Support Organizations Spreading the Joy of Math
The 2024 Math Power! Prize, part of our suite of Math Power! activities, is designed to draw attention to the importance of mathematics and numeracy skills and to publicly recognize the amazing work of exceptional organizations working in their communities and globally to promote the joy of math. Prior to our 2022 award, there did not exist a dedicated prize for this type of global recognition as there is with literacy, such as the Library of Congress Literacy Awards.
Want to be one of the co-sponsors for the Math Power! Prize in 2024 and Beyond?
We are putting in US$10,000 of our own funding for the 2024 Math Power! Prize, and looking for other wondrous co-sponsors for this year’s award and future prize calls.
Your support will enable us to:
1) Run the Math Power! Prize for three years;
2) Support more awards and with higher funding levels, and to provide additional forms of technical support to exceptional organizations which are competitively selected through a juried review process;
3) Showcase the work of these organizations at in-person (e.g., our annual Symposia) and virtual events, and through other promotional opportunities (e.g., video interviews in one of our Pulse Media Channel playlists);
4) Develop an annual Math Power! Good Practices Guide based on the work of top-ranked applicants; and,
5) Build out the network and activities of organizations involved in our Math Power! Community of Practice.
We welcome individual and organizations as recognized Math Prize! co-sponsors and technical collaborators. If you are interested, please email us at medalliance@
Are You An Exceptional Math Organization? If so, apply for the Math Power! Prize.
Awards are given to organizations and/or programs that have demonstrated exceptional and sustained depth in their commitment to the advancement of mathematics and numeracy. The selected organizations need to meet the highest standards of excellence in their operations and services.
Submit your application here. (PDF copy of application available here.)
Submission Dates: Tuesday, April 2nd – Friday, May 31st, 2024, 11:59 p.m. EDT.
See selection criteria here.
Award Amount: At least one US$10,000 prize (with additional awards based on crowd-funding and co-sponsorships).
2024 Math Power! Prize Panel
Dr. David Crombecque - American Institute of Mathematics
Dr. David Crombecque is Associate Director of Special Projects at the American Institute of Mathematics in Pasadena, where he works on supporting equitable and accessible mathematics outreach programs throughout the country. Dr. Crombecque is also Professor of Mathematics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. His interests have focused on broadening participation in mathematics in particular for people coming from historically marginalized communities. He is one of the co-directors of the LA Math Teachers Circle and the project leader of Math On the Border, a program that offers joyful mathematics after school activities to unaccompanied migrant minors. Dr.Crombecque is also a founding member of Spectra, the LGBTQ+ association of mathematicians.
Dr. Deborah Stipek - Stanford University
Deborah J. Stipek, Ph.D. is the Judy Koch Emeritus Professor of Education and the former I James Quillen Dean of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Her doctorate is from Yale University in developmental psychology. Her scholarship concerns instructional effects on children’s achievement motivation and early childhood education. In addition to her scholarship, she served for five years on the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the National Academy of Sciences and is a member of the National Academy of Education. She also chaired the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Increasing High School Students’ Engagement & Motivation to Learn and the MacArthur Foundation Network on Teaching and Learning. She currently chairs the Heising-Simons Development and Research on Early Math Education Network and serves as a senior consultant to California Education Partners, working with districts to improve P-3 alignment. Dr. Stipek served 10 of her 23 years at UCLA as Director of the Corinne Seeds University Elementary School and the Urban Education Studies Center. She joined the Stanford Graduate School of Education as Dean and Professor of Education in January 2001.
Mary W. Sichangi - Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA)
Mary works at the Centre for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education in Africa (CEMASTEA) as the head of Partnerships & Linkages Department and Senior Teacher Trainer, Mathematics Education. She has extensive experience as a Mathematics Education expert with close to twenty years training teachers from Kenya and other African countries. She has presented papers and given advocacy talks in local and international conferences and workshops in areas of mathematics and science education. Mary is a member of the executive committee of the Strengthening of Mathematics and Science Education in Africa (SMASE Africa) a continental platform for educators and implementers that focus on addressing challenges in mathematics and science education. She holds a ministerial appointment as the coordinator of ADEA’s Inter-Country Quality Node on Mathematics and Science Education (ICQN-MSE) that spearheads policy dialogue in this thematic area.
Dr. Mark Saul - mEducation Alliance
Dr. Mark Saul has touched the lives of thousands of students around the world through his work as a teacher and author. He has served as Executive Director of the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival, as Director of Competitions for the Mathematical Association of America, and as Director of the Center for Mathematical Talent at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University. He has been President of the American Regions Mathematics League (ARML), Director of the Research Science Institute, and editor of Quantum, The Mathematics Teacher, and the AMS Notices.
Mark has also served as Senior Scholar for the John Templeton Foundation, and as a program director for the National Science Foundation. His portfolio there included directing the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. He is a 1984 recipient of that award, the nation’s highest honor for work in the classroom.
Dr. Padmanabhan Seshaiyer - George Mason University (GMU)
Dr. Padmanabhan Seshaiyer (Padhu) is a Professor and Director at GMU where he has served in multiple leadership positions including the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Director of the STEM Accelerator Program and Director of the Center for Outreach in Mathematics Professional Learning and Educational Technology (COMPLETE). During the last decade, he initiated and directed a variety of research, educational and outreach programs including faculty development, post-graduate, graduate and undergraduate research, K-12 outreach, teacher professional development, and enrichment programs, to foster the interest of students and teachers in STEM education at all levels.
He currently serves as the Chair of the US National Academy of Sciences commission on Mathematics Instruction, an elected member of the Mathematics and Computer Science division for the Council on Undergraduate Research and an appointed member by the Virginia Governor to the Virginia STEM Advisory board and the Virginia Workforce Development board. He has also served as a Program Director for the Division of Mathematical Sciences at the National Science Foundation.
Congrats to our 2022 Math Power! Prize Winners
On November 3rd, 2022, at our 12th annual Symposium, we were delighted to announce the winners of the 2022 — and first — Math Power! Prize. Please find profiles below of the winners, along with links to other top candidates.
About the Math Power! Prizes
The 2022 prize purse was divided into 2 Math Power! Prize Winner awards of $25,000 each and $5,000 for a Good Practices Honoree.
2022 Math Power! Prize Winners - $25,000 Prize Awards
talkSTEM
talkSTEM is a nonprofit organization, based in Dallas Fort Worth (DFW), Texas, working to empower children from all income levels, ethnicities, genders to see Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) as an intriguing and vital part of their daily lives.
They believe that every child is a STEM child.
Through their walkSTEM initiative, they depict math as a foundational language that forms the bedrock of STEM disciplines and work in partnership with a wide range of youth-serving organizations to effect a cultural shift when it comes to youth’s development of mathematical identity.
The walkSTEM initiative, consisting of math walking tours, co-developed by founder and CEO of talkSTEM, Dr. Dhingra, together with Dr. Glen Whitney, founder of the National Museum of Mathematics in New York, represents the largest arm within the talkSTEM organization.
walkSTEM uses place-, observation-, and inquiry-based learning strategies to provide immersive community experiences where students from underrepresented populations can dive into mathematics via local heritage, landscapes, opportunities, and experiences without even leaving their own neighborhood.
The freely accessible talkSTEM YouTube Channel contains hundreds of short videos of walking tours at over 200 public landmarks in DFW, highlighting key concepts and including downloadable educator guides and student worksheets to aid in active learning.
Click here to learn more about walkSTEM and here to view their guides.
Congratulations, talkSTEM!
From left to right: David Barth (Save the Children), Benjamin Feinstein (talkSTEM), Anthony Bloome (mEducation Alliance), and Alexis Bonnell (Google)
onebillion
onebillion is a UK-based non-profit developer of comprehensive EdTech solutions for children to become numerate and literate.
onebillion was an early pioneer of using tablet technology to enable marginalized children to unlock their potential.
From its first pilot of its numeracy content with one school in Malawi in 2014, there are now over 300,000 children using its software to attain numeracy and literacy in their own language.
onebillion’s onetab solution has been extensively scaled in school settings – including in USA, Malawi, South Africa and Canada – with the design principle that it must deliver learning for a child who may have no access to school.
By focusing on the needs and realities of these children, onebillion has developed EdTech that also works effectively for children who have more scaffolding to support their learning. Looking ahead, onebillion intends to focus more on supporting partners in refugee and emergency education contexts, where adult scaffolders may be unavailable, or available inconsistently.
A core goal of onebillion is that children are never left unsure what to do at any stage of their learning, and this has led to powerful innovations such as adaptive learning pathways without personal login, hardware resistant to daily usage in tough conditions, and lessons in digital literacy so that any child – or adult – can immediately start engaging with the content.
You can read about onebillion’s onetab solution here.
Congratulations, onebillion!
From left to right: David Barth (Save the Children), Andrew Ashe (onebillion), Anthony Bloome (mEducation Alliance), and Alexis Bonnell (Google)
2022 Good Practice Honoree - $5,000 Prize Award
CLT India
CLT India (Children’t LoveCastles Trust), founded in 1997, is a not for profit working in the field of education to help remote teachers and students in government schools while addressing the challenges of: teacher shortage, lack of subject matter expertise in STEM, lack of connectivity and access to the internet, and limited educational resources in rural schools.
CLT India has built a large repository of 20,000 STEM videos in English, Kannada, and Hindi with additional resources such as lesson plans, real-time experiments, and assessments which get loaded onto the plug & play Android device, the CLT Lab in the Box, along with data analytics for tracking usage.
CLT India is driven by the philosophy that every child – no matter their circumstances – deserves access to a rich educational environment to be able to build their aspirations and dreams. Visit their site to learn more!
Congratulations, CLT India!
2022 Math Power! Prize Nominees
While these organizations were not selected for one of our prizes, we applaud them for their important work!
2022 Math Power! Prize Sponsoring Organizations
2022 Collaborating Partners
