Teaching math to enrich lives

The Mathworks program at Texas State held their summer youth math camp this past week, hosting a ceremony Thursday at the San Marcos High School to recognize the teachers that participated, the sponsors and the annual T-Shirt contest winner.

The program was sponsored by the Webber Foundation, H-E-B and the Lion’s Club. The curriculum was developed by Assistant Director of Research and Curriculum Development for Mathworks Hiroko Warshauer and Terry McCabe.

The Founder and Executive Director of Mathworks Max Warshauer was the main speaker for the event and handed out certificates of recognition for all of the teachers involved. Warshauer said there were 140 students that participated in the camp at San Marcos High School, 70 students in a residential program at Texas State University and 76 participating at another camp at the university. The students come from all over the country. Texas State supports the program in other ways too. “This year we had 22 undergraduates from Texas State assisting in the classroom,” Warshauer said.

Warshauer said the math camp is important for several reasons. “This teaches people to think creatively and develops their imagination. Einstein said, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge.’ They learn to work together. They develop a foundation to do higher level math and science, so they’re prepared for careers in STEM,” he said.

Warshauer noted that the importance isn’t limited to career advancement. “We want to develop new students as students who can solve anything, so they become unafraid of making mistakes,” Warshauer said. “No matter what happens, they’ll be able to handle it.”

According to their website, The Webber Foundation, is based out of Austin and supports programs that focus on school readiness, early literacy and learning outside of the classroom. The foundation was represented by the Executive Director Marisol Foster and the Program Manager Courtney Horm. “We give grants to support high achieving kids just like you all here. Our goal is to continue to inspire outside of school learning,” Foster said. “As a foundation we strongly believe that a quality education and curiosity are what drives innovation [and] what drives success. Our founder Neil Webber was many things. He was just like you guys when he was little. Today he carries a lot of titles. He’s a founder and an entrepreneur. He’s a mathematician. He’s an MIT graduate. He’s a philanthropist, He’s also made the Forbes List of the wealthiest people in the world - He was just like you guys, trying to learn to be inspired by and enjoy Math, but his greatest title is an Instigator of Thought… [it means] to ask questions, to never take anything at face value, to be relentless in your questioning, and that’s what is going to make you guys - each and every one of you here - successful.”

Foster said that she would like the kids to never quit learning. “I just want to say that I hope that each of you continues to go on this lifelong journey, to expand, to sharpen your skills because this isn’t something that’s one and done. This is forever. I want you all to promise yourselves to keep an open heart, to keep an open mind, to be open to learning things, unlearning them and relearning them. I want you all to surround yourself with people who will challenge you and make you bigger than you ever thought [possible],” Foster said. “There’s no such thing as a dumb question, ever.”

A representative of The Lion’s Club was also at the ceremony, a nonprofit staple in town that uses their tube rental business to raise money for the community. Corey Wheeler gave a speech to the kids, explaining what the Lion Club does and why this camp is important. “We give back to the community, so if you all float the river… Thank you all so much for that. We are honored. We are privileged, and we will keep doing this for many, many, many years if you all keep coming to camp and learning math,” Wheeler said. “What you guys learned this week, what you guys will learn in the future in grade school and through high school - potentially college - you will use the rest of your life. This is one skill that you will never not use.”

Wheeler said a major focus of the organization is supporting the community’s children. “One of our pillars that we like to contribute to involves the youth, so we look for every opportunity we can to sponsor youth programs. We have a lot of different youth programs that we sponsor, I would say not particularly math in general, but ultimately whatever we can do for the San Marcos community to foster youth [learning] and youth camps - that’s what we do,” he said.

Each year, Mathworks selects a student’s design for the Summer Math Camp T-shirt at the commencement ceremony following camp completion. This year’s winner created a design that displays the words The Power of Math with an illustration of a personified math worksheet scaring off a figure wielding a baseball bat. Congratulations to this year's selected artist, Kennedie Freese.