Beautiful Math for All

Cambridge Math Circle addresses one of the most serious roadblocks to STEM careers for girls in the US: math. In fact, women have made remarkable gains in all fields of STEM except the math-intensive ones: while women make up 59% of degree earners in biology, only 43 percent of degree earners in mathematics or statistics and 18% computer and information sciences are women. There are two main ways math can be a roadblock or a superhighway into STEM careers: one is the requisite math skills and abstract reasoning, and the other is having the passion for and interest in math and STEM more broadly. 

This problem is endemic in the United States: half of the population faces greater math anxiety, stereotype threat, lack of access to high-quality math experiences and enrichment for elementary/middle-school girls, as well as a lack of role models. These factors play a central role in why women are underrepresented in STEM fields by influencing girls to steer clear of STEM.  In the Cambridge/Boston area, there are no other providers we know of who teach fun, challenging math with a focus on equity for girls and other underrepresented students, and provide inspiration for STEM careers. 

We counteract the factors driving girls away from STEM in general and math in particular by addressing these 3 main areas:

• Math is key to success in STEM: There are a lot of programs that aim to get students excited about STEM fields, and present subjects that are easily accessible. While this is extremely important, excitement without the requisite skills is not enough. The primary hurdle to STEM careers for many students is math, and increasingly, it is becoming clear that math anxiety and not simply math performance plays a role.

• Math anxiety and stereotype threats are rampant and hit girls most: Many elementary school teachers are themselves anxious about mathematics, and there is research showing that this creates math-anxiety in their female students but not in their male students. Stereotype threat more broadly affects underrepresented students, including girls and women.

• Starting young is key to success in math: Factors driving girls away from math develop early, and once a student falls behind or loses interest, it's hard to catch up because of the sequential nature of the subject. High school or college is often too late.

Our solution is to provide immersive experiences that strengthen elementary and middle school girls’ math and problem solving skills and build a strong sense of math confidence, in a community where all students, and especially girls and underrepresented minorities, are welcome.   

Cambridge Math Circle was founded and is run by women to address multiple bottlenecks in the STEM pipeline before and during key transitions of girls’ being tracked away from STEM, using the benefits of our experience as female STEM professionals, immigrants, and parents. While many other excellent organizations focus on delivering a high-quality math curriculum in similar ways, we personalize the experience for our students and make it accessible to everyone. 

Students in elementary and middle school explore the vastness of math and discover which areas of math they are particularly interested in. This serves as a springboard for a greater passion for and interest in STEM, preventing the drop-off from the STEM pathway. Some unique features of our approach include:

• We proactively recruit girls and students underrepresented in math, by partnering with community leaders and schools. Currently, over 50% of our students are girls and over 75% of our student body comes from groups underrepresented in STEM (girls, Black and Latinx students, and students from low-income families);

• We emphasize making mistakes as a learning opportunity. Because women and girls tend to internalize failure and to judge themselves more harshly in math in particular, we talk about our mistakes and even make mistakes on purpose, so that students can see our delight when they notice the mistakes!

• We present math as a social endeavor; for example, we run team-based rather than individual competitions, knowing that girls prefer competing for their team rather than competing as individuals.

• We organize a modeling contest where students come up with their own real-world problems and solutions that help their immediate community. We do this because girls often prefer working on issues that have relevance to the world they live in.

• We use pedagogical tools that allow for everyone to share an answer at once, giving equal airtime to all students. Because girls on average take more care and often speak up less quickly and frequently than boys, having equal airtime lets everyone have a fair chance.

• We recruit warm, assertive and math-positive teachers, because teachers who are anxious about math tend to pass along their anxiety to students, and girls are especially vulnerable to this.

By reaching kids in their formative years, helping them experience math as joyful and build their confidence and skills, while connecting them to other children who love math, we expect that more girls will stick with math and pursue honors and AP level math classes in high school, complete college STEM programs, and pursue STEM careers. By having many girls in the same community go through the journey together, we are making it more likely that even when any of them waver, the others will be there to lift them up and keep them going.

CMC gives children of all genders and backgrounds access to joyful, challenging math. However, from the beginning, our primary focus has been on 3 target populations that are often excluded from STEM careers: girls, Black and Latinx children, and children from low-income families. We have identified this need for access through our own observations of which students receive additional math enrichment outside of school, by speaking with hundreds of parents and students and by being part of the Cambridge Public School parent community. 

Parents in all of our target groups pointed out that they wanted their children to develop a love of math, and to feel confident in math. Parents from our target groups report that their children were enjoying math more, and requesting more math! 

• Maryam’s dad (the names have been changed for privacy) reported that the only time his 7th-grade daughter enjoys math is one of our weekly classes. He told us how much Maryam looks forward to math that is both challenging and fun. 

• Aliyah’s mom called us on the phone a few weeks ago to let us know that her 1st-grade daughter won’t be able to attend for a couple of classes due to family logistics. You could probably hear Aliyah's primal scream of “No!!!” through the phone from 30 yards away as she learned this information. Not only did she manage to convince her mother to bring her to class (albeit a little late), but she finished every problem in record time, and also came to online office hours the following week, just in case she had missed something. 

• Rebecca has been with us for over 3 years. She is an incredibly dedicated student who dreams of being an anesthesiologist -  a profession for which she knows she will need a lot of math, and in which African-American females like her aren’t widely represented. Not only has she been learning rigorous math with Cambridge Math Circle, but through our community partners, we were able to connect her with a female African-American anesthesiologist who is now mentoring her, making Rebecca dream much closer to reality. 

Our proximity to the communities we are serving:

CMC was founded by two proximate leaders: refugee women who are parents in the Cambridge community. Because most of their children attend Cambridge Public Schools, CMC’s CEO as well as the Board of Directors understand first-hand the challenges students and families are experiencing. In addition, our CEO has taught in both Cambridge Public Schools and other public and private schools in the area, providing insight into the experience of being a teacher in Cambridge. 

How we understand the communities’ needs:

The parents of our students (some of whom are members of our governing and advisory boards), as well as our school partners and the students themselves, provide feedback in ongoing conversations, as well as in surveys and interviews which we use for improving the program. For example, at the start of the COVID pandemic, parents asked for more classes so that students who were largely left on their own could interact with others and with caring adults while their parents worked and schools figured out how to teach online. We responded by adding an extra set of classes with a new curriculum just a week later. Girls especially benefited from this as they were more likely to be isolated during the pandemic.

How do the communities we serve guide our solution’s design and implementation:

Our communities continually guide our trajectory. For example, when parents of many of our low-income girls told us that their children’s school laptops were no longer available for home use, we raised funds and purchased laptops to lend to students who didn’t have a device. When we partner with schools, we design the delivery method for our curriculum around the schools’ needs and logistics, together with our partners. We fine-tune the curriculum to meet the needs of the students in each setting. For example, when a school told us that they were particularly concerned about math for their girls of color, we made sure to focus our work around those students. And when parents of color (primarily of girls) told us how important it is for them to have their kids succeed in school math classes, rather than assume they will do so and focus on enrichment and problem-solving alone, we made sure to keep our curricular math classes going. Whenever a student misses class, we make sure to check in with the family to see if there are any logistical barriers we can remove to keep the learning going for many years.

During the pandemic, the number of families looking for math enrichment skyrocketed, and Cambridge Math Circle has scaled to support this need. In 2018 (when CMC began) we served 20 children; of which 70% were from underrepresented groups in STEM. In 2021, these numbers climbed to 300/75%. This year, 2023, our numbers have increased further to over 700. 

Over the past 5.5 years (3 of them pandemic), CMC has developed multiple high-quality programs, including math circles, in-depth curricular math classes, and lunch math games at schools. We have developed deep connections within the Cambridge community and partnerships with a third of our city's public schools. We have also received requests to set up similar programs in other schools in Cambridge and nearby districts. Hence, we are poised for growth. It is time to refine our business model and plans for growth. We would appreciate support for this from Solve and Tiger Global Impact Ventures. Individual and/or group leadership coaching would be incredibly useful at this stage, as we go from one full-time person juggling 5 roles and managing 50 or so part-time contractors, to more full-time staff. Finally, everything is easier when there are peers to work with: this is a belief we practice in our classes with our students, and we would love to be a part of the peer-to-peer network.

Nataliya moved to the US from Ukraine at the age of 14 as a refugee, and 4 years later entered MIT to study math and physics as an undergraduate, both conducting research and serving as a mentor for other students. After getting a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago, where she continued to work in education, she conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge in the UK. After returning to Cambridge, MA, following a stint at a math ed tech company in Texas, Nataliya became a public school parent, while transitioning to a full-time K-12 classroom teacher role, first in Cambridge Public Schools and later in other schools in the area. All of these experiences allowed Nataliya to create connections in academia and in parent communities, in addition to experiencing both what it’s like to be a mathematics researcher and a K-12 teacher of mathematics. Last but not least, being a parent of a child in the Cambridge Public Schools for the past 8 years has created many meaningful connections to families from a wide cross section of the communities CMC serves.

Using our unique perspective as female STEM professionals and K-16 educators, as well as our proximity to the communities we serve, we have developed 4 key innovations: our curriculum, our community, personalization and delivery, centering the needs of girls and other underrepresented students.

Curriculum: We have created an innovative curriculum that is aimed squarely at having more girls and other underrepresented students pursue STEM careers. We use the best of Eastern European enrichment math experience, combined with the experience of our partners in the US (Math Circles of Chicago, Prime Factor Math Circle, PROMYS, as well as faculty at MIT, Harvard, Tufts, among others), to create a curriculum to inspire kids and allow them to experience what it’s like to be a mathematician or scientist. We also partner with The Art of Problem Solving to use their curriculum in an innovative way which can potentially be replicated around the US. 

Community: Our teaching is done in small groups, and this is how girls learn best. We group students primarily not by grade level, but by current skill, pace of learning, and personality. We help the shy students become comfortable with the program first, before grouping them with the more confident/talkative students. This helps girls feel more empowered.

We have warm and caring instructors with strong math backgrounds. This keeps the classes welcoming to all, so girls are experiencing less of the math anxiety that drives students away from STEM. 

Personalization: We use our knowledge of the students, gleaned through regular ice-breakers and other close interactions, to personalize the learning. Girls are especially interested in real-world connections, so this benefits them the most.

In our curricular math classes, we give every student a chance to show whether they know the material already, and modify the learning path for them. Girls are more likely to keep quiet about their advanced knowledge due to cultural norms, and this ability to place out of content benefits them.

Delivery: We are in our sixth year of running the Cambridge Math Circle programs in Cambridge, with a pilot program in Boston. Classes are given as both out-of-school and in collaboration with schools. We work with our partner schools to deliver the solution in ways that make sense given their logistical constraints and educational needs of their students. We multiply the impact of our intervention by working with math coaches, parents and teachers, who then are able to support their students to extend the learning on their own, as well as in tandem with us. Because of the immense pressure from society against girls doing math-intensive STEM, it takes support from many sources for girls to succeed and stay in the STEM pipeline.

Goals for the next year:

-> Increase the number of children accessing our programming;

-> Increase number of locations for Cambridge Math Circle programming within Cambridge schools;

-> Increase CMC’s overall capacity by adding core staff and building new relationships with similar organizations and STEM businesses.

Our 2023-2024 goals will be realized through the work we are already doing. These goals are attainable and a natural extension of the work from this year and our existing partners. 

Goals for the next five years:

-> expand the program into more communities in the greater Boston area

-> participate in an accelerator program in order to professionalize our operations and help develop new revenue streams, such as licensing fees for our curriculum

Our five-year goals will be attainable as we continue to grow, but will be even more achievable through connections to networks like MIT Solve. We will also utilize our connections to the national math circle network, our board, and our partner organizations to continue strengthening our capacity.

We have been tracking our percentage of underrepresented students served for the past 4 years, and it has been at or over our target of 75%. We have also been regularly surveying students and parents to see whether our classes have been having the effects we are aiming for: increased confidence, which over 80% of students have said it does. Our students are just starting to enter high school: we aim to survey their families to track whether they are choosing honors and AP classes.

Outcomes: More women pursue STEM careers when the following factors come together:

• An interest and excitement around STEM

• Female role models in STEM

• The necessary high school mathematical preparation and abstract thinking skills

• Confidence (ie no anxiety) in math 

• STEM is viewed as a) being communal in nature, and b) positively affecting the community

Outputs: 

• Girls report feeling confident in math

• Girls have communal experiences in STEM 

• Girls take honors and AP math classes in high school

• Teachers gain more confidence in math

Activities:

• Girls participate in afterschool classes that strengthen mathematical thinking and provide joyful math experiences in a welcoming community

• Girls meet women in STEM and learn about past women in STEM

• Girls take part in math competitions highlighting STEM for the community good

• Teachers are exposed to anxiety-busting, community approaches to math

Currently, girls and women in the US are directed away from STEM at high rates at every point in their careers, starting as early as elementary school. College-level math is one key roadblock to STEM education and careers. The other is the relative lack of excitement in STEM for girls, which comes from anxiety in math, a lack of role models, and perceived non-communal nature of STEM.  

We address these roadblocks head on, by organizing classes that create welcoming communities, emphasize the usefulness of STEM to the wider community, bring in female role models, and work to destroy math anxiety by allowing both teachers as well as students to see real-world mathematicians make mistakes and treat them as part of the process. We know these approaches work because this is how countries in Eastern Europe produce many STEM professionals with gender parity, and it is also how students who often do end up in STEM (wealthier boys) are encouraged and supported in the US. 

We have evidence of the impact we are starting to have already. Because we began with mostly 2nd graders at the outset in 2018, and because of data privacy concerns, we do not yet have data on which courses our students are choosing at the high school level. However, we do know that 

• Over 1,000 students have taken part in our extended programming, including over 500 girls.

• Over 80% of our students are reporting increased confidence in math and greater enjoyment of math. 

• Girls have reported being inspired and encouraged by their interactions with 10+ outstanding women in STEM who have visited our classes. 

• Over 20 teachers and math coaches have attended our classes either separately, at teacher-only math circles, or alongside their students. 

• Girls working in teams have taken top places in dozens of team math problem-solving competitions that generate excitement around math and also allow girls to work together. 

• Approximately 50 girls have taken part in our new team challenge to use math modeling to improve the community

• Over 97% of parents and students surveyed would recommend our classes to their friends.

While the humans we serve and human interaction are at the core of our solution, we use technology as a tool in a variety of ways, as needed. 

• To make logistics easier for families, we hold classes in schools with transportation provided by the schools, and we deliver some of our lessons via Zoom for kids in a nearby town’s after-school program, and those who head home after school. 
• We keep track of our students’ progress in curricular math classes using the Beast Academy/Art of Problem Solving system supplied by our partner, AoPS Pathways. 
• We are able to hire and train teachers around the world thanks to Zoom and our online curriculum and lesson planning system. 
• We use automatic texting and emailing to remind parents of upcoming classes for their students, as we noticed many underrepresented students have a lot going on and really appreciate the extra reminders. This has improved attendance by underrepresented students dramatically. 
• We distribute homework (both optional and required, depending on the class type) electronically and the required homework is graded electronically, giving students instant feedback that results in improved learning outcomes. 
• We bring in diverse female mathematicians (Pamela Harris, Eugenia Cheng, Lauren Williams, Margo Levine) from around the US using Zoom, so they can act as role models for girls and inspire students to STEM careers.

1 full-time; 5 part-time; 50 contractors

5.5 years (since 2018)

As a member of a persecuted group (Jews in Eastern Europe), our co-founder Nataliya Yufa experienced what it’s like to be discriminated against for an ethnic attribute. As a woman in STEM, she has experienced what it’s like to be one of only a handful of women in a math classroom, including at MIT, where not a single STEM class she took while majoring in both math and physics was taught by a woman. As a refugee, Nataliya also experienced deep poverty first-hand. These lived experiences are behind her drive to run an equity-based nonprofit, one which levels the playing field for girls, Black and Latinx students, and low-income students. CMC actively recruits students, teachers, and board members from underrepresented groups. Over 75% of our students are from the three target groups listed above. 

Our revenue comes from several different sources:

• Families of students paying for high-quality, innovative STEM classes, which partially subsidizes other students;

• Government and school contracts to provide services to underrepresented students;

• Foundation and corporate grants to support enrichment math education; 

• Individual donations from members of our community.

We receive in-kind support from local schools (in the form of paying for space, transportation, and school staff's time), local universities (Harvard and MIT), which provide free space and/or students to serve as our teachers, and parents and other community members who volunteer their time to support our students.

CMC was founded by proximate leaders (leaders who are part of the community they serve) without access to starting capital, and has evolved from a donation-only model to a fee-for-service model for families that can afford it, with additional support from recurring grants and contracts. 

CMC's revenue model allows us to provide our services at low-cost or no-cost to families with need. We rely on in-kind support from our partner schools and Harvard University (such as free classroom space, recruitment of students and teachers, support during classes from school teachers, and transportation when needed), which helps offset operations expenses and reach more students. In the past 5 years, starting with $0, we have generated over $500k in revenue. Further financial stability will come from securing more recurring grants and sustaining donations from individuals, and from strategically growing the tuition portion of our work.

Thus far, the Cambridge Math Circle has received over $330k in tuition payments, starting from $10k in our first year of operation, 2018. We have obtained a total of over $110k in government funding (from the City of Cambridge), and we now have obtained over $90k in grants from The Carina Fund, Polynera Initiative, Google, and the Cambridge Community Foundation, among others.