Shelley Dougherty earns Award for Excellence in Academic Unit Service

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (10/21/2024) – Assistant Professor Shelley Dougherty recently earned the Award for Excellence in Academic Unit Service from the University of Minnesota. The award recognizes exceptional service that has strengthened the functioning and climate of the School of Mathematics.
Dougherty has been a member of the University of Minnesota community since 2013, when she started in the Mathematics graduate program. She graduated with her PhD in 2019 and went on to complete a postdoctoral research position at Michigan State University. Dougherty returned to the University of Minnesota in 2021 as a Lecturer and the Assistant Director of the Mathematics Center for Educational Programs (MathCEP).
“There were a lot of draws to come back to Minnesota. For one, Minneapolis is an amazing place to live. I love living so close to running and biking trails, while still also being close to big-city entertainment like restaurants and music venues. I loved living here so much that while I was in graduate school, my mom and sister moved to Minneapolis from Massachusetts, our home state, and still live here today! The fact that my mother, sister, and then-partner (now husband) lived in Minnesota while I was doing my postdoc at Michigan State were really compelling reasons to come back,” Doughtery says. “I also missed the UMN Mathematics culture. I loved everything from the social events and support networks down to simple things like communication, organization, and well-stocked supply closets. Even when I was struggling as a grad student, I always felt welcome in the department.”
In her role as Assistant Director of MathCEP, Dougherty plays a critical role in developing, teaching, and supporting the center’s enrichment programs. She teaches Calculus for the University of Minnesota Talented Youth Program (UMTYMP), an initiative that brings students as young as eighth grade to campus to study mathematics at a higher level than is available in most high schools. “The passion and eagerness the UMTYMP students bring to the classroom makes me so happy! They raise their hands to compete to answer my questions first, and try to stump me – sometimes with success! – with questions about counterexamples to the material we're learning,” Dougherty says. “They don't want to only learn mathematics – they also want to know why the mathematics is what it is, and what could go wrong if we alter the definitions or theorem statements slightly.”
Dougherty also supports MathCEP enrichment programs like Saturday Morning Math and Girls Excel in Mathematics (GEM), two programs aimed at elementary school students. Saturday Morning Math is a program for 5-7th graders, held one Saturday per month throughout the academic year. “I really love being able to sit down with students who are passionate about math from a young age, and teach them about topics they likely won't see in school, such as the mathematics behind origami, or music, or optimizing city design when you can only travel along grid lines,” Dougherty says. The GEM summer program offers a week long day camp experience for girls and nonbinary students in 4-6th grade.
“This summer, on the last day of GEM camp the students made Sierpinski pyramid kites out of straws, string, and tissue paper,” Dougherty explains. “The girls were having so much fun that they spontaneously burst into song, and sang Do-Re-Mi (from The Sound of Music) together. It was one of the wildest, most unexpected, cutest, and happiest moments of my life as an educator. I look forward to running this camp each summer!”
The Award for Excellence in Academic Unit Service is one of three awards given “in recognition of exceptional service that has strengthened the functioning and climate of the recipient’s unit at the University of Minnesota.” Dougherty accepted the award in a ceremony on September 16th.