinury To me, math is a good friend and rival who pushes me to do better, whom I am simply unable to match. Despite our gap, never for a second does it demotivate me. I am motivated by the insurmountable gap, the ever-shifting goalpost. Math is the friend I joke with while getting...

Pop Culture as a Gateway to Research: Expanding Belonging in Mathematics

By Qianyi Jiang, Niharika Nirankari, Monica Morales Hernandez Undergraduate students often experience mathematics as a sequence of courses centered on technique, correctness, and speed. Research, when it appears at all, usually shows up later — after students have racked up enough credentials to be granted permission to ask questions. This structure privileges speed, prior access,...

What’s Important About UCSD’s Math Report—And What It Leaves Out

By Kyndall Brown and Robin Wilson As educators who have collectively spent 50-plus years of our lives on improving math teaching, we are normally pleased when math education gets attention in the newspapers. But a recent report from UC San Diego about declining math preparation has been a mixed blessing. Crucially, the report puts a spotlight...

How I Learned to Mitigate Sustainability Issues with Maths

By Rhea Ghosal In March 2025, smoke from the Crabapple Fire north of Fredericksburg pushed across the Hill Country toward Austin. News alerts kept stuttering in, and by morning a family friend’s house was gone. Later we stood in a kitchen that still smelled of smoke, talking about wind, dryness, and how fast the fire...

Serving the Students We Don’t See

By Dave Kung When mathematician Jordan Ellenberg wanted to demonstrate to the general public How to Not Be Wrong – how mathematics can help us be more precise and successful in our thinking – he started with the story behind this famous image. When planes returned from World War II firefights, the bullet holes (in red)...

Ethnomathematics: A Culturally Responsive Approach to Learning

By Shakiyya Bland, Ed.D. Who gets to decide what mathematics is and why it must be done in a particular way? That question has followed me since I was a student. I remember sitting in middle and high school math classes, flipping through the pages of my textbooks, pausing at the photos of the authors,...

Grades are Violent: A Reflection on the Negative Impacts of Grades

By Mallory Dolorfino Since I started undergrad, I have witnessed the harmful effects, the ineffectiveness, and the simultaneous overuse of the grading system in higher education. This year, as a first time graduate teaching assistant, the phrase “grades are violent” has become increasingly resonant. The following is a reflection, based on my own experience as...

Curious Calculations: How Math Found Me in the Future

By Cyndi Coon I grew up poor in rural western Michigan. Dirt-under-the-fingernails, government-cheese, make-your-own-fun kind of poor. The only things I had in abundance were imagination and grit. I was neurodivergent and undiagnosed, navigating the world by spotting patterns no one else seemed to notice. While other kids focused on finding the “right answer,” I...

What I Needed to Hear Ten Years Ago: A DREAMer’s Journey in Math

By Daniel Flores Galiote Throughout my academic journey, I have often found myself unable to relate on a personal level with my peers. For example, classmates will talk about the careers of their family members, many from families of professors. When such a conversation arises, I remain silent because why would I want to tell...

Cynthia Simmons: Space for Math

By Ralph Pantozzi What do you do when you dream of exploring space, but the spaces in which you travel contain few clear routes to the stars? Cynthia Simmons, spaceflight engineering specialist and Deputy Center Director at NASA , knew what to do: point herself in the direction of the nearest signs of flight. I...

Rate My Professor

By Shriya V. Nagpal I had just finished introducing sequences, and the students were working on a practice problem before I presented it on the board. As I did most days, I walked around the classroom, checking in on their understanding. The students were distracted — registration for next semester had opened that morning for...

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