Monica VanDieren Outreach

Recent activities

• Guest speaker at local middle and high schools. Interactive presentations have included material on digital communications, cryptography and careers in mathematics.

• Workshop on the Rubik's Cube and other Mathematical Puzzles. Saturday Workshops for Middle and High School students at Robert Morris University. March 2008.

• Keynote Speaker at the Math Day 2007 at the University of Oklahoma. Gave an interactive talk, entitled Keeping Secrets, to over 150 high school students on the history and mathematics behind the breaking of the World War II Enigma code.

• Co-organizer of the Pittsburgh Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) Conference. Having not had representation in the Pittsburgh region for over 5 years, I initiated the drive to bring EYH back to Pittsburgh. This years event attacted 200 junior high girls and their parents. The conference focused on hands-on activities in math and science which connected girls with women role models in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) careers. Parents participated in optional workshops on student self-esteem and on the college and financial aid application process. Robert Morris University teamed with the Expanding Your Horizons Network and Seagate Technologies to put on this event. Click here for a newspaper article about the Pittsburgh event. October 13, 2007.

• Workshop Leader for the Pittsburgh Expanding Your Horizons Conference. Ran two workshops on cryptography for 44 junior high school girls. October 13, 2007.

• Digital Communications Workshop for high school students sponsored by the School of Science, Engineering and Mathematics at Robert Morris University. In this workshop, we explore the mathematics behind the way computers, iPods and digital cameras communicate and store information, music and photos. Computers have a very limited alphabet (only the symbols 0 and 1) which means that in order to store the word "Hello" in a computer it will first need to be coded or translated into a list of 0's and 1's. Of course, this translation is done behind the scenes on the computer, but by understanding this translation we can gain a better idea of why credit card numbers and other private information can be transmitted on the internet with some degree of security. Some topics to be covered include binary arithmetic, data compression and cryptography. Saturday, April 14, 2007. For more information or to register for this or other workshops see the news release.

• Ready, SET, Play! Workshop for middle and high school students sponsored by the School of Science, Engineering and Mathematics at Robert Morris University. In this workshop, we play several games including the card game SET with a focus on exploring mathematical concepts from logic and combinatorics. Saturday, March 31, 2007. For more information or to register for this or other workshops see the news release.

• Snowdrop Elementary School Math Club K-6. Hands-on activities allowed students of all ages to explore the theory underlying the communication between fax machines. The students sent and received a fax, translated between binary and base-ten numbers, communicated with one another in binary and decoded a data compressed picture. March 8, 2007.

• Mathcounts volunteer for the regional Pittsburgh competition organized by the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Pennsylvania Society of Professional Engineers. Spring 2006.

• King-Chavez-Parks Program host at the University of Michigan. This program is run through the University of Michigan's Office of Academic and Multicultural Initiatives. As a host, I present to seventh graders some of the mathematical concepts underlying sound and radio waves by allowing the students to explore how to vary frequency and amplitude on oscilloscopes with their voices. Fall 2005.

For more information about my outreach activities and career, see my c.v.
Back to Monica VanDieren's homepage.