April 01, 2018
Linda Blaser
Foresters place first in math competition
Kaloyan Parvanov '20 (from left), Emma Juettner '20, Assistant Professor of Mathematics Enrique Treviño, and Dipika Subra...
Lake Forest College students placed first among Illinois teams at the Spring 2018 Intersectional Collegiate Mathematics Competition, a meeting of the Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan Sections of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), on March 23–24, 2018 at Valparaiso University.
Students competed in teams of three to complete a two-hour exam of eight questions.
Lake Forest College had two teams, one of which placed first among the 13 Illinois teams and seventh overall out of 52 teams. The winning team included Emma Juettner ’20, Kaloyan Parvanov ’20, and Dipika Subramaniam ’21. The trio felt confident after the competition, but didn’t expect to win first in the state.
To prepare for the competition, Lake Forest College students met every Monday for 60 to 90 minutes during the fall semester to practice problem-solving.
“Usually, each state holds their own sectional MAA competition every year, but this competition was special because Illinois, Indiana and Michigan sections came together to compete,” Assistant Professor of Mathematics Enrique Treviño said. “The last intersectional competition was 25 years ago.”
The winning team felt confident, knowing they solved the problems and showed their work to garner as many points as possible, and were happy to earn top in the state. “It felt pretty good,” Juettner said.
Lake Forest College competes in the Illinois competition every two years. In 2014 and 2016, the Foresters brought home back-to-back second-place wins.