27+. Interview with Dr Amanda Serenevy

Education Bookcast

Dr Amanda Serenevy is a mathematician and mathematics educator, focussing on outreach through the medium of Math Circles, and on teacher training. This episode appears as number "27+" because the previous episode, Consider the Circle, was about how Amanda rescued a young girl from a terrible time with maths at school.

She is the founder and director of Riverbend Community Math Centre in South Bend, Indiana, which works to improve mathematics education within the local community. She runs teacher training courses throughout the year, both to help teachers with their pedagogy, and with their knowledge of maths itself. She also has many local children and young people come to her Math Centre to engage in mathematical activities, the most prominent of these being Math Circles.

In summer, she is the main organiser of the Summer Math Circle Institute at the University of Notre Dame, which is a course for learning how to run Math Circles, and is the place where I met her. She also finds time to spend almost two months a year in Navajo Nation helping to run maths outreach programs, including a three week long summer camp.

She did her undergraduate degree in mathematics at the University of Indiana at South Bend, and her PhD in dynamical systems at Boston University. Interestingly, she declined academic positions at university in favour of doing more maths outreach, and so her choice of career is very deliberate, and she is committed to her cause.

From getting to know Amanda personally, I can say that she is both very personable and very dedicated to her work. It is easy to see how much positive effect she is having on her community, particularly on the children who have clearly gained so much from her help, guidance, and activities. While she has a thorough understanding of the problems with maths education in her country, she somehow isn't completely disillusioned, which is a feat in itself. I was greatly privileged to be able to shadow her for a week while in the US and pick her brains about maths, education, and why America is such a strange place.

Enjoy the episode.