Mathematics Project at Minnesota: Cultivating confidence and community for underrepresented undergraduates
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (5/6/2025)
“Now I can confidently say I feel like I belong to the math department and know I can find community in it.”
“Everyone was so welcoming and accommodating and I feel like I have a community in Math now!”
“MPM has changed the way I view the math department and has made me feel like a wanted respected individual here. I have felt very isolated within the math department since becoming a math major and MPM has completely changed that.”
These words, submitted by attendees of the 2025 Mathematics Project at Minnesota (MPM) session, demonstrate the power of mentorship and community taking place right here at the School of Mathematics. Earlier this year, the eighth annual MPM session brought together underrepresented undergraduate students for a week-long winter workshop. The event – which blends practical math skills, professional development, and personal well-being – is designed to connect participants with mathematics, mentorship, and each other.
Over the course of the workshop, undergraduates work closely with graduate student mentors to build confidence in their mathematical skills and build community. This year’s program included individual projects, math mini-workshops, and sessions to discuss self-advocacy, changing the mathematics culture, and financial literacy. During and in between the sessions, participating students make invaluable personal connections with mentors, faculty, and each other. By the end of the week, the amount of participants who responded positively to the survey question “The mathematics department is welcoming to me and people like me” increased from 72% to 95%.
On the mathematics side of the spectrum, the Individual Projects portion of the workshop gave 88% of participants the opportunity to give their very first mathematics presentation. Over the course of the workshop, attendees and mentors make time each day to work on reading and dissecting an accessible math text and preparing a 5-minute presentation. “Participants often say that giving a presentation is one of the most empowering parts of MPM and report that seeing the presentations of their peers helps them “feel less intimidated [about] various math fields,” MPM organizer Elise Catania says. “As MPM staff, it is a joy to witness participants confidently discuss a topic in advanced math, surrounded by a supportive community of peers and new friends and mentors.”
Students also get a chance to engage with faculty research through two mini-workshops. In each workshop, a faculty member gives a one-hour interactive presentation on a high-level, but digestible mathematical topic. In addition to being mathematically informative, the mini-workshop is an opportunity for participants to meet senior members of the math department in an informal, relaxed setting. This year, Assistant Professor Maru Sarazola and Professor Dick McGehee gave lectures on picture hanging problems and climate modeling, respectively.
MPM is continuously working to make improvements to the workshop and to cultivate experiences that are valuable both practically and personally. In the 2024 and 2025 sessions, organizers introduced three new professional sessions based on participant feedback. In collaboration with the Office for Equity and Diversity (OED), a brand new Self-Advocacy session was launched this year. During the session, staff from OED helped participants utilize growth mindset ideas to address potential challenging situations with self-advocacy and discussed ways that self-advocacy intersects with identity. Two programs that were new in 2024 – Finances and Changing the Culture – also returned in 2025. “We learn a lot about the experiences of our undergraduate math students through MPM. This helps us better understand their needs and in turn improve as mentors and teachers,” MPM organizer Patty Commins says. “For example, through sessions like Individual Projects and Changing the Culture, we have been able to hear about challenges students have faced in navigating the math major, teaching techniques which have been helpful to their learning, or class activities that have helped them feel like they belonged. We also get to learn about their longer-term goals and what types of opportunities they are most interested in, which helps us plan sessions like the Future Opportunities Panel and the Summer Opportunities Panel.”
Programs like MPM are crucial in building community and a sense of belonging for undergraduates at key moments in their academic careers. MPM could not achieve its success without the dedicated support of graduate student organizers, faculty and student mentors, and financial aid from public and private donors. In November 2024, Give to the Max Day donations exceeded fundraising goals and raised over $2,000 for the program. This year’s session was generously sponsored by an anonymous donor. Sustained by a solid support system, MPM hopes to continue to grow for many years to come.
