Math Department helps students find 'lightbulb moments' in education

Elaine Wagner and Annaka McClelland talk about the Math Department during an episode of the <i>Fulfilling the Mission </i>podcast.

BYU-Idaho Radio

With five different bachelor's degrees, the BYU-Idaho Department of Mathematics works to help students find the math careers they want to work in.

Bachelor's degrees include Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Mathematics Education Composite and Mathematics Education. There is also a Data Science associate degree.

Department Chair Elaine Wagner says the professors in the department work to help students identify what type of math they enjoy the most.

"(The professors) say, 'Hey, you're really talented at this. This is an opportunity for you. Look at these ideas,'" Wagner said.

The Data Science degree provides a variety of opportunities for students to find a career working with numbers in an industry they're already interested in, Wagner said.

"What's exciting about Data Science is it's an 'and,' right? You can do this **and** say you love fashion. Well, you can go into the fashion industry **and** do data there. Or I love sports and so I want to do the analytics for sports because every team has a data analyst that is, every professional team has a data analyst that's associated with it to help pull out performance. You could do that in finance. You can do it in all sorts of places," Wagner said.

Annaka McClelland is a senior studying Data Science. She's working part-time as a data analyst for John Deere, which she hopes will help her get a full-time job as a data scientist or a machine learning engineer. She found the Data Science program while she was already a student at BYU-Idaho studying computer science.

"Once I saw Data Science, I was like, this is exactly what I want to do. And so I switched and never looked back," she said.

Wagner says the Department of Mathematics is also for those students who are going into other fields and may struggle learning math. She has helped create courses to help students know how to use math in the real world and says the Lord will help them understand the math they need to use to be successful.

"Everyone can do it," Wagner said. "And sometimes they just need taught in a different way. They need a little more time understanding something or they need connections to the world around, and then, we see that people feel more empowered just to do whatever they want to do in their lives."

Wagner says they have so many tools to help students get those "lightbulb moments" where they realize they can understand math.

"That's why you become a teacher," Wagner said.

Some of the tools include free one-on-one tutoring for specific math classes, starting with Math 108 and going on up the classes. There are Teachers Assistants in the classrooms who can help students. The faculty also has regular office hours for students to drop in. The Data Science Society helps students with coding. The Math Study Center is a drop-in lab in the McKay Library room 288. Find hours at Math Study Center.

While all of these skills help build students in ways they can be leaders in their careers, the Math Department is also helping students be disciple leaders, which is the mission of BYU-Idaho.

Wagner quoted Galileo Galilei who said, "Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe."

"We really work to share our discipleship as teachers, to talk about ideas of how they connect," Wagner said.

Learn more about the Department of Mathematics.

You can watch or listen to this episode of the **Fulfilling the Mission** podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The episode is also available below.

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