Zsuzsanna Szaniszlo

Associate Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science

Teaching young minds to play at – and love – mathematics

Zsuzsanna Szaniszlo

Zsuzsanna Szaniszlo, is on a mission to get more children involved with – and interested in – math. She has channeled her passion into everything from international math competitions for young students to intensive “math camps” for gifted collegians. And for the past three summers, Szaniszlo has brought a nationally recognized math workshop to Valpo.

How did Szaniszlo come to her love of numbers? She says math was in the air at her childhood home in Hungary. “My mother was a high school math teacher and my dad was a theoretical physicist. Plus, my older brother was extremely good at math so I had to keep up with him,” she says with a smile.

As a teenager, Szaniszlo whiled away hours “playing” at math problems and participating in math competitions. Now she serves as a judge for the Abacas International Math Challenge, an internet-based project for 3 rd through 8 th graders (Szaniszlo grades solutions submitted by 7 th and 8 th grade participants). She also sits on the panel that constructs the Mathematical Association of America’s famed American Mathematics Competitions.

But perhaps Szaniszlo’s most unique – and intensive – involvement with young people and math is via the Leadership Program in Discrete Mathematics, an 20-day workshop for elementary and middle school teachers that she directs.

The idea behind the institute, which is a part of a larger prestigious national program administered by Rutgers University, is to help teachers improve their classroom skills so students become more engaged in learning about mathematics.

Szaniszlo, who is an associate professor of mathematics and computer science, lobbied to get the program at Valpo because she sees discrete mathematics, which focuses on critical thinking and problem-solving skills rather than number-crunching, as a tremendously useful tool that can be used over a lifetime. “Even students who don’t go on to use mathematics on a regular basis need to learn how to think critically. It’s important to teach that mindset of questioning things,” she says.

“Discrete mathematics is very different from what is usually taught in the classroom. Students who hate math, or think they’re bad at it, often do well with discrete mathematics because it requires creative problem-solving,” she says. “But it’s also good for high-end students because it involves very current concepts and can be used to groom someone for doing cutting edge mathematics.”

Intriguingly, discrete math concepts pop up all over the place in children’s literature, says Szaniszlo. “Any book that incorporates a map or has a someone going on a quest is utilizing discreet math. One of the teachers who took our workshop used the Harry Potter books to help teach discreet math skills. That’s why I love this area – because it gives students and teachers fun ways to do math.”

During spare summer hours, Szaniszlo is also involved in “VERUM” (Valparaiso Experience for Research by Undergraduates in Mathematics), a highly competitive national program supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation. The small group of VERUM participants spends 9 weeks working on original research, being taught and mentored by Szaniszlo and her math department colleagues.

When she can steal time for her own research, Szaniszlo spends time thinking about “graph theory”. She explains, “A graph has vertices and edges. Think of it as a map of a city where a street corner is a dot and the roads are lines. I study these kinds of structures.” How will Szaniszlo’s graph theory research affect you or me?

“It probably won’t,” she says with a smile. “Most of what I do is pure math. I could make up some use for it, but that’s not really what I’m interested in. I care about math more as a game or an art form.” And because of her passion for the subject, the next generation of teachers, mathematicians, and scientists are catching the same vision.

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