Montclair State - Mathematics Department

The Montclair Math Club has been busy this semester! From Movie Night 🎬 to a GraphWars competition against the Physics Club 📈 to Game Night 🎲, we've had a great time bringing students together for some fun! Each event featured catered food, raffles, and awesome prizes, including iPads, AirPods, a TI-84 Evo, and AirTags! 🎁

Thanks to everyone who joined us! Stay tuned for more fun Math Club events, including Karaoke Night on November 23 at 8 PM in CELS 120! 🎤🎶

Math graduate student Ryan Avallone and Dr. Eliza Leszczynski took the stage with the MSU Chorale during Kaleidoscope on October 2 and 3 in Kasser Theater. The Chorale performed a movement from Dan Forrest’s Requiem for the Living. The concert was incredible!

Ryan is active in three choirs, including the MSU Chorale, Montclair Singers, and Vocal Accord, and his graduate research explores connections between mathematics and music.

Ryan and Dr. Leszczynski will return to the stage for the Winter Concert on December 5, when the MSU Chorale will perform all five movements of Forrest’s Requiem for the Living with the MSU Symphonic Orchestra.

Pictured with Ryan and Dr. Leszczynski are Dr. Heather Buchanan, Chorale Director, and Seth Velez, Assistant Director.

Doctoral candidate Emily Olson recently presented research at the 2026 Mid-Atlantic Conference on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education (MA-RUME), hosted in a hybrid format at Richard Bland College in Prince George, Virginia. Olson presented alongside Drs. Joseph DiNapoli of Montclair State University, Jennifer Ward of Kennesaw State University, and Alesia Moldavan of Georgia Southern University. Their talk, What Elementary Preservice Teachers Notice in Children’s Mathematical Reasoning, examined how 54 elementary preservice teachers interpreted children’s mathematical thinking while analyzing a video case centered on an open-ended basketball modeling task. Findings showed that preservice teachers readily noticed arithmetic strategies and contextual reasoning, while deeper mathematical structures, such as systematically organizing possibilities and determining whether all solutions had been found, were less visible. Way to go, Emily!

REMINDER: Join us this Sunday, October 11, 2026 at 1:00 PM for the Fall 2026 Virtual Graduate Open House Math/Math Education Information Session. The session will detail our graduate online programs for mathematics teachers. We offer flexible synchronous online and in-person programs to help you grow and ultimately help students learn! Registration required. View the flyer for info about the programs and QR codes to register.

Undergraduate mathematics education major, Noelani Brown, was awarded a Student-Led Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities Grant to continue their research on the alignments of Student and Faculty Perceptions of Student Belonging in the College of Science and Mathematics with faculty mentor Dr. Nina Bailey. Congratulations Noelani, we are excited to learn about your results!

Our Mathematics graduate student, Preston Pietruszewski, received an Outstanding Poster Award for his research poster at the MAA MathFest in Boston, MA. His poster was shared at the Research in Motion poster session during the conference. His poster was titled “Beauty of Divisibility in Pascal's Triangle.” Great work, Preston!

Join us on Sunday, October 11, 2026 at 1:00 PM for the Fall 2026 Virtual Graduate Open House Math/Math Education Information Session. The session will detail our graduate online programs for mathematics teachers. We offer flexible synchronous online and in-person programs to help you grow and ultimately help students learn! Registration required. View the flyer for info about the programs and QR codes to register.
The registration link is also here: https://graduate.montclair.edu/register/math-education-programs

John O'Meara, a PhD candidate in the Mathematics Education program and adjunct professor, presented a talk at the 2026 MAA MathFest in Boston, MA on August 8, 2026. His talk was entitled "Approaches to College Mathematics: Supporting Mathematical and Collegiate Growth for STEM Students" and represented his dissertation work as well as his work with the MATH 108 research group on supporting students in their first semester of college mathematics.

Montclair doctoral candidate Elise Lahiere and her Western Kentucky colleague Rachel Maggard presented a session, Growing Together: Building a Peer Observation Process for Learning Assistants, at Pedagogicon 2026. This conference was recently hosted at Eastern Kentucky University. During this session, they described the peer observation process they developed for the undergraduate Learning Assistants in the Center for STEM Excellence at EKU. They presented an overview of its development, the process used, and feedback from the Learning Assistants, who are an integral part of the observation process and participants in its development. Way to go, Elise!

Doctoral candidates Emily Olson and John O’Meara presented their research at the Rutgers Mathematics End of Year Conference (RUMEY) in May 2026.

Emily, alongside her advisor Dr. DiNapoli, presented a talk entitled Perseverance in Undergraduate Proof Construction. This talk detailed the ways in which undergraduate provers overcame impasse moments during number theory proofs.

John, alongside Dr. Eliza Leszczynski, gave a talk entitled Creative Thinking Through Mathematics: Explorations with Paper Loops and Links. This talk focused on how creative thinking can be elicited and supported in a general education mathematics course for non-STEM majors, featuring tasks from Dr. Munakata and Dr. Leszczynski's recently published book: Connections and collaboration: Concept mapping as a research and learning tool in undergraduate mathematics.

Congratulations, Emily and John!