| Erica Dakin Voolich (President and founder) is an award-winning middle school mathematics teacher. She won a Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching in Secondary Mathematics (1999), an Edyth May Sliffe Award (1999) and an Above and Beyond Award (Massachusetts Software & Internet Council, 2002). The author of two supplementary mathematics texts: A Peek into Math of the Past: Mathematical Historical Investigations for Middle School and Pre-Algebra Students, (2001) and Investigating with Power Solids, (1997) and numerous articles on teaching mathematics, she has conducted local, national, and international workshops for mathematics teachers. She has also written two books on design in weaving: Parallel Shadow Weave, (with Elizabeth Lang, 1987) and Playing With Blocks: An Exploration of Multiharness Overshot, (1977). She just retired from teaching seventh grade mathematics at the Solomon Schechter Day School (Newton). She has taught previously at Wheelock College, Cambridge Friends School, and in the public schools of Philadelphia and Arlington, Massachusetts. She is a fellow of the Teachers Leadership Academy of Massachusetts. Locally she has served as the Clerk of the Board for RESPOND, Inc (1998-2004), and as the Recording Clerk (2000-2002) and Finance Committee member (1997-2000) of the Fresh Pond Friends Meeting. |
Richard Graf (Vice President) is an award winning real estate and urban design professional. He is responsible for development of commercial and residential projects, an adviser to clients on development issues from urban to project scale, with specializations in historic tax credits and adaptive reuse. He was a Visiting Critic (1989-97) at Harvard University, concentrating on the relationship between real estate economics and urban design. |
Susan Weiss (Webmaster) is an award-winning mathematics teacher with degrees in mathematics, education, special education, and instruction technology. Her awards include the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching in Elementary Mathematics (2000), a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship (1991), and a Compaq Technology Grant (1999). She has presented workshops in technology and discrete mathematics at local, regional, and national teachers’ conferences and served as an officer for many organizations devoted to education in mathematics and technology. She has taught mathematics in grades K-12, primarily in the lower grades. Currently she is the Instructional Technology Specialist and Math Support Provider at the Solomon Schechter Day School (Newton). |
Michael Voolich |
| Patricia Jehlen served on the Somerville School Committee from 1975 until 1990 when she was elected to the Massachusetts Legislature. She served in the House until 2005, when she was elected to the Senate. She currently chairs the committee on Elder Affairs, and is co-chair of the committee on Education. Rep. Jehlen holds a Master of Arts in Teaching from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She taught history at Brookline High School and supervised student teachers at Simmons College. She is the mother of three SHS graduates, and the grandmother of two students at the Healey School in Somerville. |
| Monica Fernandes (Auditor) grew up in Somerville, graduating from Somerville High School. She went on to Suffolk University, where she graduated with her BSBA and Masters in Accounting in 2008. She graduated with honors and as a member of the Griffin Honor Society. She is a licensed CPA in MA and works in taxation at PricewaterhouseCoopers. |
| Jay Landers (Treasurer) is a retired field controller for Kraft Foods. Currently he is the treasurer of New England Dollars for Scholars, the regional advisory board for Scholarship America. Currently he is the Treasurer (and was the past President) of Citizen Scholarship Foundation of Wakefield, MA. He has an MBA from Oregon State University He resides at the start bike path in Davis Square with his spouse Jasper. |
| Erin Munro (Co-Secretary) is a research fellow in the Mathematics Department at Boston University. She is a recent graduate from Tufts University, where she completed her doctoral dissertation with Christoph Borgers in mathematical neuroscience. Besides the Somerville Math Fund, she also enjoys volunteering for Reaching for Higher Ground, a program that offers free tutoring in Dorchester. |
| Zbigniew Niteckiis a mathematician working in nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory. He has been on the faculty at Tufts University since 1972; previously he taught at Yale and the City College of New York. Besides papers in research journals, he has written three books: Differentiable Dynamics (MIT Press, 1971: Russian translation 1975, Chinese 1979), Differential Equations, A First Course (with M. Guterman: Saunders,1st ed. 1984, 3rd ed. 1992), and Calculus Deconstructed, A Second Course in First Year Calculus (MAA, 2009). In 1982-3, he served as the first director of the Geometric Analysis program at the NSF. He is currently on the editorial board of two journals: Real Analysis Exchange and Qualitative Theory of Dynamical Systems. He was recently appointed Associate Treasurer of the American Mathematical Society starting in February 2012. He lived in Somerville from 1974 to 1983, and is delighted to be back, since 2007. |
| Beth Porter serves as Technical Product Manager of Educational Markets for Mathsoft Engineering & Education, Inc., a private software development company in Cambridge. The firm creates math applications for professional engineers, researchers, and scientists, as well as members of the academic community. Beth taught high school mathematics for a few years after completing her undergraduate and graduate work at Cornell. She remains interested in all levels of math and science education, particularly in terms of what technology can do to help teachers and learners succeed. |
Sharon Rewerts, Vibro Dynamics |
| Andrew West (Co-Secretary) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Astronomy at Boston University (BU). Most of his research focuses on the movement, distribution and magnetic fields of low-mass stars (much smaller and dimmer than the Sun). By harnessing the statistical power of large samples, he uses these small stars to investigate the kinematic, chemical and binary evolution of the Milky Way. Andrew has been awarded for his work to diversify the demographics of STEM fields and currently sits on the Multicultural Advisory Committee at BU and the Astronomy/Astrophysics organizing committee for the National Society of Black Physicists. He holds a B.S. in physics and astronomy from Haverford College, a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Washington and held postdoctoral fellowships at UC Berkeley and MIT. In addition to his academic life, Andrew plays ultimate frisbee and is an active participant and promoter of local food in Somerville. |
| Advisory Board Peter Golden, The Golden Group Richard D Schafer, Professor of Mathematics Emeritus, MIT Jeffrey Swartz, The Timberland Company |