What is your club about? 

The Mathematics Society provides an opportunity for not only math majors, but anyone who takes interest in the vast and beautiful world of math to gather.  

When was your club established?

We actually aren’t sure when the club was established. It has been established at least since 2016, but we suspect it might have been around before that. 

Who are your current leaders (advisors, president, vice president, etc.)?

Our advisors are Dr. Brenna Curley and Dr. Shannon Talbott from the Math and Computer Science departments. Our executive board includes president Emma Miller, vice-president Kyle Schaedler, treasurer Rey Anaya, secretary Victoria Samuels, and PR coordinators Kayla Valle and Calum Taft-Lockard. We will be announcing the new e-board at our upcoming Pi-Day celebration!

When does your club meet?

Our club meets on Mondays at 4:00 via Zoom. You can email [email protected] if you would like the link or be added to our emailing list!

What is the most popular activity that the campus knows you for?

Our most popular activities for our members have always been our annual Pi-Day celebration and of course our many off-campus conferences and trips! Every year around Pi-Day, our math students and the math faculty get together and eat math-referencing and non-math-referencing baked goods made by the math faculty (COVID permitting), announce our executive board, and come together as a community to talk and play a few games. 

In addition, in the past, we have gone to an M.C. Escher museum in New York City and last year we were planning on going to the Spy Museum, also in New York City.  We also go to the bi-yearly EPADel conferences and more. Non-members most likely know us from our many Epsilon talks which many of the Calc classes require students to attend. We hope to hold more Epsilon talks this upcoming April!

What are the biggest challenges that your club faces?

One of our biggest challenges is that many people fear mathematics and tend to write it off early on. We wish more people would join our club and be able to experience mathematics without the pressures of scoring a high exam grade.  More people could appreciate mathematics if they simply gave it a chance.  

If you could pair up with another club for an event or project, who would it be?

In the past, we have paired up with WISE and MC^3, but we would love to work with any of the other science or even art clubs on campus. Mathematics is very widespread in a variety of, if not all, disciplines and we love to incorporate it any way we can!

What is the latest project that your club is excited about?

We currently have two upcoming movie nights to spotlight Women’s History Month. On March 12th we are showcasing a documentary in Prosser Auditorium about the first and only women to have ever won a Fields Medal award in mathematics. Also, on March 26th, we are hoping to show the movie Hidden Figures. In addition to these movie nights, we will be celebrating Pi Day on March 16th (we’re rounding up this year).

If you had an unlimited budget, what dream project would your club put it towards?

We would love to put more money towards outreach programs for both Moravian students and other schools in the area, both college and grade school levels. These outreach programs could include more guest speakers, inviting more people on campus (COVID permitting) for events, and more! On a less serious note, we also think that a math-themed theme park would be very cool. 

What do we do at our meetings?

We all love math and love to talk about math; however, we do not talk about math problems at our meetings (most of the time). At our meetings, we typically talk about upcoming events that we are hosting or events available to the public. In addition, we also just get together and talk. Sometimes this is pertaining to math but other times it’s just normal conversation that helps bring the math faculty and math students together. When COVID hit, we still managed to get together and solve math puzzles and riddles just to keep our community together.

Answers provided by Emma Miller, Dr. Brenna Curley, Kayla Valle, Calum Taft-Lockard, and Victoria Samuels