Oakland, CA–September 14, 2009. For more than 10 years, Mills College math professor Zvezdelina Stankova has organized more than 350 lessons to hundreds of students, exposing them to a myriad of problem-solving techniques and mathematical topics to inspire them to become future math leaders.

In her latest book, A Decade of the Berkeley Math Circle: The American Experience, (American Mathematical Society, 2008), co-edited with Oakland High School math teacher Tom Rike, Stankova explains how her math circle got started and became the model nationwide.

Stankova participated in math circles as a middle and high school student in Bulgaria, where she overcame initial traumatic math experiences and went on to win two silver medals at the International Mathematical Olympiads in 1987 and 1988.

After immigrating to the U.S., Stankova was shocked to learn of the vastly different culture and attitude toward math education and found that most American students may not encounter a single proof during their entire K–12 math education.

“There is a perception that math is only for a small percentage of the population. While math at the highest level is, arguably, not for everyone, there is something for everyone,” she said. The result is “an enormous gap between the average-level and top-level math students in the U.S., and a corresponding abyss between K–12 and college math education,” she said.

To remedy the state of math education, Stankova started the Berkeley Math Circle (BMC) in 1998. Since its beginning, 60 instructors from university professors to business tycoons to advanced high school students have led sessions on topics such as non-Euclidean geometry, number theory, probability, and game theory. Today BMC has become the pioneering model of American math circles, with math teachers nationwide looking to Stankova for guidance.

Stankova said the students voluntarily attend the weekly sessions for the pure enjoyment of studying math in a non-competitive, research-based environment. The program is open to students from grades 5 through 12, grouped according to levels. This fall the program also accepts students in grades 1 through 3.

In fact, what makes math circles different from math teams, which is more common in the U.S., is their different orientation towards math competitions, said Stankova.

Math teams tend to focus on the speedy solutions with short or multiple choice answers for numerous problems, she said, rather than advanced proof techniques. Proof requirements encourage students to truly understand mathematical concepts rather than simply be good at memorizing math rules.

But math circles are not elitist, said Stankova. Two-thirds of the participating students have had no prior math extracurricular experience. One of her math circle students, 10th grader Evan O’Dorney of Danville, won the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 2007 and became a brilliant math problem-solver within months of entering the BMC.

Stankova is already busy working on the second volume of the math circle book, adding to the first book’s collection of 300 mostly beginner to intermediate-level problems with topics from inversion in the plane to circle geometry; from combinatorics to Rubik's cube and abstract algebra; from number theory to mass point theory; and from complex numbers to game theory.

“The book encourages you to apply the newly acquired knowledge to problems but rarely gives you ready answers,” she said. “The mathematical world is huge: you'll never know everything, but you'll learn where to find things, and how to connect and use them.”

Stankova hopes her books will inspire more math teachers to organize more math circles, provide more math extracurricular opportunities for students, and even change the country’s current attitude towards math.

“If math circles become as popular as the spelling bee, including being televised, we will have reached our goal,” she said.

Nestled in the foothills of Oakland, California, Mills College is a nationally renowned, independent liberal arts college offering a dynamic progressive education that fosters leadership, social responsibility, and creativity to approximately 950 undergraduate women and 500 graduate women and men. Since 2000, applications to Mills College have more than doubled. The College is named one of the top colleges in the West by U.S. News & World Report, and ranks as one of the Best 371 Colleges by the Princeton Review. Forbes.com ranked Mills 55th among America's best colleges and named it a "Top Ten: Best of the All-Women's Colleges." Visit us at www.mills.edu.

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