Morehouse College Helps Produce Rhodes Scholar Phaidra Buchanan : Morehouse College

Congratulations Phaidra Buchanan, on being named a 2021 Rhodes Scholar!  

Phaidra participated as a Mathlete in Morehouse College community outreach program, Annual Math Competitions Bootcamp, in middle school and all throughout her high school years.  She won her grade level contest every year and won the overall competition every year except one.  She so believes in the importance of this community outreach effort that she has journeyed back to Morehouse College as a volunteer, all throughout her college years, assisting with the bootcamp as panel moderator and designing questions for the Mini-Math Contest.  She mentions her volunteer work with Morehouse College in this article for the University of Georgia, where she is currently a senior.

Morehouse College is dedicated to serving the community year-round through its many outreach programs for children and youth, which includes an extensive list of programs in the Summer Academy.  A means to develop mathematical talent is to strengthen mathematics knowledge and skills through preparation for math competitions. Preparation for math competitions inspires the participant to increase the amount of time spent studying math and increase the difficulty of problems studied.  Thus, each participant becomes a winner through preparation.  Each becomes a champion by improving their mathematical ability through preparing for math competitions.   

The Annual Math Competitions Bootcamp was started in 2012 and was held virtually in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Though the main objective is to facilitate participation of underrepresented groups in mathematics competitions, all boys and girls in grades 5 -12, are welcome to participate.  Students come from all over metropolitan Atlanta and surrounding states to take part in the bootcamp.  To learn more about the bootcamp, click here (see pages 51-63).

It truly does take community to make a scholar and we, in the Math Department at Morehouse College in the Division of Mathematics and Computational Sciences, are so very grateful and happy for the opportunity to do our part by holding the Annual Math Competitions Bootcamp. 

Congratulations again, Phaidra Buchanan, on being named a 2021 Rhodes Scholar! 

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About the Article Author:

Dr. Tuwaner Lamar is an assistant professor of mathematics at Morehouse College.